Alternate Spaceshuttle?

[ValleyTwo]

Found this while looking up alternate evolution and wondered what you folks felt about it?  How would it change history?   Would it have changed history?  

 

http://spaceflighthistory.blogspot.com/2015/10/an-alternative-stationshuttle-evolution.html

[DerekL1963]

48 minutes ago, ValleyTwo said:

Found this while looking up alternate evolution and wondered what you folks felt about it?

Paper spacecraft always launch on time and within budget.

That being said, the "alternative" Shuttle mentioned only briefly in the article isn't an alternative - it was one step on the evolution that lead to the historical Shuttle.  Had it flown...  it would have dramatically changed history, probably for the worse overall.  The key problem with that design (from the changing history POV) was it's very low cargo capacity.  If the historical Shuttle is viewed as a full size pickup truck, then this one could be viewed as one of the tiny rice burner pickups you don't see many of anymore.  That means no independent free flying missions...  Some of those missions, like Spacelab/Spacehab  would have become station activities.  Others, like SIR-C/X-SAR would have gone to satellites (if they flew at all) and certainly wouldn't have been reflown (the SIR-C/X-SAR hardware was modified and reflown as SRTM).  Hubble, as we know it, wouldn't have happened at all.

We would have had a station much earlier, but would that program continue?  That's an open question.  Even without requiring an expensive low flight rate booster, stations are expensive.  And without a station that particular Shuttle design is practically useless...

[YNM]

31 minutes ago, DerekL1963 said:

We would have had a station much earlier, but would that program continue?

The reds kept up with a really small spacecraft.

TBH the flaws in the Shuttle program was simply the size of the task in hand. Experimental, yes, but it's one heck of a step. It's a damn impressive sight to behold, but it's also bloody expensive to keep up.

I think what was more instrumental to keep a space program afloat is the will of those in charge and less of the engineering caveat that has to be made. So if they had been pumped as heck as if it was the larger shuttle then it might be possible they'd get the space station up earlier.

But given the real-life shuttle was only given the go-ahead after it *could* serve the needs of the defense and intelligence community, I doubt the "civilians-only" shuttle would've been given the go-ahead. And it didn't in our history.

[DerekL1963]

8 minutes ago, YNM said:

So if they had been pumped as heck as if it was the larger shuttle then it might be possible they'd get the space station up earlier.

Only if the budget had been available.   That's what many proponents of alternate history keep missing...   There wasn't going to be Apollo era budgets.  Period.  Everything flows from that elephant in the room.

[tater]

^^^ That said, I think a counterfactual where Shuttle is a primarily crew vehicle, and heavy lift is relegated to a dedicated HLV is interesting.

It's too complicated to think too deeply on, however---it's not just tech, it's also where things are made (which districts), etc.

[YNM]

2 hours ago, DerekL1963 said:

Only if the budget had been available.

There's always a budget if it's already truly agreed and comitted on.

I mean, blimey, they kept the larger shuttle flying.

Edited October 21, 2018 by YNM

[DerekL1963]

3 hours ago, tater said:

That said, I think a counterfactual where Shuttle is a primarily crew vehicle, and heavy lift is relegated to a dedicated HLV is interesting.

Yes, and no.  Interesting in some ways, in that it enables a Station much earlier.  Less interesting in that some of the most of the really interesting stuff the Shuttle did and all the stuff that only a big pickup truck can do simply goes away.

The only way it gets really interesting is if the US gets into modular space stations.  That's unlikely as the US historically avoided construction in space until it was forced on them by the mandate to justify the existence of the shuttle - resulting in many of the "big pickup truck" missions.  If you're restricted to what can go up on a single launch, basically re-running Skylab...  That's going to be a hard sell.  

The real problem is that a space station is like an Antarctic Station - scientifically valuable, but boring as [censored]...  And costing a hundred times as much.

NASA grew by selling itself as doing wildly valuable things and constantly accomplishing firsts...  And that has come back to bite them when it's time to transition to doing things routinely.
 

1 hour ago, YNM said:

There's always a budget if it's already truly agreed and comitted on.

True.  And utterly meaningless and irrelevant.  The US wasn't going to commit to a hugely expensive program in the late 60's-early 70's.  Period.

The historical Shuttle evolved because of the need to stay within budget caps.  Budget caps that precluded the insanely expensive program (which relied heavily on expendables), outlined in the article.

[YNM]

24 minutes ago, DerekL1963 said:

The US wasn't going to commit to a hugely expensive program in the late 60's-early 70's.  Period.

Apart from highways and suburban housing I guess. Even through the oil price crisis.

And oh, Apollo 11 happened in 1969.

And Cold war was at full swing.

It's about the will.

Edited October 21, 2018 by YNM

[DerekL1963]

1 hour ago, YNM said:

And oh, Apollo 11 happened in 1969.

And, oh, the Apollo program was running on fumes and force of habit by 1969 - with equipment production all but cancelled and funding but a fraction of what it had been just two years earlier.  The program's end was already in sight and not many years off.

And, oh,  it wasn't a hugely expensive program at that point, and it decidedly wasn't a hugely expensive program running off twenty years into the future.
 

1 hour ago, YNM said:

It's about the will.

No matter how many different ways you repeat it, the simple fact remains - despite the truth of that statement, it's irrelevant.

[YNM]

4 hours ago, DerekL1963 said:

the simple fact remains - despite the truth of that statement, it's irrelevant.

Because it didn't happen. I grant you that.

But there are a lot of examples that just show things are sometimes less about the financial cost/benefit and more about socio-economical 'cost-benefit'.

And in those cases it sometimes really is about the will.

[tater]

9 hours ago, DerekL1963 said:

Yes, and no.  Interesting in some ways, in that it enables a Station much earlier.  Less interesting in that some of the most of the really interesting stuff the Shuttle did and all the stuff that only a big pickup truck can do simply goes away.

 

Cool series of pages on paper vehicles starting in the early 60s:

http://www.pmview.com/spaceodysseytwo/spacelvs/sld001.htm

The late 60s into 70s designs start honing in on Shuttle variants.

Most all have substantial payload capacity in addition to crew (that was what was being asked for, after all).

If I was going to craft an alternate history, I think I'd want some of the vehicles on the page above

 

[wumpus]

With a smaller payload capacity, two options are available: you can either add a fairing to the shuttle (with no return capacity) or you can have an array of expendable launchers for everything else.
 

If the shuttle can't lift the external payload, you are out of luck.  Also DoD backing was deemed necessary, and that enlarged cargo area was needed to bring home a keyhole if necessary (did they even launch at Vandenburg?  I don't think they launched anything into polar orbit from a shuttle)...

If you allow competing expendable rockets,  you give Congress that much more power to cancel the shuttle.  I don't think it could survive the competition.  Granted, such things were routine after the Challenger disaster, and you could plan on the Challenger disaster simply by checking the expected safety of the Shuttle, but don't expect congressmen to do math (you'd think their staff could do that, but they are mostly wannabe congressmen).

Congress wasn't at all interested in Apollo-level budgets for NASA, thus the need to exaggerate cost savings at every opportunity.  They weren't approving the shuttle, they were approving the dream of what the shuttle could be.  They already canceled the 3 other programs that worked together for a modern space plan, leaving the Shuttle a 'bus to nowhere'.

[tater]

Yeah, the Apollo budget was (and is) never going to happen again.

The cost issue with the Shuttle... I'm unsure if there is an alternate history where it's avoidable. The early concepts assumed a much more aircraft-like turn around on the vehicle. People understood well, even in the early 1960s that the way to reduce cost was via reuse. Not expensive refurbishment, but operational reuse. It's a chicken and egg thing, however, in order to justify that, you need some reason to have to fly to space a lot. (a problem we still face).

 

[YNM]

10 minutes ago, wumpus said:

If you allow competing expendable rockets,  you give Congress that much more power to cancel the shuttle.

TBH that lasted only for 21 Shuttle flights. Then they just get themselves another rocket.

[DerekL1963]

1 hour ago, tater said:

The late 60s into 70s designs start honing in on Shuttle variants.

Most all have substantial payload capacity in addition to crew (that was what was being asked for, after all).

If I was going to craft an alternate history, I think I'd want some of the vehicles on the page above

Yeah, during the "don't worry about cost" phase, there were indeed some cool designs...  One wonders how practical some of the were, and even with money-is-no-object, how much they would have changed in the transition from paper dreams to flying hardware.  The X-33 stands as a stark reminder of how badly things can go wrong!  Something many folks don't have a good handle on is just how conservative NASA was with both Apollo and Shuttle - they only went outside the lines when they really had no other choice.  Sometimes (*cough*SSME*cough*) that cost them dearly.

[Gargamel]

16 hours ago, YNM said:

Apart from highways and suburban housing I guess. Even through the oil price crisis.

Crises and budgets don't change geography. 

[YNM]

2 hours ago, Gargamel said:

Crises and budgets don't change geography. 

Nah, sometimes they do, like New Deal during Great Depression. Also will.

Edited October 22, 2018 by YNM

[wumpus]

21 hours ago, YNM said:

TBH that lasted only for 21 Shuttle flights. Then they just get themselves another rocket.

21 Shuttle flights was enough to construct the entire fleet and hang the sunk costs and existing jobs around the neck of Congress.  By then it was too late to cancel the Shuttle, and they are even today insisting on paying for those same jobs via the SLS (which has far less justification than the Shuttle).  There's no way you would get 135 crewed flights of an expendable rocket, Congress would have shut it down in a few years.  Sure, they might plan a follow up, but US astronauts have been limited to Soyuz for 7 years and counting.  And if we were relying on Congress and SLS, we'd still have to use Soyuz between rare SLS flights.

While politics might be a forbidden topic, no bucks - no Buck Rogers.  Managing Congress and finding ways that will get them to pay not only today but for decades is what makes NASA administrators successful.  No idea what that does to the irreplaceable bits that NASA does (we have a bunch of billionaires deciding to turn manned flight into the next sportsteam competition, but not so much science and air R&D), although the ESA is certainly doing plenty of science now.

[tater]

It's interesting to note that we now know the actual cost of refurbing SSMEs. The SLS program is spending $127,000,000 to refurbish each RS-25 they will fly on SLS.

 

[YNM]

1 hour ago, wumpus said:

no bucks - no Buck Rogers.

I'd question that the world's largest economy that hasn't seen a war on it's soil for 100 years (by 1960s, now that exceeds 150 years) can have no funds.

You had, it's just no one was willing to spend it on that.

Edited October 22, 2018 by YNM

[DerekL1963]

36 minutes ago, YNM said:

I'd question that the world's largest economy that hasn't seen a war on it's soil for 100 years (by 1960s, now that exceeds 150 years) can have no funds.

Yes, we know that.  You've said it six times now.

Repeating it accomplishes nothing.

[tater]

1 hour ago, YNM said:

I'd question that the world's largest economy that hasn't seen a war on it's soil for 100 years (by 1960s, now that exceeds 150 years) can have no funds.

You had, it's just no one was willing to spend it on that.

You're welcome to donate all the funds you like to the US. How my tax money is spent? I care what others think regarding US gov expense commensurate with their US tax bill, the more you pay, the more I'll listen, if you pay nothing, your opinion doesn't matter.

[YNM]

1 hour ago, DerekL1963 said:

Repeating it accomplishes nothing.

As much as talking alternate histories. I wonder why are we having this thread then.

39 minutes ago, tater said:

the more you pay, the more I'll listen

Nah, you should listen to them then.

[tater]

11 minutes ago, YNM said:

As much as talking alternate histories. I wonder why are we having this thread then.

Nah, you should listen to them then.

One, hate that guy, couldn't stand watching 30 seconds of him on anything. Two, the Saudis pay no significant US taxes, so I also don't care what they think. (I didn't watch it, read title, so don't bother explaining the vid, I'll ignore it).

The large bulk of US Fed revenue is from personal income taxes, and the bulk of that is from the top 20% of taxpayers (US divides payers into equal pop quintiles).

I'd not presume to tell you how your own space program should spend taxpayer money.

The reality is that the NASA budget is not going to change, nor should it, frankly. The US space program was never about exploring space. The Space Race was about geopolitics first, local politics second (pork). The current program is about local politics first (pork), and geopolitics second (cooperation with other countries furthering international interests, vs competition doing that in the Space Race).

As a result more funds would not necessarily have any positive effect. Throwing billions at SLS hasn't, and now it's literally out of money and will require the better part of a billion new $ just to stay on track (and it's already delayed, and way, way over budget). More money would just give contractors more money, I doubt it changes outcomes.

Edited October 22, 2018 by tater

[YNM]

30 minutes ago, tater said:

I'd not presume to tell you how your own space program should spend taxpayer money.

You have 3.8 trillion USD to manage 325 million people. We only have 0.1 trillion USD to manage 250 million people. You have 25x more budget per person. And that's the levels today - 50 years ago it's like trying to compare single dust particles with a huge rock.

Your 0.5% NASA funding from your budget is as large as we're spending on education in whole (minimum 20% of our budget). If you want to explain about being poor then we should exchange places.

30 minutes ago, tater said:

The US space program was never about exploring space.

But it's useful. As I said in another thread it may well make up for the comparatively small direct aids you give to other countries. And the porkbarrels you keep mentioning help keep your money-attracting companies on the bleeding edges. And that helps keep the top 20% to pay that much taxes.

Am I seeing what your country is better, or what ?

Edited October 22, 2018 by YNM