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The shuttle was for the most part a terrible program. It cost an enormous amount of money compared to its benefits. It would have been cheaper to continue sendi

by buerkle 10y ago

The shuttle was for the most part a terrible program. It cost an enormous amount of money compared to its benefits. It would have been cheaper to continue sending rockets than trying to maintain and fly the shuttle fleet.

wanderingjew 10y ago
That's not entirely true. The shuttle could do things no other ship could, including what's on the drawing board. The shuttle could down mass a lot of stuff. Look at the long duration exposure facility, a bus-sized satellite filled with materials experiments. We have rockets to take that to orbit now, we don't have something that could bring it down. It's arguably the ISS, in its current configuration, would have been possible, and Hubble would have probably been abandoned 20 years ago without the shuttle. The shuttle had problems, but its greatest strength was a gigantic space bus, built to take big satellites up and down. In fact, one of the biggest missed opportunities coming from the SpaceX camp I'm seeing is a lack of science and payload applications for the BFR/ITS. Example: the James Webb space telescope will be launching soon. It's a 6.5 meter telescope with weird folding mirrors because of the limitations of the launch vehicle. The ITS has a seventeen meter payload. Put a big fairing and a transfer stage on the ITS, and you can deliver gigantic payloads to orbit like we've never seen. Want a radio telescope at Earth-Moon L2? ITS can do that, but no one has even suggested it so far.
Diederich 10y ago
Right. You can google up the references, but a lot of the shuttle's design problems came from morphing it into a platform that could service military needs. Its liftoff mass was 2/3 of the moon-bound Saturn V stack! Make no mistake, I will hold deep, deep nostalgia for the Space Shuttle, but its failings were largely driven by 'irrelevant' military size and lift requirements. At the same time, I also understand that much of the money for the whole space-race, including the shuttle, effectively existed because of various military/'defense' priorities.
- Roboprog 10y ago
  E.g. - recovering film from spy satellites. Sometime around the time the shuttle went live, the military discovered CCD or similar cameras and encryption. The "Keyhole" satellites used to parachute down film canisters, which would be scooped up by a plane while descending on the chute - caught in-flight to avoid capture by other nations.
- fail2fail2ban 10y ago
  Recover material from asteroids much?

by buerkle 10y ago

wanderingjew 10y ago

That's not entirely true. The shuttle could do things no other ship could, including what's on the drawing board. The shuttle could down mass a lot of stuff. Look at the long duration exposure facility, a bus-sized satellite filled with materials experiments. We have rockets to take that to orbit now, we don't have something that could bring it down. It's arguably the ISS, in its current configuration, would have been possible, and Hubble would have probably been abandoned 20 years ago without the shuttle. The shuttle had problems, but its greatest strength was a gigantic space bus, built to take big satellites up and down. In fact, one of the biggest missed opportunities coming from the SpaceX camp I'm seeing is a lack of science and payload applications for the BFR/ITS. Example: the James Webb space telescope will be launching soon. It's a 6.5 meter telescope with weird folding mirrors because of the limitations of the launch vehicle. The ITS has a seventeen meter payload. Put a big fairing and a transfer stage on the ITS, and you can deliver gigantic payloads to orbit like we've never seen. Want a radio telescope at Earth-Moon L2? ITS can do that, but no one has even suggested it so far.

Diederich 10y ago

Right. You can google up the references, but a lot of the shuttle's design problems came from morphing it into a platform that could service military needs. Its liftoff mass was 2/3 of the moon-bound Saturn V stack! Make no mistake, I will hold deep, deep nostalgia for the Space Shuttle, but its failings were largely driven by 'irrelevant' military size and lift requirements. At the same time, I also understand that much of the money for the whole space-race, including the shuttle, effectively existed because of various military/'defense' priorities.

Roboprog 10y ago
E.g. - recovering film from spy satellites. Sometime around the time the shuttle went live, the military discovered CCD or similar cameras and encryption. The "Keyhole" satellites used to parachute down film canisters, which would be scooped up by a plane while descending on the chute - caught in-flight to avoid capture by other nations.
fail2fail2ban 10y ago
Recover material from asteroids much?