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Had NASA engineers actually build a better design for Space Shuttle, lots of budget would have been available to do more. The Space shuttle could have done much
by nickik 6y ago
Had NASA engineers actually build a better design for Space Shuttle, lots of budget would have been available to do more. The Space shuttle could have done much more much better things if it was designed differently.
- pfdietz 6y agoAnd had my father had two X chromosomes, he'd have been my mother. There has to be a reason to entertain contrafactuals; you can't just state them and assume that outcome would have been likely.
- nickik 6y agoThe point here being that it was not bureaucracy or the government that trapped NASA in LEO. It was NASA own design process. Blaming everything always on the congress/president is a way for NASA to never take responsibility. All the success gets credit to NASA but failure is always somebody wrong doing.
- pfdietz 6y agoThe point I was making was there was no plausible way the shuttle could have been designed so it would have been successful.
- nickik 6y agoTotally disagree. With the same budget a much more successful vehicle could have been built. Simple changes like not going for hydrogen, separating main engines from Shuttle itself, not using hydrogen on the first stage, vertically mounted shuttle and so on.
- pfdietz 6y agoNo, I don't think so. The underlying problem was the Shuttle was a One Big Bite attempt at developing a very complex technology. That doesn't work. Development of something like that has to be iterative. Shuffling the deck chairs with different propellants wouldn't have made any difference.