3 ms·

Everyday Astronaut explained this pretty well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCCw_M8MAU0&t=110s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCCw_M8MAU0&t=110s The Shuttl

• Retric 8y ago
  The shuttles largest issue was it's weight. It's the old square cube law. You need to remove more energy based on the mass of the object, but you remove it over what amounts to a 2d area. Unfortunately, part of the design requirements was to return a large amount of mass from orbit which means it needed to be designed to dump a rather obscene amount of energy into the upper atmosphere. This meant it could not do a rapid decent and because it would overheat, and thus needed to stay in the upper atmosphere for a long time. Which meant it's thermal tiles needed to operate for much longer time periods requiring extreme amounts of thermal protection. PS: The wings also added even more weight issues.
  • cultus 8y ago
    The Shuttle was one of the finest examples of MI complex waste and negligence there has ever been.
    • canhascodez 8y ago
      The Shuttle was designed for a use-case that evaporated, and it's not necessarily inaccurate to suggest that it was manufactured so as to spread "pork" to as many Congressional districts as possible. However, wasting money on space is not necessarily a waste, particularly if no one else is doing it. And for all their faults, the Shuttles flew high, and accomplished much.