7 ms·

I think it's generally agreed upon that the Space Shuttle program was needlessly wasteful and more PR- than science-driven. A heavy space plane has zero advanta

I think it's generally agreed upon that the Space Shuttle program was needlessly wasteful and more PR- than science-driven. A heavy space plane has zero advantages over a capsule for most work done in LEO. It's good to see this renewed focus on more practical designs. (If that's incorrect and you're qualified to correct me please do.) Having said that, the name Starliner writes a check that a manned capsule won't ever be able to cash. This is the first time I've heard of Boeing's Starliner and it got me really, really excited until I pulled up a picture of it. They really should have picked a less grandiose name.

mynameisvlad 10y ago
Maybe *liner will be the new naming scheme for Boeing?
- klausa 10y ago
  Two next Boeing aircrafts don't have such names, although they are essentially modifications of existing ones (737 MAX and 777X).
grinich 10y ago
Shuttle flew a decent number of missions for the National Reconnaissance Office, conducting secret experiments and deploying spy satellites. Most of the missions are still classified, but many folks have said the military needs drove the design of the Shuttle program. There are pretty obvious advantages to a spaceplane if your goals include capture of enemy satellites. http://www.space.com/34522-secret-shuttle-missions.html http://www.space.com/34522-secret-shuttle-missions.html It turns out a lot of science space research is heavily driven by military space presence. For example, Hubble has a 2.4m mirror because there was already a factory making that size for dozens of spy satellite. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_Kennen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_Kennen And ever heard of "The Dish" at Stanford? It's a 150-foot radio telescope the US Air Force funded during the Cold War to ostensibly "study the chemical composition of the atmosphere." Total BS. The Air Force built it to intercept signals from Soviet radar systems after they bounced off the moon. (Thankfully Stanford got to keep it and it's been used for hundreds of projects since then.)
- creshal 10y ago
  Retrieval of objects in space and bringing them back to Earth is about the only mission where the Space Shuttle was superior to capsule designs. This was also used in a handful of science missions for studying long-term exposure of various materials. But the vast majority of the Shuttle's 130 flights would have been better served by an Apollo or Gemini derived design.
  - grinich 10y ago
    From what I've read, Shuttle also did quite a bit of satellite repair (like fixing Hubble). And the orbiter's cargo bay certainly was useful to transport many parts of the ISS. The Department of Defense still actively uses a spaceplane-ish vehicle. It's just a much smaller unmanned one called the X-37b. Many folks speculate it's used to repair and refuel spy satellites, and potentially even rendezvous with and and hack enemy satellites. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37 Generally I totally agree though-- capsule design makes way more sense for anything leaving or reentering atmosphere. The upcoming Orion are clearly in that directly.
    - creshal 10y ago
      > From what I've read, Shuttle also did quite a bit of satellite repair (like fixing Hubble) It did, but a capsule can do the job just fine too – for JWST, it is (or was) planned to do repairs using the Orion capsule and a mission module docked to it. > And the orbiter's cargo bay certainly was useful to transport many parts of the ISS. Kinda, yes. But an unmanned rocket could have done the same job, and likely cheaper than the Shuttle. Most of the civilian Shuttle missions could have been easily served by other, much cheaper craft – but who knows what happened during the classified ones, it might actually have been cheaper to the taxpayer at large (if not NASA) to have one craft to serve both roles. > The Department of Defense still actively uses a spaceplane-ish vehicle. It's just a much smaller unmanned one called the X-37b. Many folks speculate it's used to repair and refuel spy satellites, and potentially even rendezvous with and and hack enemy satellites. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37 We don't really know, but given how little fuel capacity it has and how long it stays in orbit, it's more likely that the DoD's stated purpose of long-endurance testing of new spy hardware is true.
msl 10y ago
One thing that the Space Shuttle had going for it was that it could be used as a Canadarm[1] platform. Bringing the arm back home in one piece was handy, and the orbiter's huge mass probably made it easier to reason about the physics involved. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadarm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadarm
Retric 10y ago
It's important to note the space shuttle was a poor design in large part because it added a lot of cargo on a man rated system. 1 failure to achieve orbit in 135 missions is an outstanding record, but very wasteful when sending cargo. A capsule seems better in large part because it does not. Further, if the shuttle was only sending people to orbit it's design could be both reusable and vastly simpler because of vastly lower rentry temperatures and more redundancy.
PerfectDlite 10y ago
> I think it's generally agreed upon that the Space Shuttle program was needlessly wasteful and more PR- than science-driven. Soviets decided to replicate it. So even if it was PR, it was a good PR - it managed to trick USSR to waste quite an effort.
- mikeash 10y ago
  Considering that the Buran program was much less active and only had a single launch, the ROI on that wastage seems like it would have been rather low.
akiselev 10y ago
> (If that's incorrect and you're qualified to correct me please do.) You're not wrong but there are some nuances. The original design for the shuttle was very different from what was ultimately built because when the Shuttle program funding was in jeopardy the Air Force was brought in and they forced the design to change to meet their needs. The shuttle got bigger and added the external fuel tank, almost entirely crippling the shuttle's reusability. By far the most negative impact on the shuttle was the massive reduction in space flights from the he original proposal due to budget cuts and Congressional politicking. The average cost per flight was something on the order of $1.8 billion but most of that was fixed overhead and a lot of that overhead was the consequence of the Air Force redesign. If the shuttle were funded independently as originally planned, it would have cost a lot less to fly and with enough flights it would have been significantly more cost effective. Whether NASA could make it as cheap as rockets is unclear but it's not impossible that they could have brought it within a factor of two. However, it's also unclear to me whether we could have pulled off something like the Hubble telescope repair with a rocket and pods.

mynameisvlad 10y ago

Maybe *liner will be the new naming scheme for Boeing?

klausa 10y ago
Two next Boeing aircrafts don't have such names, although they are essentially modifications of existing ones (737 MAX and 777X).

grinich 10y ago

Shuttle flew a decent number of missions for the National Reconnaissance Office, conducting secret experiments and deploying spy satellites. Most of the missions are still classified, but many folks have said the military needs drove the design of the Shuttle program. There are pretty obvious advantages to a spaceplane if your goals include capture of enemy satellites. http://www.space.com/34522-secret-shuttle-missions.html http://www.space.com/34522-secret-shuttle-missions.html It turns out a lot of science space research is heavily driven by military space presence. For example, Hubble has a 2.4m mirror because there was already a factory making that size for dozens of spy satellite. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_Kennen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_Kennen And ever heard of "The Dish" at Stanford? It's a 150-foot radio telescope the US Air Force funded during the Cold War to ostensibly "study the chemical composition of the atmosphere." Total BS. The Air Force built it to intercept signals from Soviet radar systems after they bounced off the moon. (Thankfully Stanford got to keep it and it's been used for hundreds of projects since then.)

creshal 10y ago
Retrieval of objects in space and bringing them back to Earth is about the only mission where the Space Shuttle was superior to capsule designs. This was also used in a handful of science missions for studying long-term exposure of various materials. But the vast majority of the Shuttle's 130 flights would have been better served by an Apollo or Gemini derived design.
- grinich 10y ago
  From what I've read, Shuttle also did quite a bit of satellite repair (like fixing Hubble). And the orbiter's cargo bay certainly was useful to transport many parts of the ISS. The Department of Defense still actively uses a spaceplane-ish vehicle. It's just a much smaller unmanned one called the X-37b. Many folks speculate it's used to repair and refuel spy satellites, and potentially even rendezvous with and and hack enemy satellites. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37 Generally I totally agree though-- capsule design makes way more sense for anything leaving or reentering atmosphere. The upcoming Orion are clearly in that directly.
  - creshal 10y ago
    > From what I've read, Shuttle also did quite a bit of satellite repair (like fixing Hubble) It did, but a capsule can do the job just fine too – for JWST, it is (or was) planned to do repairs using the Orion capsule and a mission module docked to it. > And the orbiter's cargo bay certainly was useful to transport many parts of the ISS. Kinda, yes. But an unmanned rocket could have done the same job, and likely cheaper than the Shuttle. Most of the civilian Shuttle missions could have been easily served by other, much cheaper craft – but who knows what happened during the classified ones, it might actually have been cheaper to the taxpayer at large (if not NASA) to have one craft to serve both roles. > The Department of Defense still actively uses a spaceplane-ish vehicle. It's just a much smaller unmanned one called the X-37b. Many folks speculate it's used to repair and refuel spy satellites, and potentially even rendezvous with and and hack enemy satellites. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37 We don't really know, but given how little fuel capacity it has and how long it stays in orbit, it's more likely that the DoD's stated purpose of long-endurance testing of new spy hardware is true.

msl 10y ago

One thing that the Space Shuttle had going for it was that it could be used as a Canadarm[1] platform. Bringing the arm back home in one piece was handy, and the orbiter's huge mass probably made it easier to reason about the physics involved. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadarm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadarm

Retric 10y ago

It's important to note the space shuttle was a poor design in large part because it added a lot of cargo on a man rated system. 1 failure to achieve orbit in 135 missions is an outstanding record, but very wasteful when sending cargo. A capsule seems better in large part because it does not. Further, if the shuttle was only sending people to orbit it's design could be both reusable and vastly simpler because of vastly lower rentry temperatures and more redundancy.

PerfectDlite 10y ago

> I think it's generally agreed upon that the Space Shuttle program was needlessly wasteful and more PR- than science-driven. Soviets decided to replicate it. So even if it was PR, it was a good PR - it managed to trick USSR to waste quite an effort.

mikeash 10y ago
Considering that the Buran program was much less active and only had a single launch, the ROI on that wastage seems like it would have been rather low.

akiselev 10y ago

> (If that's incorrect and you're qualified to correct me please do.) You're not wrong but there are some nuances. The original design for the shuttle was very different from what was ultimately built because when the Shuttle program funding was in jeopardy the Air Force was brought in and they forced the design to change to meet their needs. The shuttle got bigger and added the external fuel tank, almost entirely crippling the shuttle's reusability. By far the most negative impact on the shuttle was the massive reduction in space flights from the he original proposal due to budget cuts and Congressional politicking. The average cost per flight was something on the order of $1.8 billion but most of that was fixed overhead and a lot of that overhead was the consequence of the Air Force redesign. If the shuttle were funded independently as originally planned, it would have cost a lot less to fly and with enough flights it would have been significantly more cost effective. Whether NASA could make it as cheap as rockets is unclear but it's not impossible that they could have brought it within a factor of two. However, it's also unclear to me whether we could have pulled off something like the Hubble telescope repair with a rocket and pods.