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I think I tell this story every time there's an article about the STS on here. When I was a precocious space cadet, I followed the development of the Shuttle as
by _bpgl 10y ago
I think I tell this story every time there's an article about the STS on here. When I was a precocious space cadet, I followed the development of the Shuttle as closely as a kid could before the Internet. I remember the initial promised launch cost of $50/lb into LEO. Young theothermkn weighed himself and worked out how much that would cost, and even tried to guess how much a capsule would weigh, and how much of a group capsule's weight that he would be responsible to pay for. Tough, but doable.
And then the price went to $100/lb. Okay, tougher, but still within reach. And then $500/lb. Ugh. And then $1,000/lb. Oh, well. Maybe a later version will be cheaper. Economies of scale! And then the newscasters stopped talking about the cost at all, except to note how far we were from the initial cost.
The Space Shuttle set spaceflight back 40 years. Years later, I got an aerospace engineering degree, and promptly left the field when I graduated because I didn't want to work inside soul-crushing aerospace institutions without even the hope of doing anything good.
We may never recover, given that all our eggs are in the SpaceX basket.
- aardvark291 10y ago> given that all our eggs are in the SpaceX basket. What do you mean here?
- theothermkn 10y agoSpaceX is currently the only credible organization with a low-cost launch system of sizeable payloads capable of reaching more than a tiny fraction of the energies needed for orbit. For example, Blue Origin's vehicle is capable only of an exoatmospheric hop, which is optimistically 3% of the energy capability needed to get to orbit. Given that the rocket equation says that the floor of the the remaining costs are proportional to exp(sqrt(remaining 97% of the orbital energy)), Blue Origin amounts to a rich boy's hobby or lifestyle tourism business. Advances in space launch technology and improvements in cost are thus concentrated in one basket, and one that is additionally weighted with electric car and solar power ventures of dubious long-term financial viability.
- dasmoth 10y agoBlue do have a plan for an orbital launch vehicle. And seem to be fairly far advanced with developing an engine for it (BE-4 -- also planned for use on ULA's new "Vulcan" launcher) They've got a launch site at CCAFS, and have started building a new factory there as well. I'm a SpaceX fan, and definitely consider them to be ahead at the moment -- but certainly wouldn't write Blue off completely.
- Florin_Andrei 10y agoYup. Most of the energy actually goes into building up kinetic energy to be able to circle around at tremendous speeds. Lifting the thing up to that level only takes a tiny fraction of the total energy budget. Blue Origin can only climb up, then fall down - for now. But who knows what they are working on.
- Gibbon1 10y agoThis was a touchy subject for me to bring up because it became obvious if you had a practical eye that the Shuttle was a monster that ate not only most of NASA's budget but also meant there were no funds left over to develop it's replacement. Touchy because mention that to anyone and they'd typically go insane on you.