Get that dang space shuttle of my lawn.

[Corona688]

You don't just "send up another hubble", it took decades to build one of them.

[Bill Phil]

24 minutes ago, Corona688 said:

You don't just "send up another hubble", it took decades to *develop* one of them.

Fixed that for you.

[tater]

Much of Hubble was learned from Keyhole. We lofted rather a lot of those. It takes ages to develop expensive science experiments when the costs are so high, and they want the thing to last for ages. If they know they get a new one every X years, they could have built them faster. 

BTW, it was developed in the 70s, it launched in 1990---because of the Shuttle disaster. So blame Shuttle for the delay. It finally got funded in 1978, and was scheduled for launch in '83. Planned 5 years, not decades, though they then delayed to '85, then Challenger, and the delay to 1990. Minus Shuttle it would have launched in 1985 (7 years from funding). They'd have discovered the problem, and by 1993 (the mission that repaired it making it useful) they could have had another one, easily. Heck, even with the delay of the first, they could have launched a replacement in 1992, and on the initial schedule (not impossible since they knew what they were doing then) they could have launched a replacement by 1990.

 

[PB666]

Not going to warch the nother shuttle hater video.

[legoclone09]

20 hours ago, White Owl said:

Without watching the video, and speaking as a long-time fan of STS-like designs...

It's fashionable in certain circles to lambast the poor shuttle for all its many failings, while giving very little attention to the vehicle's very impressive capabilities. The shuttle may not have been anywhere near as good as the original concept and early designs, but even the emasculated, fragile, and overpriced version that finally became reality was a powerful and hugely flexible machine.

Just take a quick glance at the list of STS missions, and notice how often various payloads malfunctioned, and how often it turned out to be very useful to have a crew with a toolbox right there, ready to fix the problem. Or even decide to bring the payload back home for repair. Not a factor in KSP or other various fictional space programs, but it definitely turned into a majorly important capability in real-life.

Yep, after visiting the KSC I realized it wasn't worthless. What vehicle has that downmass, 10 crew at a theoretical maximum, and has ~25 tonnes to orbit? Sure it was expensive, but it did all of that.

[tater]

I don't think anyone argues the capability of the vessel, I think that the issue is "what might have been." Given the same expenditure, we could have done very much more.

Instead of launching 100 mt, and returning 75, we could have returned a fraction, and put that excess mass someplace interesting.

ISS is about 417 mt. That's 4 lofts of 100 mt (like shuttle, including cost), and a single Russian launch. Done. What do we do with the other 100 plus launches?

[Bill Phil]

6 minutes ago, tater said:

I don't think anyone argues the capability of the vessel, I think that the issue is "what might have been." Given the same expenditure, we could have done very much more.

Instead of launching 100 mt, and returning 75, we could have returned a fraction, and put that excess mass someplace interesting.

ISS is about 417 mt. That's 4 lofts of 100 mt (like shuttle, including cost), and a single Russian launch. Done. What do we do with the other 100 plus launches?

Heck, with Saturn V variants it could be 3 launches of 150+ tonnes, and a single Apollo (modified for LEO operations) launch.

Or, we could've modified the Saturn IB, and added some boosters. It'd take time to develop, but 30 tonnes would be achievable.

[White Owl]

7 hours ago, Stargate525 said:

No one's mentioned that the frikkin CIA decided to mandate the thing needed to be able to hit a polar orbit as well. Mission creep indeed.

My reading of various histories suggests it would be more accurate to say the shuttle designers asked the Department of Defense what capabilities they would like to see in a reusable spaceplane. The DoD replied that they would want their best spy satellite to be launched into a polar orbit at a moment's notice, with the launch vehicle returning to the launch site after one orbit. The satellite had already been designed, could not be reasonably redesigned for the shuttle, and was big as a Greyhound bus. It would require a payload bay at least twice as big as what the early shuttle concepts were considering.

Built a few shuttles in KSP? If so, have you noticed how incredibly expensive that internal payload bay is? A slight increase in payload bay volume means a much, much larger and heavier orbiter. That's the reason my favorite KSP designs shifted to stacking the payload in front of the nose inside a fairing; just ditch the internal payload bay entirely.

The shuttle designers could have simply denied the DoD's request, and put together a space shuttle of more reasonable scale... but they believed they would never get the funding to build unless they could claim the DoD wanted to use the shuttle. Whether the lower development and operating cost of a smaller shuttle could have happened or not is one of those unanswerable questions. But the CIA didn't technically mandate the huge size; they just answered the question of what they would need to use the ship if it was built. The DoD was perfectly happy to keep using Titan rockets for all their payloads.

Personally, I would've liked to see a more modest shuttle initially, to prove the concept and learn how to operate one efficiently. Build the do-everything monster a few versions later. Who knows if that could have happened.

[GoSlash27]

29 minutes ago, tater said:

I don't think anyone argues the capability of the vessel, I think that the issue is "what might have been." Given the same expenditure, we could have done very much more.

Yeah, it was plenty capable for what it was. The problem was that it wasn't what was originally intended and wasn't what was promised in the final form. It was beautifully designed and brilliantly executed, but a botched plan.

This is one of those situations where real life diverges from KSP. In KSP, there's no worry about customer pressure, cutbacks, cancellations, etc. You just outline the mission, design the craft, and proceed. The shuttle had to contend with all these hazards and wound up being something wildly different from what was originally planned as a result. Not hating on it, just telling it like it is.

 

 

 

 

[tater]

What @White Owl said is true... note that the size they needed also just happened to be the size of the telescope that looked UP  as well.

[PB666]

8 hours ago, tater said:

I don't think anyone argues the capability of the vessel, I think that the issue is "what might have been." Given the same expenditure, we could have done very much more.

Instead of launching 100 mt, and returning 75, we could have returned a fraction, and put that excess mass someplace interesting.

ISS is about 417 mt. That's 4 lofts of 100 mt (like shuttle, including cost), and a single Russian launch. Done. What do we do with the other 100 plus launches?

Whats critically wrong with your arguement is we haven't had the expenditure in 6 years and what have we done without it, nothing. No hubble replacement, we are limping around on K2, the mars rovers are old hat, objectives all complete. In that 6 year period in the sixties we were 80% of the way to the moon, we are not even 80% of the way to to a working Orion capsule right now. Shuttle was expensive but its utility was a committment, not much of a committment in the space program right other than sitting around and seeing what ELon musk can do with NASA head-nods abd third party contracts. Suffice it to say we coukd not put a man on the moon right now in eight years if we wanted to, the problem is not in clear lake, its in DC. Either you want a committment to space or you dont, if you dont  want a committment then you dont get a technology driven feedback effect. Its not about losing dollars it a bout losing stimulus to the growth- engine sector of the economy. 

The really big question here is why is there this repeatedly overt and now cryptic attempts to insert this shuttle hate politics into the space-science sub forum. 

[Emperor of the Titan Squid]

It could have worked if we had brought fuel tanks to orbit. I think the main problem was that the large space shuttle budget, made it so that there was no money left to do anything with it.

[GoSlash27]

1 hour ago, PB666 said:

The really big question here is why is there this repeatedly overt and now cryptic attempts to insert this shuttle hate politics into the space-science sub forum. 

"Shuttle hate politics". I think I have a new favorite phrase

[tater]

2 hours ago, PB666 said:

Whats critically wrong with your arguement is we haven't had the expenditure in 6 years and what have we done without it, nothing. No hubble replacement, we are limping around on K2, the mars rovers are old hat, objectives all complete. In that 6 year period in the sixties we were 80% of the way to the moon, we are not even 80% of the way to to a working Orion capsule right now. Shuttle was expensive but its utility was a committment, not much of a committment in the space program right other than sitting around and seeing what ELon musk can do with NASA head-nods abd third party contracts. Suffice it to say we coukd not put a man on the moon right now in eight years if we wanted to, the problem is not in clear lake, its in DC. Either you want a committment to space or you dont, if you dont  want a committment then you dont get a technology driven feedback effect. Its not about losing dollars it a bout losing stimulus to the growth- engine sector of the economy. 

The really big question here is why is there this repeatedly overt and now cryptic attempts to insert this shuttle hate politics into the space-science sub forum. 

Shuttle was a product of DC, obviously. I suppose that the SLS/Orion people are hoping for a similar sunk cost motivation as Shuttle, though it is certainly easier when you can point to a few Orbiters and say, "we have our spaceship right here!"

Those of us who saw both programs (Apollo/Shuttle) complained about us not going anywhere 30 years ago. Many of us were in the big dumb boosters camp, too. Disliking Shuttle is nothing new, I was doing it in college in the 80s.

Edited August 28, 2016 by tater

[Kerbart]

4 minutes ago, tater said:

Shuttle was a product of DC, obviously.

As if Marvel would have done a better job?

[tater]

10 hours ago, Kerbart said:

As if Marvel would have done a better job?

My daughter would likely have a pretty strong opinion on that topic  .

 

Cutting spending from the "crash" nature of Apollo was pretty much inevitable given the realities at the time. Aggressive goals with weak expenditures were not going to happen quickly, if at all. If we were to posit counterfactuals, we'd have to look at what could realistically be accomplished with the new normal (post Apollo) in terms of NASA budget assuming no politics at all muddied the decision making (in other words, in a world of pure fantasy  ).

 

As much as I tend to the "shuttle hater" camp, there is another idea that must be considered... given the political realities, Shuttle might have been the best we could possibly have hoped for post Apollo, even if it was a just a machine to put astronauts in space so that we'd have astronauts in space.

BTW, the OP video states that Soyuz hasn't failed, which is untrue, it just hasn't failed in a long time. 

[UmbralRaptor]

With hindsight I can only argue that the shuttle was a mistake. High costs, low-middling flight rates, capabilities that were used rarely to not at all, only modestly more reliable. The fungible payloads (eg: TDRS) should have gone on Titan IVs, and possibly even the one-offs. (If Galileo hadn't been delayed by Challenger, it most likely would have not suffered the high gain antenna failure.)

 

5 hours ago, PB666 said:

Whats critically wrong with your arguement is we haven't had the expenditure in 6 years and what have we done without it, nothing.

You can partially blame Orion/SLS, continued ISS operations, and that 6 years isn't *that* long for getting a space craft from idea to launch these days. Or consider things launched since then (GRAIL, LADEE, IRIS, RBSP, MAVEN, MMS, ASTRO-H(rip), and soon OSIRIS-REx). I'll admit that some programs this round being delayed (INSIGHT) or canceled (GEMS) didn't help, but at least this isn't like the 1980s.

 

17 hours ago, Corona688 said:

You don't just "send up another hubble", it took decades to build one of them.

The Hubble servicing arguments don't seem to consider that there have been/are other space telescopes (eg: Hubble was part of a program of 4, and 3 of them are still operational, or that a larger than HST sized telescope has been launched and completed its mission.), or that instrumentation costs are on the same order as glass. This is part of why WFIRST has been pushed back so much (the rest is JWST), and we have no idea what (if anything) will be done with the other NRO mirror.

 

edit: It's interesting to consider that the EELVs explicitly stuck expendable in their names. (Though one can probably blame the X-33 alongside the Shuttle for that)

Edited August 28, 2016 by UmbralRaptor

[tater]

@UmbralRaptor, there are also the relatively "mass produced" HSTs that point down, not up  as a model. We flew 16 KH 11s, each basically a HST. Then there is whatever we have sent up after those.

[foamyesque]

15 hours ago, GoSlash27 said:

Yeah, it was plenty capable for what it was. The problem was that it wasn't what was originally intended and wasn't what was promised in the final form. It was beautifully designed and brilliantly executed, but a botched plan.

This is one of those situations where real life diverges from KSP. In KSP, there's no worry about customer pressure, cutbacks, cancellations, etc. You just outline the mission, design the craft, and proceed. The shuttle had to contend with all these hazards and wound up being something wildly different from what was originally planned as a result. Not hating on it, just telling it like it is.

 

The other major thing about KSP is that in KSP, for a lot of the tasks the shuttle was best at, airbreathing spaceplanes are better, because of the huge differences in OVs. In some respects I'd like to see KSP go to a full-scale system and get another gear on the time warp -- the small one has forced some weird compromises -- but I doubt it will ever happen.

[Camacha]

On 27/08/2016 at 3:10 PM, Red Iron Crown said:

I think it was an OK concept that didn't pan out as planned. If reusability/turnaround time had been anything remotely close to the projections when it was being designed it would have greatly reduced cost to orbit (mission rate is a another factor here, too). Unfortunately the refurbishing time and costs after each flight killed any benefit that reusability offered, so it became an overweight launcher with a large return capacity (which is of questionable utility).

To be fair, the projected numbers were never going to happen. They were the very typical project advertising you tend to see in relation to huge projects that simply are not economically or technically sensible. People want to see a project happen, yet know that it will never be funded that way. So what do you do? You make up numbers. It probably is a mixture of wilfully misleading people (due to personal or local interests) and feverishly wishing for something that just does not add up.

You still see it happening today. It is the reason projects go over budget many times the original budget. Projects on this scale have little to do with engineering and sense and a lot more with politics.

[Corona688]

4 hours ago, UmbralRaptor said:

(eg: Hubble was part of a program of 4, and 3 of them are still operational

That it took four large, specialized space observatories of radically different kinds to make one complete instrument package kind of argues against the Hubble being easily replacable...

Quote

or that a larger than HST sized telescope has been launched and completed its mission.)

So, that's two hubble class mirrors able to be launched in a 50 year span.  Obviously they can make them like popcorn.

Can we stop this argument?  This is getting boring and going nowhere.

[edit] wow, the Herschel wasn't even a comparable instrument aside from mirror size, it certainly wasn't a hubble replacement.

Edited August 28, 2016 by Corona688

[Bill Phil]

3 minutes ago, Corona688 said:

That it took four large, specialized space observatories of radically different kinds to make one complete instrument package kind of argues against the Hubble being easily replacable...

So, that's two hubble class mirrors able to be launched in a 50 year span.  Obviously they can make them like popcorn.

Can we stop this argument?  This is getting boring and going nowhere.

So we're ignoring the other large mirrors?

[Corona688]

The same way you ignored 99% of my post and focused on the soundbite, yes.  I'm done.

[Bill Phil]

3 minutes ago, Corona688 said:

The same way you ignored 99% of my post and focused on the soundbite, yes.  I'm done.

The point you made is based on ignoring the other evidence provided to you.

[tater]

11 minutes ago, Corona688 said:

That it took four large, specialized space observatories of radically different kinds to make one complete instrument package kind of argues against the Hubble being easily replacable...

So, that's two hubble class mirrors able to be launched in a 50 year span.  Obviously they can make them like popcorn.

Can we stop this argument?  This is getting boring and going nowhere.

[edit] wow, the Herschel wasn't even a comparable instrument aside from mirror size, it certainly wasn't a hubble replacement.

You realize that Hubble's objective diameter was determined by the fact that it was identical to the practically mass-produced satellites being built for the NRO, right? It was conceived to be 3m, but the NRO was already banging out perfect 2.4m glass. Kh11 was basically Hubble, though the secondary components were built for recon, not astronomy. We built at least 18 Kh11 mirrors in that 20 year period (flew 17 of them, I think)... all 2.4 meters.

NASA has a couple NRO birds in a clean room for astronomy use should they ever chose to launch them, actually.

Edited August 28, 2016 by tater