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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 che
by 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 agoThere'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 agoHubble 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.