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> as they included R&D and ongoing capital costs. See: upgrades https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_main_engine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shut
by creshal 11y ago
> as they included R&D and ongoing capital costs. See: upgrades https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_main_engine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_main_engine
If your engines burn out after 5 instead of the planned 55 flights, I damn well hope you're going to invest into more R&D on them!
> Had a 54 day turnaround time which is not 'great' still.
And the pressure to keep up that break-neck pace directly led to the Challenger disaster.
- Retric 11y agoI am not going to defend Challenger. IMO, it was more an issue with NASA than the shuttles design. Still, the point is they did not need to wait over a year reusing launches from design constraints. Instead, NASA simply did not need that many manned launches per year. Now, I am not saying it was a great or even that good of a design. It was simply a poor fit for what they used it for. NASA would have been better off with either a much smaller shuttle that only sent crew up, or an unmanned system for hauling cargo. Instead, they tried to do both which caused a lot of problems.