Lucky motherfluffers

[Glaran K'erman]

I dont even know if I should put this here but I need others to rage with envy at these people as fast as possible so I don't explode.

Thanks!

[Motokid600]

Sucks for the people on the right side of the plane.

PS: YouTube comments should be banned.

[MrWalrus123]

Taken from comments section "LOL goes up anf falls into ocean"

[vger]

Sucks for the people on the right side of the plane.

Never before was it so easy for people to entice others to sit on their laps.

[Scotius]

I don't care what critics say about space shuttles. Those magnificent 'birds' were THE symbol of space exploration for a good chunk of my life. When they were scrapped and sent to the museums, we lost something priceless.

[G'th]

As awesome as that was, it doesn't really beat being able to walk out into my yard and feel the vibrations from a Shuttle going up, never mind watching it.

I don't care what critics say about space shuttles. Those magnificent 'birds' were THE symbol of space exploration for a good chunk of my life. When they were scrapped and sent to the museums, we lost something priceless.

Indeed. Its no secret that the Shuttles were not the most effective spacecraft for the cost (though mostly because we didn't use it for half of what it could do) but it still bugs me when people wonder why others are so fixated on them. The simple fact that they were reusable meant they were like Sci-Fi spaceships. Seeing an Orbiter coming down from space (and then seeing it go back up over and over again) was like seeing the USS Enterprise or the Millennium Falcon doing the same.

Expendable capsules don't really carry that same gravitas.

[_Augustus_]

As awesome as that was' date=' it doesn't really beat being able to walk out into my yard and feel the vibrations from a Shuttle going up, never mind watching it.

Indeed. Its no secret that the Shuttles were not the most effective spacecraft for the cost (though mostly because we didn't use it for half of what it could do) but it still bugs me when people wonder why others are so fixated on them. The simple fact that they were reusable meant they were like Sci-Fi spaceships. Seeing an Orbiter coming down from space (and then seeing it go back up over and over again) was like seeing the USS Enterprise or the Millennium Falcon doing the same.

Expendable capsules don't really carry that same gravitas.[/quote'] I remember a few months ago asking someone if individual Orion capsules would have names, and he said "maybe".

Well, I suppose that the Dragon V2 fleet will have named capsules, I guess.

[vger]

I don't care what critics say about space shuttles. Those magnificent 'birds' were THE symbol of space exploration for a good chunk of my life. When they were scrapped and sent to the museums, we lost something priceless.

My inner child still hasn't gotten over it.

[LordFerret]

I don't care what critics say about space shuttles. Those magnificent 'birds' were THE symbol of space exploration for a good chunk of my life. When they were scrapped and sent to the museums, we lost something priceless.

Call it a major mistake. Can't further comment - way too political stuff involved.

[_Augustus_]

Call it a major mistake. Can't further comment - way too political stuff involved.

Indeed. While everyone loved how cool they looked, no one loved what they did to American space exploration.

Actually it kind of messed up the space exploration of other nations, too. The Russians' Energia/Buran was so expensive that it changed the design of Mir (Yes, Mir had the shape it did because otherwise Buran could not dock), and Hermes was... just... forget it.

[sumghai]

Personally, I feel that the Shuttle was a nice concept with a somewhat-questionable execution.

Back in the '60s and '70s, spacecraft such as the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo were blunt-body capsules, and while they were quite efficient and effective at protecting their occupants from the aerodynamic and thermal stresses of re-entry, there was little control over where they landed (other than timing the retro-burn at the right moment and hoping for the best). Winged spacecraft would have increased the landing envelope, but traditional fuselage-wing designs were only optimized for subsonic speeds. Consequently, NASA undertook significant research in lifting bodies, which shaped the fuselage itself to generate sufficient lift without the need for actual wings, while being efficient at subsonic, supersonic, hypersonic and atmospheric re-entry regimes.

NASA's original intention for the shuttle was to provide cheap, reusable and frequent access to space, and early shuttle concepts were based around lifting bodies supported by a booster, with a small crew and/or moderate payload capacity. However, the DoD, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) and the USAF saw the shuttle solely as a means to deploy and maintain reconnaissance and other national security payloads - in return for providing additional funding to cover the increasing development costs of the shuttle, the DoD and NRO now had the final say on many of the shuttle's specifications:

- The DoD and NRO envisioned successive generations of spy satellites becoming bigger and bigger, so insisted on a much bigger (60 x 15 feet) payload bay than NASA originally planned (40 x 12 feet). NASA considered the new requirements excessive for civilian space access, but was forced to concede.

- The DoD also wanted increased cross-range capabilities - the shuttle not only was required to reach highly-inclined orbits in order to capture Soviet spy satellites, but also needed the capability to loiter long enough to find and land at an friendly airstrip (in case their original retro-burn put them near bad weather / Soviet airspace).

Both these complications meant that the original lifting body concept was no longer viable, and was thus replaced with the eventual delta-wing design. This increased the wing area of (and the corresponding atmospheric/thermal stresses experienced by) the orbiter.

Had NASA been solely responsible for shuttle development, they would have proceeded with reusable liquid-fuel boosters, which had superior performance, lower per-flight cost, lower environmental and developmental risk. However, the Department of the Treasury's Office of Management and Budget insisted that NASA pursue the higher-risk solid-fuel boosters instead, due to the perceived lower development cost at a time when the various components of the shuttle system were competing for limited funding.

Additionally, the shuttle was envisioned to have a turnaround time between launches and landings as short as two weeks, being serviced quickly and efficiently like commercial airliners. Instead, the DoD's new design requirements meant that the resulting orbiter had turnaround times in the order of several months, during which the Space Shuttle Main Engines (SSMEs) had to be completely disassembled, cleaned, inspected, reassembled and re-certified after each mission, along with the inspection and maintenance of the numerous thermal protection tiles on the underside of its fuselage. A "reusable" spaceplane is not worth very much if it flies very infrequently and requires what effectively amounts to dismantling and rebuilding the shuttle after every mission.

Finally, the shuttle's piggybacked booster configuration was an inherently unsafe design, as many KSPers would have discovered to their dismay w.r.t. off-centered thrust. Whereas the Mercury, Apollo and Orion crew capsules have a Launch Escape System (LES) to pull the pod out of the way in an emergency, the shuttle didn't have that luxury (its ejector seats were removed after early flights). Indeed, the shuttle had much fewer and limited escape options compared to other spacecraft, and even if crew bailout was possible, they were more than likely to be unsurvivable.

After the Challenger and Columbia disasters, there were proposals to either reinstall ejector seats for all crew, or to make the entire cockpit ejectable as an escape pod. However, this would have required extensive modification to what was now an considerably antiquated hardware, and once again the DoD would have protested against *any* reduction of payload capability (despite the Cold War having already thawed by that time).

Don't get me wrong - I agree that Shuttle was an engineering marvel, given the circumstances of its conception. But the myriad of compromises, cost-cutting measures and questionable design decisions has dampened my enthusiasm for any shuttle revivals for the forseeable future.

Edited September 28, 2015 by sumghai
Fixed typos

[Glaran K'erman]

Sucks for the people on the right side of the plane.

PS: YouTube comments should be banned.

Can we get a petition going for that...the lowest of the low those commenters are!

And glad to hear all the kind words about the shuttle, such a great time. Just glad I got to see one launch live when I was a kid on vacation to Florida. We were pretty far away, but close enough to see the large plume behind it, pity I had no idea what I was looking at.

Personally, I feel that the Shuttle was a nice concept with a somewhat-questionable execution.

Back in the '60s and '70s, spacecraft such as the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo were blunt-body capsules, and while they were quite efficient and effective at protecting their occupants from the aerodynamic and thermal stresses of re-entry...

Fascinating

Edited September 27, 2015 by Glaran K'erman