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It was designed to put classified satellites in orbit and possibly go recover them. In the long run it somewhat paid off for the repair Hubble missions. It wa

It was designed to put classified satellites in orbit and possibly go recover them. In the long run it somewhat paid off for the repair Hubble missions. It was also a pretty cool truck. It generated 21kW of power, using Hydrogen/Oxygen fuel cells, and captured the output water for use on missions. During most of it's life it had to send the excess water overboard, but when it came to ISS, they started bagging it up and transferring it to the station. The power itself, the payload bay, the payload manipulation arm made this a pretty nice platform to build ISS with. Which was a natural consequence of the shuttle not being good for much else than building space stations and recovering spy satellites before the Russians did. In terms of a natural step in our evolution towards a space faring society it was an incredible vehicle and it inspired the imagination of everyone who watched it fly.

pfdietz 3y ago
> It was designed to put classified satellites in orbit and possibly go recover them. It ended up useless for both roles. The military quickly moved back to expendables. Satellite recovery never made any sense as a mission for the Shuttle; satellites are generally not worth recovering at those launch costs. > In the long run it somewhat paid off for the repair Hubble missions. Clearly not. For the cost of the shuttle program, a large number of copies of HST could have been built and launched on expendable boosters. This is especially the case when one amortizes engineering cost of the program over multiple instances of the physical hardware. All the other things you mention there are examples of drawing a bullseye around where the arrow landed, post hoc rationalizations. A launch vehicle that is actually cheap, like Falcon 9 or even more so (if it works) Starship would be far more inspiring; look at the palpable excitement from SpaceX's achievements. The shuttle was a Potemkin Village in its inspiration: it superficially looked cool, but objectively it was a hollow shell, leading nowhere. The truly sad thing about the shuttle was that the US could have had cost optimized expendable launchers many decades ago, even launchers that could have evolved into something like Falcon 9 with a recoverable first stage (the Saturn 1B might have been a good jumping off point; the H-1 engine is in the same thrust class as the Merlin, it just weighs twice as much). Bastiat's "What is Seen and What is Not Seen" should be kept in mind when thinking about the program: compare it to what the alternative could have been, not to nothing at all.
- cryptonector 3y ago
  As you've noticed, the truth is not popular.
- akira2501 3y ago
  > Satellite recovery never made any sense The idea was conceived in the 1970s. Satellite downlinks weren't that capable and several keyhole satellites still used film. > For the cost of the shuttle program, a large number of copies of HST could have been built That's presuming we got _nothing_ else out of the shuttle. > post hoc rationalizations. Yes. It's amazing that a vehicle built for one purpose was capable of being put to so many others. > US could have had cost optimized expendable launchers many decades ago The US is not some monolithic agency. You're ignoring all the parts of reality that are inconvenient to your argument and the fact that the shuttle was a running program for 30 years. > compare it to what the alternative could have been, not to nothing at all. And you're comparing it to a level of perfection that was just not achievable by a public agency with funding controlled by congress. To take this perspective and call it a "boondoggle" is clearly misguided. Anyways.. wake me up when a private company has managed to put a space station into orbit.
  - NikkiA 3y ago
    > The idea was conceived in the 1970s. Satellite downlinks weren't that capable and several keyhole satellites still used film. Specifically, the mid 70s KH-9s had a re-entry vehicle magazine that carried something like 6 or 7 REVs, and when it ran out the KH-9 became useless. The idea was that the shuttle could service the KH-9s on orbit and replace the magazine. The real reason this became useless was that around the same time CCDs were invented, and KH-11s (from 1976 - still in the design phase of the shuttle) didn't need re-entry vehicles at all. Oddly the USAF still operated KH-9s with their REV cannisters up til 1980. (If you're wondering what happened to KH-10, that was the cancelled 'MOL' program: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manned_Orbiting_Laboratory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manned_Orbiting_Laboratory )
    - cryptonector 3y ago

pfdietz 3y ago

> It was designed to put classified satellites in orbit and possibly go recover them. It ended up useless for both roles. The military quickly moved back to expendables. Satellite recovery never made any sense as a mission for the Shuttle; satellites are generally not worth recovering at those launch costs. > In the long run it somewhat paid off for the repair Hubble missions. Clearly not. For the cost of the shuttle program, a large number of copies of HST could have been built and launched on expendable boosters. This is especially the case when one amortizes engineering cost of the program over multiple instances of the physical hardware. All the other things you mention there are examples of drawing a bullseye around where the arrow landed, post hoc rationalizations. A launch vehicle that is actually cheap, like Falcon 9 or even more so (if it works) Starship would be far more inspiring; look at the palpable excitement from SpaceX's achievements. The shuttle was a Potemkin Village in its inspiration: it superficially looked cool, but objectively it was a hollow shell, leading nowhere. The truly sad thing about the shuttle was that the US could have had cost optimized expendable launchers many decades ago, even launchers that could have evolved into something like Falcon 9 with a recoverable first stage (the Saturn 1B might have been a good jumping off point; the H-1 engine is in the same thrust class as the Merlin, it just weighs twice as much). Bastiat's "What is Seen and What is Not Seen" should be kept in mind when thinking about the program: compare it to what the alternative could have been, not to nothing at all.

cryptonector 3y ago
As you've noticed, the truth is not popular.
akira2501 3y ago
> Satellite recovery never made any sense The idea was conceived in the 1970s. Satellite downlinks weren't that capable and several keyhole satellites still used film. > For the cost of the shuttle program, a large number of copies of HST could have been built That's presuming we got _nothing_ else out of the shuttle. > post hoc rationalizations. Yes. It's amazing that a vehicle built for one purpose was capable of being put to so many others. > US could have had cost optimized expendable launchers many decades ago The US is not some monolithic agency. You're ignoring all the parts of reality that are inconvenient to your argument and the fact that the shuttle was a running program for 30 years. > compare it to what the alternative could have been, not to nothing at all. And you're comparing it to a level of perfection that was just not achievable by a public agency with funding controlled by congress. To take this perspective and call it a "boondoggle" is clearly misguided. Anyways.. wake me up when a private company has managed to put a space station into orbit.
- NikkiA 3y ago
  > The idea was conceived in the 1970s. Satellite downlinks weren't that capable and several keyhole satellites still used film. Specifically, the mid 70s KH-9s had a re-entry vehicle magazine that carried something like 6 or 7 REVs, and when it ran out the KH-9 became useless. The idea was that the shuttle could service the KH-9s on orbit and replace the magazine. The real reason this became useless was that around the same time CCDs were invented, and KH-11s (from 1976 - still in the design phase of the shuttle) didn't need re-entry vehicles at all. Oddly the USAF still operated KH-9s with their REV cannisters up til 1980. (If you're wondering what happened to KH-10, that was the cancelled 'MOL' program: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manned_Orbiting_Laboratory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manned_Orbiting_Laboratory )
  - cryptonector 3y ago