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The first space shuttle launch was crewed. It ended up with a ~2% failure rate. The Titan made about 50 dives. So, from a reliability perspective, on par with t

• foota 3y ago
  Why go on the shuttle when you can go on the dragon?
  • vardump 3y ago
    One big reason is they weren't contemporary.
• sebzim4500 3y ago
  I don't think I'd go on a shuttle, but I would definitely on a crew dragon and I'd probably go on new shephard (I might buy a ticket if the price comes down a bit). There's no way in hell I'm getting on one of virgin galactic's death traps, that looks 10 times worse than the space shuttle.
  • sacnoradhq 3y ago
    The Shuttle was driven by USAF "military" needs that didn't matter. Gliding and maneuvering served zero mission purpose. It should've reduced horizontal delta v to zero like a Falcon engine and had an ablation shield. Like many military-involved projects, it was also far too expensive, complex, and fragile. These fundamentals made the Shuttle unnecessarily risky that proved out in its lifecycle.
• cbzoiav 3y ago
  The shuttle did something nobody had done before and was viewed as a genuine step forward in human capability. It was also over 50 years ago and had to rely on technology of the time - uncrewed tests were much harder to perform. This wasn't a particularly ground breaking vehicle in terms of capability and was taking paying tourists...
  • wkat4242 3y ago
    It also wasn't built with parts from camper world and cheap Xbox controller knockoffs. NASA actually had a strong focus on safety. They just went about it the wrong way, calculating safety ratings backwards. Considering the pressure vessel of this sub was only meant to handle 1300m as per another article, the way it survived 50 dives at 4000m is pretty amazing though.
    • pdxandi 3y ago
      Do you have a link to that other article by chance?
    • stickfigure 3y ago
      > this sub was only meant to handle 1300m There seems to be a lot of confusion around this, let me try to clear it up. The 1300m limit of the glass number comes from an interview with the "whistleblower" in 2018. That would mean it refers to the Cyclops 1 vehicle they had then. A couple years later they built the Cyclops 2, which has the 5" thick hull, titanium bells, and first dove in 2021. That's the ill-fated Titan. If you pay close attention to the videos floating around you'll notice two visibly distinct subs - one with a large transparent dome in front (v1) and one with the titanium bell and tiny porthole (v2). EDIT: This video (taken from a commenter on this page) includes film of the previous sub, playing next to the guy talking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mSq6ibKKXQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mSq6ibKKXQ
      • efraim 3y ago
        The report by the whistleblower David Lochridge is specifically about Cyclops 2, also called Titan, and the quality control of the carbon fiber cylinder. It also mentions the viewport only being certified to 1300 meters. Some of it can be read in the lawsuit that came from Oceangate firing David. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.262471/gov.uscourts.wawd.262471.7.0.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.26...
  • akira2501 3y ago
    > The shuttle did something nobody had done before Put spy satellites into orbit and then later retrieve them? That's not to be critical, but we could have done much of the scientific and space station work with a different platform and likely had a much lower mission failure rate. The design of the shuttle wasn't solely about this criteria, though.
• spencerflem 3y ago
  Its a big hackernews meme that NASA spends way too much on safety/beurocracy instead of innovation. Plenty of other submarines companies do the same (and get classed). I don't think this is a very insightful comparison.
  • rossjudson 3y ago
    I have rarely seen large groups of humans be accused of excessive consistency over time when it comes to matters of fact and science.
    • brookst 3y ago
      Consistency isn’t possible at a sufficient level of context. I mean, I light campfires and I put them out. At a level of reductionism very common in online conversations, I am totally hypocritical about whether I want a fire or not.
    • kergonath 3y ago
      It’s not large groups of humans posting on a given HN story. It is entirely unsurprising to have different moods in different threads, because different people with different opinions are driven towards different stories. It’s not actually the same people saying both black and white, it’s just that HN has a polarised audience on some topics, with both sides quite vocal.
  • sebzim4500 3y ago
    I don't think anyone objects to NASA spending money on safety for crew. The fact that an uncrewed SLS launch costs $4B is insane by any standard.
• shadowgovt 3y ago
  Not me. That thing has a 2% failure rate and I want to live.
• programd 3y ago
  Space Shuttle - "a ~2% failure rate" Which incidentally was exactly what the engineering studies predicted while it was being designed. Which really says something about the quality of engineering analysis which went into creating the Shuttle. For reference you can nerd out on the following awsome books: "Space Shuttle Decision, 1965-1972 (History of the Space Shuttle, Volume 1)" "Development of the Space Shuttle, 1972-1981 (History of the Space Shuttle, Volume 2)"
• proggy 3y ago
  One of the shuttle missions that resulted in loss of crew was caused by operating the vehicle outside of the rated temperature envelope (for the SSB O-rings). If that requirement was honored, the failure rate could have been halved. The other loss of crew was caused by a genuine oversight in the design of the system, in that the orbiter was always susceptible to strikes from insulating foam falling from the external tank. Unlike Titan, neither one of these failures were due to the inevitable cyclic wear of the primary pressure vessel. They were both devils hiding in the details, neither one the result of reckless hubris. OceanGate full on admitted that its carbon fiber hull, a major red flag component at the center of its design, was highly experimental and did not know exactly when it would fail. They foolishly thought that strain gauges would detect issues well in advance of failure, while completely ignoring how immediately and catastrophically composite structures are known to fail. They recklessly sold tickets to fund their experimental craft, inviting people aboard who were definitely not made fully aware of just how flawed the design was up front. These were not all members of the Explorers Club — a former head writer for the Simpsons went on a dive, for goodness’ sake. So to return back to your point, I’d rather take a shuttle after a few dozen flights than get inside a Titan II after a few dozen dives.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • hgsgm 3y ago
    More specifically, mission control management intentionally chose to launch Challenger after being notified that the launch was rejected by engineering. Same as Titan -- Management intentionally launched into catastrophe. At least Rush bet his own life on it, not only innocent victims. I'm not sure about Colombia.
    • nocoiner 3y ago
      With Columbia, Mission Control knew there was a potential issue pretty much as soon as the shuttle reached orbit, but because there was basically nothing* that could be done about it, they essentially were going to not worry the crew too much about it and hope for the best. As I recall, they modified the reentry procedure somewhat to possibly reduce stress on the affected wing. Obviously it did not work. * There were a handful of high-risk options that in all probability would have resulted in one or more dead astronauts. One plan would have been to send the Columbia crew on a spacewalk to try to fashion whatever kind of shield they could jerry-rig to cover the ceramic tiles - like bags of frozen water. The most glorious plan would have been putting the Columbia crew on a minimal sustenance/activity schedule right away and then rushing the next orbiter scheduled to fly (Atlantis, I think it was) into orbit on a rescue mission. I get chills even thinking about that kind of mission, but the shuttle was obviously a temperamental vehicle, and if NASA had cut the normal months of prep time into a handful of weeks, who knows what could have gone wrong with that launch. I have no doubt you would have had 100 or more volunteers among the past and present astronaut corps to fly it though.
• phire 3y ago
  First, it did way less than 50 dives. I'm finding it really hard to find any solid numbers, but I've only found reference to only 3 or 4 previous dives to the Titanic, a test dive and a few dives to much shallower depths. That would put the failure rate for dives to this depth closer to 20%. Second, the space shuttle never carried any paying passengers. I'm very much of the opinion that the second you start accepting paying passengers, the safety standards should massively go up. Consumers have an expectation that if a company is offering a service to the general public, that service will meet a minimum level of safety. Companies shouldn't be able to hide behind liability wavers (well, not for a ~2% risk and absolutely not for a 20% risk) as even with a waver explictly stating death is an option, they will under estimate it. Third, NASA engineers actually quantified the risk all the way back in the design stage and had it at ~2%, remarkably accurate in retrospect. NASA decided that was an acceptable level of risk for their mission profile and went ahead (it would have been way safer if the air force hadn't put insane mission profiles on it) With everything we now know, there is no way in hell that OceanGate had any level of risk calculation. They were denying any risk at all, asserting that their real-time monitoring procedures would catch any failures before they became critical.
  • nocoiner 3y ago
    The space shuttle carried politicians, though! The mission that landed right before Challenger carried the now-administrator of NASA and then Florida Congressman Bill Nelson. They also took up a republican rep or senator from Utah (where the SRBs were built). That’s pretty much the NASA equivalent of “paying customers.” I actually don’t disagree with your point at all, it’s just funny to look back at the teacher in space and who preceeded McAuliffe and who would have been next if Challenger hadn’t blown up (probably Walter Cronkite or Dan Rather).
    • stickfigure 3y ago
      And let's not forget the 77-year-old Senator John Glenn!
      • nocoiner 3y ago
• zardo 3y ago
  There is no next shuttle flight, in no small part do to the shuttle's high failure rate.
• flaminHotSpeedo 3y ago
  The space shuttle was known to be a borderline death trap (the platform was temperamental at best, the abort maneuvers for several segments of the launch were laughable, it was considered to be a flying brick, it couldn't do go-arounds... Etc) that never took paying passengers. A) I expect many HN readers are familiar with how stupid and bureaucratic the shuttle program was and would never agree to fly in one B) comparing the shuttle to titan is a pretty obvious false equivalence
• dm319 3y ago
  It's funny you should bring up the shuttle, I don't know if you've seen the documentary on the challenger disaster? Yet another case of managers not heeding the concerns of engineers. Boeing max, theranos..