5 ms·

The Air Force ... [required] ... enough cross-range capability when landing to be able to launch into a polar orbit from Vandenberg, deploy a satellite, and lan

The Air Force ... [required] ... enough cross-range capability when landing to be able to launch into a polar orbit from Vandenberg, deploy a satellite, and land back one orbit later. This is purely a wartime requirement. No peacetime mission needs this. This required much bigger wings (and thus much more weight), even though the Shuttle never once launched out of Vandenberg, let alone on one of these crazy single-orbit missions. THANK YOU! 16 years ago I visited Vandenberg and saw SLC-6, and it has always confused me why they spent so much money building a shuttle launch complex they never used. The argument I always heard was, "well a polar orbit wouldn't make sense for the shuttle" ... but as a wartime option as you describe, now I can see why they did it. I'm not saying I agree with them, but finally it makes sense why they built and maintained the place, without ever using it.

hga 12y ago
Errr, not exactly. Without wandering into the weeds of the other subthread, NASA managed to get a mandate that the shuttle would be the sole method of putting US satellites into orbit. Forget about the wartime requirements or desires, this meant that anything the military wanted to put into a polar orbit would have to be done by the shuttle, naturally launching from Vandenberg. Going from memory of what I've read in the last few days, and of what went into the decision, one factor was the shuttle ended up 20% overweight, and the higher energy requirements for polar orbit launches resulted in a plan for lighter filament-wound instead of steel SRBs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Solid_Rocket_Booster#Filament-wound_cases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Solid_Rocket_Boo... and of course the Challenger disaster helped people to realize just how dangerous the SRB concept was to begin with. Post Challenger, during the Shuttle fleet's 3 year grounding, a hard look was taken at what was needed to bring SLC-6 up to spec (see end of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SLC-6#Space_Shuttle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SLC-6#Space_Shuttle), and NASA was no longer in a position to force the Air Force to use the shuttle. Which the latter had always thought unwise and the disaster proved to all who could see.

hga 12y ago

Errr, not exactly. Without wandering into the weeds of the other subthread, NASA managed to get a mandate that the shuttle would be the sole method of putting US satellites into orbit. Forget about the wartime requirements or desires, this meant that anything the military wanted to put into a polar orbit would have to be done by the shuttle, naturally launching from Vandenberg. Going from memory of what I've read in the last few days, and of what went into the decision, one factor was the shuttle ended up 20% overweight, and the higher energy requirements for polar orbit launches resulted in a plan for lighter filament-wound instead of steel SRBs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Solid_Rocket_Booster#Filament-wound_cases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Solid_Rocket_Boo... and of course the Challenger disaster helped people to realize just how dangerous the SRB concept was to begin with. Post Challenger, during the Shuttle fleet's 3 year grounding, a hard look was taken at what was needed to bring SLC-6 up to spec (see end of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SLC-6#Space_Shuttle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SLC-6#Space_Shuttle), and NASA was no longer in a position to force the Air Force to use the shuttle. Which the latter had always thought unwise and the disaster proved to all who could see.