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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle There's a few things that led to this. Culturally, the American space p

by macksd 6y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle There's a few things that led to this. Culturally, the American space program has tended more towards the ideal of the "hero" astronaut than others, and there's been some tension between the technical/automated approach and the pilot-astronaut approach to things. I see this as an extension of that. They even considered having pilots manually control the pitch, etc. of the rockets on their way to orbit with the pilots hand on a joystick just following a "recommended" course to orbit. NASA had explored various ideas for very precise landings, believing that to be useful especially for rapidly-reusable aircraft. There was very serious consideration to having Gemini capsules land with a glider and the astronauts facing forward similar to an aircraft: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Gemini#Gemini_Paraglider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Gemini#Gemini_Paragli....

KineticLensman 6y ago
The book Digital Apollo [0] is fascinating on this subject. It describes the tensions that had to be resolved in terms who had overall authority, e.g. mission control vs. the crew vs. automation. [0] https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/digital-apollo https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/digital-apollo
- asudosandwich 6y ago
  Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff talked about this too, with the Mercury astronauts being called spam in a can.
  - JackFr 6y ago
    In the movie version, there’s a scene where the test pilots are deriding the Mercury astronauts as being no better than monkeys that had been sent up in earlier rockets. Yeager shuts them up by pointing out that a monkey doesn’t know he’s sitting on a bomb.
pjc50 6y ago
The Space Shuttle was massively handicapped by the Air Force giving it unreasonably difficult requirements. They were the ones who wanted it to be most plane-like. Especially the requirement to take off, capture a satellite (friendly or hostile), and land again at Vandenberg in a single orbit.
- Robotbeat 6y ago
  The Shuttle looks inefficient until you try to design a multi-purpose spacecraft that can return large payloads from orbit. If you tried to do the same thing with a capsule, it’d also be pretty huge and expensive. And for as expensive as Shuttle was, it had a pretty powerful capacity that mostly made up for it... look at the cost per kg of payload on Commercial Resupply Services to ISS and the cost per seat of Commercial Crew. Shuttle could do about 10 tons of pressurized cargo and 6 (and sometimes even 8) crew, plus about that much down-mass capability, & another robotic arm and airlock. The cost to replicate that capability 1-to-1 is about the same... Of course, that level of capability wasn’t needed as much after ISS was built, and Shuttle couldn’t stay on-orbit for longer than a couple weeks or so. And most importantly, Shuttle was stuck in LEO and could never venture farther and lacked safety features like a launch abort system and was too expensive and unsafe to justify for standard commercial launches in the 21st century. Not bad for tech developed in the 1970s, tho. The only individual spacecraft (besides Buran) that is comparable in scope and ambition and flexibility is SpaceX’s Starship.
  - nickik 6y ago
    The Commercial Crew and Cargo programs are far, far cheaper then the Shuttle. The Shuttle was one of the most expensive ways of getting to Space BY FAR. As every flight had to be a human flight. Having a vehicle that could do everything, even when 90%+ of the mission only required a small part of the capabilities made it untenable. With one simple Dragon like capsule you can replicate both crew and cargo up and down transportation for most of the things you need. If you need to transport big pieces, you can just put them on top of a rocket by itself as most station outside of part of the ISS were built. The way the Russian designed the Buran and Energia system was far more capable of doing all those things. This was mostly because most in the Russian space flight program thought that Shuttle was a terrible idea and they didn't want to handy cap their next generation rocket to a Orbiter. Had the Soviets not collapsed, their launch capability would have outstripped the US by 4x. > Of course, that level of capability wasn’t needed as much after ISS was built It wasn't needed to build the ISS in the first place. Its rather that the ISS was designed TO REQUIRE the Shuttle. It would have been far cheaper to use the cheapest commercial rockets and the Ariane to build ISS. > Not bad for tech developed in the 1970s, tho. A lot of the technology was great, but great technology doesn't make a great product.

by macksd 6y ago

KineticLensman 6y ago

The book Digital Apollo [0] is fascinating on this subject. It describes the tensions that had to be resolved in terms who had overall authority, e.g. mission control vs. the crew vs. automation. [0] https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/digital-apollo https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/digital-apollo

asudosandwich 6y ago
Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff talked about this too, with the Mercury astronauts being called spam in a can.
- JackFr 6y ago
  In the movie version, there’s a scene where the test pilots are deriding the Mercury astronauts as being no better than monkeys that had been sent up in earlier rockets. Yeager shuts them up by pointing out that a monkey doesn’t know he’s sitting on a bomb.

pjc50 6y ago

The Space Shuttle was massively handicapped by the Air Force giving it unreasonably difficult requirements. They were the ones who wanted it to be most plane-like. Especially the requirement to take off, capture a satellite (friendly or hostile), and land again at Vandenberg in a single orbit.

Robotbeat 6y ago
The Shuttle looks inefficient until you try to design a multi-purpose spacecraft that can return large payloads from orbit. If you tried to do the same thing with a capsule, it’d also be pretty huge and expensive. And for as expensive as Shuttle was, it had a pretty powerful capacity that mostly made up for it... look at the cost per kg of payload on Commercial Resupply Services to ISS and the cost per seat of Commercial Crew. Shuttle could do about 10 tons of pressurized cargo and 6 (and sometimes even 8) crew, plus about that much down-mass capability, & another robotic arm and airlock. The cost to replicate that capability 1-to-1 is about the same... Of course, that level of capability wasn’t needed as much after ISS was built, and Shuttle couldn’t stay on-orbit for longer than a couple weeks or so. And most importantly, Shuttle was stuck in LEO and could never venture farther and lacked safety features like a launch abort system and was too expensive and unsafe to justify for standard commercial launches in the 21st century. Not bad for tech developed in the 1970s, tho. The only individual spacecraft (besides Buran) that is comparable in scope and ambition and flexibility is SpaceX’s Starship.
- nickik 6y ago
  The Commercial Crew and Cargo programs are far, far cheaper then the Shuttle. The Shuttle was one of the most expensive ways of getting to Space BY FAR. As every flight had to be a human flight. Having a vehicle that could do everything, even when 90%+ of the mission only required a small part of the capabilities made it untenable. With one simple Dragon like capsule you can replicate both crew and cargo up and down transportation for most of the things you need. If you need to transport big pieces, you can just put them on top of a rocket by itself as most station outside of part of the ISS were built. The way the Russian designed the Buran and Energia system was far more capable of doing all those things. This was mostly because most in the Russian space flight program thought that Shuttle was a terrible idea and they didn't want to handy cap their next generation rocket to a Orbiter. Had the Soviets not collapsed, their launch capability would have outstripped the US by 4x. > Of course, that level of capability wasn’t needed as much after ISS was built It wasn't needed to build the ISS in the first place. Its rather that the ISS was designed TO REQUIRE the Shuttle. It would have been far cheaper to use the cheapest commercial rockets and the Ariane to build ISS. > Not bad for tech developed in the 1970s, tho. A lot of the technology was great, but great technology doesn't make a great product.