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It may have been a rather silly idea but it wasn't on the same level of impracticality as the Air Force's "launch into a polar orbit, capture a satellite, and l
by DuskStar 8y ago
It may have been a rather silly idea but it wasn't on the same level of impracticality as the Air Force's "launch into a polar orbit, capture a satellite, and land in one orbit" requirement. The first Shuttle-Centaur launch was scheduled for only a few months after the Challenger disaster occurred, so it was at least something that would have been used. On the other hand, the Air Force never even finished building a Shuttle launch complex at Vandenberg, let alone use the once-around capabilities.
- pfdietz 8y agoI thought the cross range requirement came from the necessity of "Abort Once Around" in polar launches. More deeply, the Air Force was blamed for adding requirements to the Shuttle, when the real problem was the Shuttle had such tenuous economic justification that it needed to pretend it had as many customers as it could. Never mind that much of the projected manifest (and projected flight rate) was an outright lie that the knew was BS as they were saying it.
- jandrese 8y agoThis part was NASA's fault when it cancelled the heavy launcher program. The Shuttle was supposed to just be a way to ferry people into orbit. Heavy hauling was supposed to be done with a different rocket. Cancelling the heavy hauler put all of the burden on the Shuttle and forced it to be a jack of all trades. Ironically in the name of cost savings they made the most expensive system possible.