Are lives of 5 astronauts worth this?

I was thinking the other day, if NASA is not sure what the Discovery Shuttle could do upon reentry, why don't they use an auto pilot or minimum number of asntronauts required, to fly the ship back? This way if anything happenes to go bad they would have minimised the loss of life???? I don't see why all the astronauts have to come back in this shuttle?

This really depends on the person you ask, or responds.

Me, I think it is worth it, they knew the risks. people dies everyday, its a part of life.

The Hardest thing we have to do in this world is live.

with ur job comes great risks but also great glory.. perk of the job and personally i dont think i'd feel bad for those ppl i know its not a good sounding thing but thats what happens ppl die..in experimental projects .. u ever see those dudes that jumpd off building flappin fake wings ..very old choppy videos..situation is in a sense like that maybe u'll get lucky and survive or fall and break ur neck..

well that could be possible, and return the astronauts in soyus, maybe, but i dont know if actually the shuttle have autopilot or if good enough -i mean THE AUTOPILOT-

in the end, i think that they will return in the discovery, and nothing will happend

ahhh, and what is all these "brave" and "glory" words???

after the challenger incident i dont know what they have changed in the space shuttle program, but perhaps the decitions were wrong

[edit on 4-8-2005 by grunt2]

I mean they could live to die another day right?

I am sure that we have enought technology to fly a shuttle on auto pilot, right?

Why loose life when it is not necessary? Those people you talk about with fake wings had no other option, they wanted to fly and that was the only way they knew! i don't consider their action/death unnecessary.

Does anyone NEED tp die? No its the order of things.

[edit on 4-8-2005 by SpittinCobra]

I think they have been using autopilot on the shuttle for all of the re-entries except for once

auto pilot doesnt mean jack-.... because either way if there is damage on the shuttle it will prolly explode once again..but still see the point if it happens it happens cuz with ur job comes great risks they know that when they signed up for it

in the last stage landing maneuvres they use both autopilot and manual, only autopilot dont bring to home the shuttle

i think that the problem of the human lives can be solved , use the soyus capsules (how many are 1-2???),but you know the national pride is involved, the real problem is what you will do with the discovery, it can be fixed in the space???

now that if the discovery is in real trouble, but perhaps the problems are overated and then come the politics, "if we have another problem, the public opinion will eat me alive"

but i realy dont know the situation, i think that in the end the astronauts will land alive, the discovery wont have problems, and will be a looot of tv shows and magazine reports of how "brave" and "glorious" are the astronauts, etc, etc





[edit on 4-8-2005 by grunt2]

A very good question... I have no ide so I will not start to speculate...

what do you expect to happen when you try and put a 20ish year old hunk-a-junk rocket in to space??

the astronauts knew the risks involved. instead of saying 'oh but they don't need to die etc''... why don't you ask the astronauts what they wanna do. if they don't wanna come back on that ship they won't, if they do want to come back they will. if they die it'll just go to show how little we still know about space travel.

It would be cool if they made the cockpit of the shuttle a detachable rentry pod with an ablative heat shield. This way if something happened to the shuttle they could eject if you will from it and renter the atmosphere in the same fashion that the old rocket riding astronauts did

I was under the impression that there where 7 ppl on the shuttle for this mission?

yuppers there is 7 checked the nasa page for info
www.nasa.gov...

Oh also wouldn't this thread had made more sence to be in the space section of the site?

Are lives of 5 astronauts worth this? ..... YES ... an in most probability they'll come back safe .... and it is they who have voluntarily pledged their lives ... not the agency ... and this will and must happen till they have space going UAV's

BTW : Did you ever check how many soldiers die in wars ???


[edit on 4-8-2005 by Stealth Spy]

Oh sorry i forgot to give my take on the subject. I do think that with exploration comes the risk that sometimes death is possible. The shuttle crews knows this just as much as say someone in the military.

It's simple, it is never worth the lives of the men and women who go up there each time, but they still do.

If this shuttle goes down, it'll go down in a blaze of flames that will strike the program at the heart and destroy it. NASA is totally screwed if this shuttle goes down.

Time for change is now, they should halt the use of the orbital shuttle and introduce a new shuttle, safer, economically effective, more uses. The orbital shuttle has outlived it's time. Too many problems are arising from the shuttle, it's just old.

Shattered OUT...

With any new frontier comes risks. The Astronauts are aware of this. Just like the early settlers coming to the 'new world', traveling on small ships. Lots would die before they even made it to land, but did they give up and go back home cause people died? Did others after them decide not to go? Obviously not.

It is sad when people die, but accidents happen and sometimes that's they only way to learn and make things better. Our space exploration is still very much in it's infancy and there are many more deaths and accidents yet to happen. Think of it like a baby learning to walk or a kid learning to ride a bike. They're going to take a few falls before they get the hang of it and master it. We won't get anywhere if don't do it.

The Discovery is fully automated and capable of landing itself with only one person on board. A human still needs to pull the landing gear release because thats the only system that was never upgraded to be activated without a person pulling the lever. But overall this ship has a fully automated glass cockpit.

Sorry I don't have a link to verify this.

shaunybaby calling one of the most complex machines ever built by man a "hunk-a-junk" is wrong. This is an amazing piece of technology that has been continually upgraded at an incredible cost since it first flew in August of 1984. Sure the airframe is more than 20 years old but but most of this ship is a lot newer than that. And hell the odometer is only at 98,710,673 miles after 31 flights. I think we can get a few more missions out of this grand lady before we send her off to the boneyard.

Risk is part of any new venture. It should be left to those involved to decide if the risk is worth it.

Are lives of 5 astronauts worth this?

Apparently the astronauts believe it is....or they wouldn't be risking their own necks....