Before the 2003 Columbia accident, NASA used the launch date of the cargo currently loaded into shuttle Discovery as a computer screen-saver. So relentless was the march to install what will be the final U.S. component to the International Space Station, that managers overlooked blatant safety issues, investigators determined after the shuttle's demise.
NASA insists it has absorbed the bitter lessons of Columbia and despite a presidential directive to be finished with space station construction in three years, feels no compunction to be driven by the calendar.
"We feel very confident we have a vehicle that's safe to go fly. We would not launch if we didn't think that was true," said LeRoy Cain, NASA's top shuttle manager at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
On Tuesday at 11:38 a.m. NASA hopes Discovery will launch and deliver the space station's final linchpin: the school bus-sized Harmony module, which will attach to new laboratories owned by Europe and Japan.
If the 14-day flight unfolds with few delays and no major problems, NASA plans to launch the first of its partners' laboratories on Dec. 6.
The flight can't happen soon enough for the European Space Agency, which has weathered launch delays with compassion and patience even while its bank accounts dwindled. ESA's Columbus laboratory was supposed to fly in 2002. Delays with the station's Russian-owned living quarters cost ESA two years' time, which managers handled by slowing development and payments to its contractors.
The second delay stemmed from the Columbia disaster. NASA halted station assembly for three and a half years while engineers overhauled the shuttles, designed new safety procedures and equipment, and conducted test flights. Throughout the hiatus, a cash infusion from ESA member countries kept the Columbus program afloat and its science and engineering teams employed.
ESA has spent 5 billion Euros on the program so far, with another 4 billion earmarked for operations once the lab arrives in orbit.
Despite the difficulties, ESA has no regrets about joining the station program.
"Would we want to join a program where we run the risk of having delays, or having disappointments, or having downs before we have ups? That's the normal business of space," ESA space station program manager Alan Thirkettle told Discovery News.
NASA insists it has absorbed the bitter lessons of Columbia and despite a presidential directive to be finished with space station construction in three years, feels no compunction to be driven by the calendar.
"We feel very confident we have a vehicle that's safe to go fly. We would not launch if we didn't think that was true," said LeRoy Cain, NASA's top shuttle manager at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
On Tuesday at 11:38 a.m. NASA hopes Discovery will launch and deliver the space station's final linchpin: the school bus-sized Harmony module, which will attach to new laboratories owned by Europe and Japan.
If the 14-day flight unfolds with few delays and no major problems, NASA plans to launch the first of its partners' laboratories on Dec. 6.
The flight can't happen soon enough for the European Space Agency, which has weathered launch delays with compassion and patience even while its bank accounts dwindled. ESA's Columbus laboratory was supposed to fly in 2002. Delays with the station's Russian-owned living quarters cost ESA two years' time, which managers handled by slowing development and payments to its contractors.
The second delay stemmed from the Columbia disaster. NASA halted station assembly for three and a half years while engineers overhauled the shuttles, designed new safety procedures and equipment, and conducted test flights. Throughout the hiatus, a cash infusion from ESA member countries kept the Columbus program afloat and its science and engineering teams employed.
ESA has spent 5 billion Euros on the program so far, with another 4 billion earmarked for operations once the lab arrives in orbit.
Despite the difficulties, ESA has no regrets about joining the station program.
"Would we want to join a program where we run the risk of having delays, or having disappointments, or having downs before we have ups? That's the normal business of space," ESA space station program manager Alan Thirkettle told Discovery News.
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