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For reference, I interned on the the space station. Also context, consider cost complexity: manned space flight >> space flight >> aerospace >> automotive. Ea

For reference, I interned on the the space station. Also context, consider cost complexity: manned space flight >> space flight >> aerospace >> automotive. Each increase in risk implies considerably more expense, and the difference between space flight that includes humans, and flight that doesn't is quite massive. They are different programs entirely. So if you're putting something in space with 'humans going along' - it will always be way more expensive, no matter what. The shuttle was supposed to be cheaper than multiple manned rockets, but not cheaper than regular satellite launches. So for putting out complex things like Hubble, or 'fixing it' 'retrofitting' etc. - the Shuttle might make sense. But it was never going to be cheaper than regular rockets for putting relatively straightforward satellites in space.

codeulike 8y ago
I interned on the the space station. Say what? I didn't know they had interns up there.
- sonnyblarney 8y ago
  Ha :) on the space station project :)
JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> shuttle was supposed to be cheaper than multiple manned rockets, but not cheaper than regular satellite launches This isn’t how it was sold to the public. > I interned on the the space station Thank you. Without the ISS, we wouldn’t have SpaceX.
- sonnyblarney 8y ago
  No. Manned space flight is known to be way more expensive than cheap, rocket satellite launches. There never was a comparison. The Shuttle was going to be cheaper than manned rockets, and frankly, probably was. I can't imagine who much it would cost to put up a manned rocket to do some of the retrofitting of Hubble, for example. I don't even think their is proper vehicles for that in existence! So it would be out of the question in terms of cost. The shuttle did mostly what it was supposed to, it just got old. And there is the space station to do science.
  - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
    > Shuttle was going to be cheaper than manned rockets, and frankly, probably was Soyuz + any international heavy launch candidate duplicates the Shuttle’s capabilities at a fraction of the cost.
    - Moto7451 8y ago
      There's a great graphic I've seen in the past but I can't find that illustrates why there's nothing we currently have that can service Hubble. Hubble is 150 miles higher in altitude than the ISS. The closest thing we could put together would be a Soyuz, Dragon, or Boeing capsule attached to a Centaur stage a la Gemini Agena, but none of these combinations currently exist in any real sense. While we could theoretically glue enough rocket pieces together to perform missions the Space Shuttle (or Apollo and Gemini Agena for that matter) could accomplish, the fact is we do not have those capabilities ready to fly. That is the advantage the Space Shuttle had. It had both the capabilities and the sign off to perform these missions.
      - nickik 8y ago
        Hubble was also designed with that stuff in mind. That the issue with lots of things NASA does. The always make everything depend on each other so they can say that its 'the only way'. Thats how we ended up with thee uterly insane SLS, Orion, Gateway architecture.
jessriedel 8y ago
> So for putting out complex things like Hubble, or 'fixing it' 'retrofitting' etc. - the Shuttle might make sense. Fixing Hubble was one of the most complex operations the Shuttle ever did. Although only the shuttle could do things like repair and retrieval, the large majority of the satellites that ever entered the Shuttle cargo bay were simply launched and released. More specifically, of the 105 satellites the Shuttle interacted with, only 4 were repaired-and-redeployed (including Hubble) and only 5 were recovered back to Earth. http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/dev/hillger/Shuttle-related.htm http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/dev/hillger/Shuttle-related.... > The shuttle was supposed to be cheaper than multiple manned rockets, but not cheaper than regular satellite launches. Do you have cites to support this? It's not consistent with my impression of the expectations for the Shuttle when it first started flying. Your other comments here give the strong impression that you are arguing based on your intuitive knowledge of spaceflight costs that no reasonable person could have thought launching dumb satellites on the Shuttle would have been cost effective. However, I think that's hindsight, and in fact many people at the time expected the Shuttle to cheaply deploy basic satellites, and that this was part of its official mandate. Indeed, Wikipedia says > the plan was for all future U.S. space launches—space station, Air Force, commercial satellites, and scientific research—to use only the space shuttle. Most other expendable boosters would be phased out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_design_process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_design_process EDIT: And from another link in this thread (written at the time): > NASA plans to terminate all throw-away rocket launches as soon as the shuttle is working. http://www.iasa-intl.com/folders/shuttle/GoodbyeColumbia.html http://www.iasa-intl.com/folders/shuttle/GoodbyeColumbia.htm...
- kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
  Lacrosse was also redeployed.
  - jessriedel 8y ago
    Do you have a cite? Wikipedia doesn't mention it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lacrosse_(satellite) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lacrosse_(satellite)
wolf550e 8y ago
You should learn about how the shuttle was created and sold to the public 1972-1986.
- programd 8y ago
  This is the perfect place to recommend "History of the Space Shuttle, Volume Two: Development of the Space Shuttle, 1972-1981" by T. A. Heppenheimer. An excellent account of a nation-scale engineering project and all the myriad engineering, economic, infrastructure, political, and project management pieces that go into it. Eye opening if you've never been involved in true mega-scale projects. There's also "Space Shuttle Decision, 1965-1972 (History of the Space Shuttle, Volume 1", but I think Volume 2 is far more interesting from an engineering point of view.
codeulike 8y ago
What if I argue that the humans were only on the shuttle to make it re-useable, because that was the only way to land a spaceship in the 80s.
- mikeash 8y ago
  Buran was of similar vintage and could land autonomously. I don’t think there was anything preventing the Shuttle from having that capability, other than a lack of desire. As I recall, the hardware was fully capable of it except for being able to lower the landing gear, which the astronauts insisted on being manual because doing it at the wrong moment would be fatal.
- avar 8y ago
  The Space Shuttle's reentry and landing was famously 99.99% performed by autopilot, with the 0.01% being lowering the landing gear[1], ostensibly so that the astronauts felt like they had something to do. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle#Re-entry_and_landing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle#Re-entry_and_lan...

codeulike 8y ago

I interned on the the space station. Say what? I didn't know they had interns up there.

sonnyblarney 8y ago
Ha :) on the space station project :)

JumpCrisscross 8y ago

> shuttle was supposed to be cheaper than multiple manned rockets, but not cheaper than regular satellite launches This isn’t how it was sold to the public. > I interned on the the space station Thank you. Without the ISS, we wouldn’t have SpaceX.

sonnyblarney 8y ago
No. Manned space flight is known to be way more expensive than cheap, rocket satellite launches. There never was a comparison. The Shuttle was going to be cheaper than manned rockets, and frankly, probably was. I can't imagine who much it would cost to put up a manned rocket to do some of the retrofitting of Hubble, for example. I don't even think their is proper vehicles for that in existence! So it would be out of the question in terms of cost. The shuttle did mostly what it was supposed to, it just got old. And there is the space station to do science.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > Shuttle was going to be cheaper than manned rockets, and frankly, probably was Soyuz + any international heavy launch candidate duplicates the Shuttle’s capabilities at a fraction of the cost.
  - Moto7451 8y ago
    There's a great graphic I've seen in the past but I can't find that illustrates why there's nothing we currently have that can service Hubble. Hubble is 150 miles higher in altitude than the ISS. The closest thing we could put together would be a Soyuz, Dragon, or Boeing capsule attached to a Centaur stage a la Gemini Agena, but none of these combinations currently exist in any real sense. While we could theoretically glue enough rocket pieces together to perform missions the Space Shuttle (or Apollo and Gemini Agena for that matter) could accomplish, the fact is we do not have those capabilities ready to fly. That is the advantage the Space Shuttle had. It had both the capabilities and the sign off to perform these missions.
    - nickik 8y ago
      Hubble was also designed with that stuff in mind. That the issue with lots of things NASA does. The always make everything depend on each other so they can say that its 'the only way'. Thats how we ended up with thee uterly insane SLS, Orion, Gateway architecture.

jessriedel 8y ago

> So for putting out complex things like Hubble, or 'fixing it' 'retrofitting' etc. - the Shuttle might make sense. Fixing Hubble was one of the most complex operations the Shuttle ever did. Although only the shuttle could do things like repair and retrieval, the large majority of the satellites that ever entered the Shuttle cargo bay were simply launched and released. More specifically, of the 105 satellites the Shuttle interacted with, only 4 were repaired-and-redeployed (including Hubble) and only 5 were recovered back to Earth. http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/dev/hillger/Shuttle-related.htm http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/dev/hillger/Shuttle-related.... > The shuttle was supposed to be cheaper than multiple manned rockets, but not cheaper than regular satellite launches. Do you have cites to support this? It's not consistent with my impression of the expectations for the Shuttle when it first started flying. Your other comments here give the strong impression that you are arguing based on your intuitive knowledge of spaceflight costs that no reasonable person could have thought launching dumb satellites on the Shuttle would have been cost effective. However, I think that's hindsight, and in fact many people at the time expected the Shuttle to cheaply deploy basic satellites, and that this was part of its official mandate. Indeed, Wikipedia says > the plan was for all future U.S. space launches—space station, Air Force, commercial satellites, and scientific research—to use only the space shuttle. Most other expendable boosters would be phased out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_design_process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_design_process EDIT: And from another link in this thread (written at the time): > NASA plans to terminate all throw-away rocket launches as soon as the shuttle is working. http://www.iasa-intl.com/folders/shuttle/GoodbyeColumbia.html http://www.iasa-intl.com/folders/shuttle/GoodbyeColumbia.htm...

kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
Lacrosse was also redeployed.
- jessriedel 8y ago
  Do you have a cite? Wikipedia doesn't mention it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lacrosse_(satellite) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lacrosse_(satellite)

wolf550e 8y ago

You should learn about how the shuttle was created and sold to the public 1972-1986.

programd 8y ago
This is the perfect place to recommend "History of the Space Shuttle, Volume Two: Development of the Space Shuttle, 1972-1981" by T. A. Heppenheimer. An excellent account of a nation-scale engineering project and all the myriad engineering, economic, infrastructure, political, and project management pieces that go into it. Eye opening if you've never been involved in true mega-scale projects. There's also "Space Shuttle Decision, 1965-1972 (History of the Space Shuttle, Volume 1", but I think Volume 2 is far more interesting from an engineering point of view.

codeulike 8y ago

What if I argue that the humans were only on the shuttle to make it re-useable, because that was the only way to land a spaceship in the 80s.

mikeash 8y ago
Buran was of similar vintage and could land autonomously. I don’t think there was anything preventing the Shuttle from having that capability, other than a lack of desire. As I recall, the hardware was fully capable of it except for being able to lower the landing gear, which the astronauts insisted on being manual because doing it at the wrong moment would be fatal.
avar 8y ago
The Space Shuttle's reentry and landing was famously 99.99% performed by autopilot, with the 0.01% being lowering the landing gear[1], ostensibly so that the astronauts felt like they had something to do. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle#Re-entry_and_landing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle#Re-entry_and_lan...