4-day shuttle delay keeps Marine grounded

[thedrifter]

4-day shuttle delay keeps Marine grounded
By Marcia Dunn - The Associated Press
Posted : Saturday Jun 13, 2009 12:03:04 EDT

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A potentially dangerous hydrogen gas leak cropped up during the fueling of space shuttle Endeavour on Saturday and forced NASA to postpone the launch.

Marine Lt. Col. Doug Hurley will have to wait at least four days before piloting his first shuttle mission. Hurley, the first Marine to fly the F/A-18 E/F Super Hornet, is part of a military-heavy crew: Cmdr. Christopher Cassidy, a SEAL who led missions in the caves of Afghanistan, and Col. Tim Kopra, an Army test pilot, are among the Endeavour’s six mission specialists.

The leak was almost identical to one that stalled another flight back in March and threatened to bump Endeavour’s space station construction mission all the way into July.

NASA halted the countdown shortly after midnight, less than seven hours before Endeavour was due to blast off. The seven astronauts had yet to suit up.

Launch director Mike Leinbach said the leak, located at a vent line hookup on the fuel tank, was significant. Hydrogen gas is extremely volatile and can burn in large enough quantities, he noted.

“There’s no way we could have continued,” Leinbach said at a hastily called news conference. “It’s a commodity you just don’t mess with.”

The hydrogen gas leak is similar to one that NASA faced while trying to launch Discovery three months ago. That flight was delayed four days because of the problem and shortened as well. Atlantis, however, encountered no such trouble during its countdown in May for the Hubble Space Telescope repair mission.

NASA’s launch team immediately began draining Endeavour’s external fuel tank while trying to figure out what went wrong. In March, the leak occurred where a vent line hooks up to the tank. The hookup was replaced along with a couple of seals and the seepage stopped, but engineers never did determine the exact source of the trouble.

Officials said workers wouldn’t be able to get to the vent line on Endeavour’s tank until Sunday.

NASA is up against a tight deadline. A four-day delay would make Endeavour’s next launch attempt Wednesday. But that’s the day the space agency is supposed to launch a moon-bound spacecraft aboard an unmanned rocket.

Mike Moses, chairman of the mission management team, said it was too soon to say which mission would take priority. “We haven’t even begun to work that yet,” he said.

In any event, if Endeavour isn’t flying by next Saturday, it will have to wait until July 11 for the next launch attempt because of unfavorable sun angles that would make the shuttle too hot while docked at the international space station.

During the 16-day mission, Endeavour and its crew are supposed to deliver the final segment of Japan’s huge space station lab, along with some spare parts for the orbiting outpost and more than 600 pounds of food for the six men living there.

When Endeavour pulls up, there will be 13 people together in orbit for the first time.

Of the seven shuttle astronauts, only one is a woman, a Canadian. The rest of the crew are U.S. citizens. On board the space station, the crew is more international. The six occupants, all men, represent Belgium, Canada, Japan and Russia, as well as the U.S.

Endeavour and its crew will spend 11½ days at the space station. Five spacewalks are planned.

If Endeavour flies this month, its arrival will come at a particularly busy time for the space station. The station crew doubled in size late last month; that’s taken some adjustment for everyone involved. Then just a week ago, two of the crew went out on a spacewalk. Earlier this week, the two put their spacesuits back on and went into the air lock to work on a docking hatch.

NASA is pushing to launch Endeavour as soon as possible because of the demanding lineup of shuttle flights over the next 1½ years. The space agency is under presidential direction to retire its three remaining shuttles and complete the station by the end of 2010 if possible.

“It has a lot of downstream effects if we punt to July,” Moses said. “Every launch delay pushes the next one back. It’s not the end of the world, but it’s not the simplest thing to do.”

Eight shuttle missions remain, including Endeavour’s upcoming trip. Each one is dedicated to finishing the station, currently 81 percent complete, and hauling up supplies, spare parts and experiments.

The space station will be supplied over the long haul by unmanned Russian, European and Japanese craft, but none as big as the shuttle. That’s why NASA needs to deliver large spare parts now, while the shuttles are still flying.

Until NASA’s new spaceship is ready to carry passengers — which isn’t expected to happen before 2015 — U.S. astronauts will hitch rides back and forth on the cramped Russian Soyuz spacecraft for up to $51 million a person.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Lt. col. prepares for Saturday shuttle mission
By Eric Reinagel and Al Vieira - The Star Gazette of Elmira, N.Y.
Posted : Saturday Jun 13, 2009 10:15:37 EDT

When Marine Lt. Col. Doug Hurley was a student at Owego-Apalachin Middle School in upstate New York, he checked out a book on the moon. This Saturday, if all goes as scheduled, he will be flying toward it.

While many kids dream about becoming an astronaut, Hurley, at a young age, set a course to realize his dream. “For me, obviously coming from upstate New York, you don’t necessarily realize the things you can do,” said Hurley, 42.

But when the space shuttle Endeavour blasts off from Cape Canaveral — Saturday’s launch is scheduled for 7:17 a.m. — Hurley will be the pilot on a mission to deliver components to the Japanese laboratory in the International Space Station. That mission could last as long as 17 days.

Robin Seward, who taught Hurley in fifth-grade, said “He was an all-around good student.”

Seward used to tell Hurley’s mother, Sherry, that she would order a million more students like Doug. “Some day he’s going to be president,” she would tell her. “It’s so humbling to think here’s this kid you have in your class ... and now look what he’s doing.”

Seward will be part of a large contingent of local residents who will travel to Cape Canaveral, Fla., for the launch. Hurley said so many people wanted to come down for the launch, he had a hard time obtaining enough special guest passes that provide a better vantage point and certain amenities. He was allowed to invite 225 people.

“It’s just a case you meet a lot of people over the years and you want to try to take care of everybody,” said Hurley, who graduated from Owego Free Academy in 1984.

From their childhood years, there was never any doubt in Dean Hurley’s mind that his brother would become an astronaut. Dean, 40, remembers his brother’s non-stop fascination with everything space.

“We loved ‘Star Trek’; we used to watch it together ... you know, as the younger brother, you get sucked into things,” Dean Hurley recalled. “He was into ‘Battlestar Galactica.’ He built different models of ‘Star Trek’ and ‘Battlestar Galactica’ ships, and he had them hanging from string in the bedroom.”

Dean said he knew his brother would realize his goal when he became a test pilot. “That’s what he had to do to get where he wanted to go,” he said. “That’s when I knew he was going to become an astronaut.”

Long before Doug Hurley became an astronaut, his father was putting his own stamp on the shuttle program. Harvey Hurley, then working for IBM-Owego, was the manager of a project that put one of the computer systems in the first space shuttle, Columbia.

Harvey said his son, Doug, never set a goal of only becoming an astronaut — an unrealistic goal because the selection process is so limited. But that’s clearly what he wanted to become.

“You have to be good and lucky,” said Harvey Hurley. “If I look back on what he did in school, and college, and the military, he did all the right things to position himself as well as he could to be in this opportunity to be selected an astronaut.”

Doug Hurley received his commission from the Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps at Tulane University in New Orleans in 1988. He entered flight training in 1989, initially as a naval aviator, but soon after, he reported for Marine fighter attack training.

Hurley has logged more than 3,200 hours in more than 22 aircraft, but a space shuttle isn’t on his resume yet. He has trained on a flight simulator and described landing a shuttle as similar to flying an airplane. (He will serve as the co-pilot during this mission’s landing.)

Although landing might be similar to flying an airplane, takeoff is a different matter.

In the best of circumstances, takeoff is controlled only by computers.

He will, however, have the opportunity to fly the Endeavour around the space station and take surveillance photos to ensure everything is intact.

Hurley said he’s also excited to have the opportunity to work a robotic arm to move payloads during a spacewalk.

There is a lot of work to accomplish in a short time frame, but Hurley also plans to appreciate the opportunity few ever experience.

“I surely hope I get a chance to look out a window a few times,” said Hurley. “The view is something you can’t describe.”

Ellie