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> Satellite recovery never made any sense The idea was conceived in the 1970s. Satellite downlinks weren't that capable and several keyhole satellites still u

> 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
  CCDs weren't even needed. The Soviets had a fax machine on their lunar orbiter to send back pictures.

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
CCDs weren't even needed. The Soviets had a fax machine on their lunar orbiter to send back pictures.