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The Shuttle was built to bring down soviet spy satellites and spacecraft, so in that regard, it was the best design made.
by one2know 6y ago
The Shuttle was built to bring down soviet spy satellites and spacecraft, so in that regard, it was the best design made.
- whoisthemachine 6y agoHuh interesting. Do you have sources for that information?
- kraemahz 6y agoIn the time it took you to ask, you could have been searching. This is the first result on "shuttle design airforce" in Google: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_design_process#Air_Force_involvement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_design_process#A...
- redis_mlc 6y agoThe main concern of the Soviets was that the Shuttle could swoop down and drop bombs without warning. (Both Reagan and the Soviet top leadership didn't care about MAD, they cared about practical methods to stop incoming missiles. To get the arms limitations agreements signed, Reagan allowed the Soviets an exception to the anti-ABM ban to allow a ring of anti-ABM sites around Moscow, which exists until today. The "Star Wars" kinetic interception methods are also likely still active, though the laser methods probably never worked well.)
- js2 6y agoThere was at least one mission to retrieve a satellite (not Soviet): https://www.nytimes.com/1990/01/07/us/space-shuttle-poised-to-begin-mission-to-retrieve-a-satellite.html https://www.nytimes.com/1990/01/07/us/space-shuttle-poised-t...
- one2know 6y agoI don't have access to classified military secrets, but you don't think they would build a vehicle that could return 15 tons of payload to earth to retrieve US satellites? US could just build and launch a new satellite easier and cheaper than bring one down to fix only to launch it again. Obviously there is the movie about Salyut 7 that depicts the shuttle trying to capture the station. Salyut 3 had a machine gun attached to it.
- simonh 6y agoBack in the 70s spy satellites used film cameras and used to return the film in re-entry capsules. There’s a _really_ good (fictional) move called Ice Station Zebra about a retrieval mission in the arctic that goes wrong. Retrieving the satellite allows you to safely recover the film, and re-equip the satellite with new film and propellant. The latter is important because it’s useful for spy satellites to be able to change their orbits frequently to observe new targets or evade tracking. Also bear in mind some spy satellites are huge and incredibly costly. The Hubble Space Telescope is based on a spy satellite series.
- one2know 6y agoI read something about naval engagements with soviet ships. The US ships were trying to find something underwater before the soviets did while at the same time not alerting the soviet ships as to the location of what they were trying to find. It became clear they were both looking for one of these film canisters that maybe they weren't able to retrieve in mid-air. People today can't imagine the stakes during the cold war.
- garmaine 6y agoIt was not built to retrieve Soviet satellites, despite an uncited claim in Wikipedia to the contrary. In fact, it probably couldn't. If nothing else, it'd be hard to fit a satellite designed for a different launch fairing into the payload bay of the shuttle and secure it well enough to be able to land with it. The shuttle was designed to bring cargo back, but only satellites that were specifically designed for this purpose. What the Shuttle was designed to do in a military context is launch into a polar orbit from the coast of California, release a stealthy spy satellite, and return to Earth immediately after during the very same orbit (so about 90min from launch to landing). It therefore needed the very large wings to be able to glide back to Edwards Air Force Base in southern California, which would have rotated up to 1,500km away from the path of the orbiter. And because of the Pacific ocean, there'd be other landing sites available. This cross-range capability impacted every aspect of the design. The idea was that big rockets which launch satellites are very easy to track, so it was hard to get a bird up without the enemy knowing its orbital path, and if the enemy knew the orbit they could evade overhead passes. So do a surprise launch on the shuttle, do a little orbit maneuvering while you are up there to maximize the enemy's uncertainty over its orbital plane, then immediately let go and land the shuttle--because otherwise they'd know where it was from tracking the shuttle. I'm not sure if it was ever used this way, and the requirement is now obsolete anyway. You really can't hide a satellite from modern instruments, which have full global coverage, and its critical that orbits are known to avoid collisions in the much more crowded space up there.
- sterlind 6y agoIs the X-37b's orbit known? I dimly recall articles about observers catching glimpses of it places away from its predicted trajectory. Could it maybe be placing/observing/servicing satellites? Why's it a shuttle-style design? I feel like it's not too outlandish to suspect that some military satellites might have a way to hide themselves from instruments, as well.
- garmaine 6y agoKnown to the Russians and Chinese? Almost certainly. The X-37B is a shuttle-like design because it was designed for NASA to be a crew escape vehicle for the ISS. The Air Force only took over the project when NASA cancelled it.
- ChuckMcM 6y agoThe idea that you could capture a satellite and return it was part of the mission requirements for the original shuttle design. If it was a 'friendly' or 'unfriendly' satellite was left unspecified. It was also limited by the Shuttle's OMS in terms of delta-v so the orbits from which a satellite could be retrieved was constrained.
- drran 6y agoUnfriendly satellite can blow up or cause fire inside of shuttle, so it's bad idea to capture enemy satellites. It's like sending billion-worth mine capturer behind enemy lines, which can be destroyed with AK.
- marvin 6y agoDon't see why you're downvoted for posting this. Certainly, satellites designed before the Space Shuttle would have to be very paranoidly designed to include a self-destruct mechanism, but it only takes a couple kilograms of explosives to strongly disincentivize kidnapping it. If I was a military satellite designer, heaven forbid, I'd definitely include that in a world that included the possibility of stealing satellites. The capability, quietly communicated between the powers, would be enough to ensure that the satellite would never be stolen. And therefore, the billion-dollar kidnapping capability becoming useless.
- gregoriol 6y agoEven without self-destruct, a satellite not programmed to be captured could simply fire some thrusters if it detects an orbit change, and that would likely make some big dammage inside the capturing shuttle.
- geomark 6y agoAs part of just normal station keeping it might do that.
- yencabulator 6y ago
- adamjb 6y agoIncluding features that are never used is bad design even if they don't compromise every other aspect of the design. What mainly doomed the shuttle was the DoD requirement that the shuttle be able to pluck a satellite from a polar orbit in one orbit, making it necessary to include the massive wings so that it wouldn't be forced to land in the Pacific as the world rotated underneath it.
- elil17 6y agoIf they’d used those features it wouldn’t be public knowledge
- patmorgan23 6y agoYes it would. There's no such thing as a secret satellite, it's impossible to hide them. General astronomy would notice that their's one less satellite.
- rsynnott 6y agoYou absolutely could not conceal a polar shuttle launch. No such thing ever happened.
- nemo44x 6y agoPerhaps because it existed, it never had to be used. Deterrence is a feature. An ounce of prevention, as they say.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- 7952 6y agoConsidering the complexity and requirements it is amazing that it was as successful as it was.
- rsynnott 6y agoThis is a bit of a partial myth. This idea was probably used when negotiating for funding in some quarters, but it was never a particularly plausible use of it, for at least two reasons. First, of course, the shuttle can only access extremely restricted orbits which most targets of interest would not be in. And second, countermeasures would be trivial if the Soviets believed such a threat to actually exist; just incorporate a few kilos of explosives into each device. I'm reasonably sure this story was always more of a case of "how do we sell this thing" than "this is something that we can actually realistically do".