First-Ever NASA Ice Team HD Footage Release

Very nice video

I remember the first HD video I saw, it was at NHK in Tokyo with friends from NASDA. We traveled to tokyo via shinkansen Nozomi from Kobe via Koyto station.

Outstanding clarity and field of view, excellent work.

Too bad NASA TV still broadcasts exclusively in standard definition.

Lemme see if I've got this straight: we're giving this up for a CAPSULE?

You don't know how many times I have thought the same thing. Of course the capsule will have restroom facilities? Can't picture of the logistics of a coed crew wearing diapers. Sorry I had to go there.

As a lady told me during one of my space talks: "Only in Washington would replacing the Space Shuttle with a space capsule seem like progress".

But also, in a long line across North Texas, replacing the Space Shuttle seems like progress. Unless you get off on the idea of having pieces of it in your back yard.

Hilda, no sane person wants another accident. If the Shuttle is too dangerous to extend, then why fly it at all? This is more fiction than fact. The orbiters get overhauled after every mission. A modest extension is in the national interest, unless you get off giving Russia our hard earned dollars and gamble on our national security interests not diverging at some point. An American solution to an American-made problem, the gap, is always preferable to dependence on foreign providers.

You're changing the subject. You said that you're disappointed that the Shuttle is being given up for a capsule. I'm saying that compared to a capsule, in our own experience and that of the Russians with capsules, the Shuttle is less safe. Certainly less safe than it was supposed to be. So if astronaut safety is a paramount concern, as members of Congress have stated explicitly, changing to a capsule may be the best thing.

"If the Shuttle is too dangerous to extend, then why fly it at all?"

CAIB answered that pretty definitively. We fly it to finish the job we promised to do. I'll grant you that extension may be in the national interest in one respect, but may well not be in another.

"I'm saying that compared to a capsule, in our own experience and that of the Russians with capsules, the Shuttle is less safe."

How did you arrive at this conclusion? Shuttle has carried about 800 people to orbit in 135 launches. Soyuz has carried about 250 in 105 launches. When Soyuz launches, the people are about all it carries. When Shuttle launches, it carries the mass, in payload besides the Orbiter, of several Soyuz vehicles. Its like a Boeing 747 jumbo jet as compared with a Piper Cub; hardly worthy of a comparison.

There have been two fatal missions on Shuttle, killing 14, and two fatal accidents on Soyuz, killing 4.

While here have not been any fatalities on Soyuz in recent years, there have been a number of aborts and unplanned reentry profiles.

It can be argued that the two Shuttle accidents were caused on by the vehicle or the design of the vehicle, but by lax management failing to take action in response to known problems.

By your logic Hilda, we'd be flying capsules forever, because compared to any winged planform it would be simple and safer. Let me say that the appropriate follow-on vehicle (logistics, not deep space)to the shuttle is another shuttle-like spacecraft with wings, wheels and lifting surfaces and most importantly a large cargo bay for cargo and supplies. Capsule shapes make poor cargo carriers and their reentry options usually require water landings, because that too is much less complex than acquiring a runway. But water recovery, while initially simpler than flying complex reentry trajectories that winged shapes require, vastly limits landing opportunities because the capsule has no crossrange (the shuttle has 2,000 miles)and subjects cargo to extensive delays while the capsule is hauled out of the drink and returned to dry land, which on a naval vessel could take weeks. The original Orion CEV was to land on land via steerable parachutes and airbags, all of which were among the first to be deleted for cost, so i assume the cost logic applies to other capsule designs as well. Let us extend the Shuttle for two years and reconsider future logistics spacecraft designs while there is still time. We don't need no stinkin' capsules!

That capsules are safer is clear from your statistics. The Soyuz fatalities were a long time ago. Only one, the parachute failure, had to do with the Soyuz system architecture. Both shuttle failures were due to system architecture. They wouldn't have happened with a capsule.

Yes, by my logic we would be flying capsules forever. What's wrong with that? This adoration of wings ("We don't need no stinkin' capsules!") is a little hard to understand.

Are we talking about cargo capability? CAIB was pretty troubled about the idea of a human space transportation vehicle doing dual duty as a cargo carrier. ESA doesn't need humans to carry cargo to ISS, and neither does JAXA or certainly Russia.

Are we talking about downmass? Wings are handy for that, but it isn't clear that people are necessary to pilot a winged vehicle in.

Sorry, but capsules smell quite fine from where I sit. The only trouble is that we, the U.S., don't have any. I think we all agree on that point.

The reason for lifting body logistics spacecraft is their utility and moderate G forces during reentry as compared to the blunt bodied capsule. A lifting glider entry opens up many more landing opportunities than a capsule, which basically must descend over its intended target. The shuttle can glide 2,000 miles to the L or R of its flight path, and you don't jettison parts of yourself during descent. All in all, capsules while cheaper and safer are a poor value for logistics space taxis.

Statistically it is about even in terms of numbrs of deaths per number of people carried. There are a higher percentage of catastrophic failures of the Soyuz.

As demonstrated in the recent Soyuz failures, when the modules fail to separate, or when the vehicle goes into a ballistic trajectory, the crew is helpless, which was exactly the problem in the earlier fatalities.

"A lifting glider entry opens up many more landing opportunities than a capsule, which basically must descend over its intended target."

I can accept that, but I don't see why that's essential. A capsule doesn't *need* to descend over it's intended target, but rather must have a recovery crew somewhere near where it finally descends. OK, sure, there are some places you really don't want it to descend, but ...

How many "landing opportunities" does the Space Shuttle have for landing? Vastly fewer potential landing targets than what a capsule would offer.

By the way, the recent ballistic trajectory failures of Soyuz were by no means catastrophic. They were surprising, and scary, but the vehicle handled them well.

Capsule entries are far more limited, both in locales, downmass, and because you drop the service module in the same footprint-you want to take the chance that part of it survives and lands on a school yard in Los Angeles? The benign entry is vital to fragile station experiments being returned to earth.I once asked Buzz Aldrin, who rode a Gemini and an Apollo reentry vehicle back to ocean splashdowns if he preferred a shuttle-type descent over capsules. "Are you nuts?" he asked.
Case closed.