Alternate Spaceshuttle?

[tater]

The NASA budget is not going to increase short of some rationale that demands it (say an asteroid heading our way in XX years). That's simply a fact. That Shuttle came about post-Apollo, when the budget dropped at NASA from its Space Race high is also a fact.

Any counterfactual about Shuttle needs to assume the same forces acting upon it... real budget constraints, the pork-barrel politics that drive such spending, and the specific needs of the USAF in the case of Shuttle (this drove the payload requirement, even though they never launched from VAFB as planned).

This thread is about alternative Shuttle concepts in that framework (a realistic one), not a magical framework where they have a budget they could never have again.

Edited October 22, 2018 by tater

[DerekL1963]

6 hours ago, YNM said:

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

The difference between a counterfactual history (alternate history) and fanboi porn is this:  The former generally works within reality or provides a reasonable explanation as to how and why the counterfactual diverges from history.  The latter throws reality in the trash and like all porn is nothing but pure fantasy right out of the box.

This counterfactual (though we're assuming the existence of budget for this one thing*) "what happens if this variant of the Shuttle happens" has already been interesting, I'd never really thought about how history would proceed with a less capable Shuttle that requires heavy lift expendables and is subject to their limits.  It surprised me to find that it still ends up in the same general place NASA is today - having to make a hard sell to keep the money flowing.  And that circles back to reality, unless you break the "one assumption" rule and assume the budgets continue endlessly...  at which point you're clearly in the realm of fanboi porn.

Or, to put it another way, we're having this discussion because it's providing some useful insights.  "We could have had we wanted to" adds no useful insight, as it's a true statement long accepted as fact by all.

* Some schools of counterfactual discussion allow a single assumption so long as it's not too unrealistic.  I'm no purist in that matter and I'm OK with the "one assumption" school so long as the existence of that assumption is clearly stated and understood by all participants.

Edited October 23, 2018 by DerekL1963

[tater]

This is a cool series of articles:

http://space.nss.org/the-space-shuttle-decision-by-t-a-heppenheimer/

 

Regarding counterfactuals, I'm fine with making an assumption or two that differs, then going with it. What if the AF decided that Shuttle need not service its Keyhole assets, for example---on top of other assumptions, like alternate designs being pursued.

I think that massive changes to US politics renders any such alternate history silly, however. Which contractor wins could literally have varied by a single election someplace (the right guy is chairman of the right committee), the whole gestalt of US politics is not gonna change, however.

 

 

[Ultimate Steve]

Related to a comment quite some time ago, way up the thread, 127 million to refurbish each SSME? Wow. I mean, I understand that we no longer have the assembly line to build the SSME, but first off, I've seen serious talk of restarting production, and various estimates I've seen online range from 40-50 million for each new one during the program.

How does refurbishment get to be twice the cost of a new engine?

[tater]

Three times if 40M is a real number. Insane. 127 is from the OIG report.

[YNM]

7 hours ago, tater said:

This thread is about alternative Shuttle concepts in that framework (a realistic one), not a magical framework where they have a budget they could never have again.

 

2 hours ago, DerekL1963 said:

The former generally works within reality or provides a reasonable explanation as to how and why the counterfactual diverges from history.  The latter throws reality in the trash and like all porn is nothing but pure fantasy right out of the box.

I didn't ask for an entirely different and bonkers attitude. For a while USAF considers their own space station (MOL) before they have autonomous spy cameras on satellites. Perhaps they could've something that would require a manned station up in orbit.

I mean, the soviets thought the large size of the IRL shuttle was perfect to have a returnable spy satellite, but if it was smaller that'd mean they're just serving to something, same as Soyuz/TKS - Almaz.

Edited October 23, 2018 by YNM

[Xd the great]

Im gonna do one just for the sake of doing it.

FH with space shuttle.

Expecting backslash.

More like a smaller buran on the FH.

100% reuseability.

[tater]

FH cannot lift Shuttle, aside from everything else, even empty, much less with any cargo. That's not a thing.

A shuttle with liquid side boosters was in fact discussed, and lost out because then the side boosters would not have been made in Utah. That's how the sausage gets made.

[Ultimate Steve]

8 minutes ago, Xd the great said:

Im gonna do one just for the sake of doing it.

FH with space shuttle.

Expecting backslash.

More like a smaller buran on the FH.

100% reuseability.

Except if you were to use an off-the-shelf shuttle orbiter, it's like 68 tons, beyond the recovery threshold of FH, and you would have to swap out the RS-25's for Merlins, and all the associated plumbing. 

[Xd the great]

7 minutes ago, Ultimate Steve said:

Except if you were to use an off-the-shelf shuttle orbiter, it's like 68 tons, beyond the recovery threshold of FH, and you would have to swap out the RS-25's for Merlins, and all the associated plumbing. 

What about 2 FHs?

I should get some sleep.

[tater]

Not to mention the aerodynamics issues. And the TPS is likely an issue as well (exhaust will get entrained behind the orbiter, the bottom of the Main Tank got scorched badly every launch).

Here:

https://www.aiaa.org/uploadedfiles/about-aiaa/history_and_heritage/final_space_shuttle_launches/shuttlevariationsfinalaiaa.pdf

 

[Ultimate Steve]

Just now, Xd the great said:

What about 2 FHs?

I should get some sleep.

FH Reusable can get 23 tons to LEO, and that's with the second stage being expended. If you managed to attach three Falcon Heavies (9 cores!) symmetrically around the shuttle without second stages, and did some tricky throttling and maybe midair ignition of some cores (we don't have crossfeed) then you could probably reach orbit. But some cores would be expended because they are now in orbit...

Maybe if you used 4 to 6 Falcon Heavies you could leave enough fuel in those cores to de-orbit and land, but at this point you're better off strapping the shuttle orbiter to the BFR or something, if BFR didn't already do everything the shuttle did.

[tater]

^^^ this is not even counterfactual, it's KSP. Get the mods, and fly it in KSP, that's as close as that idea would ever get to even a white paper.

 

Real alternate shuttle concepts had flyback boosters (often larger looking versions of the orbiter itself). That was a cool idea, and given the lower stresses on a booster, those might have allowed NASA to really get experience with efficient, operational reuse vs the orbiter.

Imagine a concept sort of like Shuttle C, but lofted with a flyback booster...

[DerekL1963]

1 hour ago, tater said:

A shuttle with liquid side boosters was in fact discussed, and lost out because then the side boosters would not have been made in Utah.

*Facepalm* Liquid side boosters were more than just "discussed", they studied extensively and proceeded as far as preliminary designs.  Ultimately they were rejected because of high development and operations costs and concerns over whether they could be recovered.  (Nobody at the time could work out a method that seemed viable.)

When it comes to the SRB's, four of the five bidders on the contract bid segmented boosters.  Two segmented bids were rejected on the grounds that lacked the ability to do the work.  (One, Lockheed, had neither a factory or experience.  The other was running at full capacity producing Poseidon motors and had the Trident contract and a MX development contract (as well as other, smaller, contracts and was judged not capable of taking on additional work.)  The monolithic bid was rejected on the grounds that monolithics were an immature technology and that there were too many unanswered questions.  (Which in fact there were.)  That left two standing with only minor differences between the bids.  There is absolutely zero evidence of any impropriety in awarding the bid.  In fact, both NASA's Inspector General and the OMB investigated when the award was protested by the loser.

Segmented solid boosters were a product of three problems that continually plagued Shuttle development:  First, a hard cap on annual expenditures.  Second, schedule pressure to meet the planned 1978 launch date.  Third, focusing on the ability to support the planned launch rate.

This is all in Jenkins (Space Shuttle: Developing an icon), which I highly recommend to anyone interested in the  Shuttle and it's history.  (Get and read the three volume final edition, which has a ton of stuff not in the earlier editions.)

The fanboi theory WRT Utah is just that - a theory.

[tater]

I thought the advisory office had wanted Aerojet (that was the monolithic design, right?), and the Administrator went with MT anyway. I remember there was an argument about it, but I thought there was no clear reason established for going with the MT bid.

I honestly only know Shuttle stuff as I read it at the time it happened, so I've likely been rehashing the same observations for decades... I've never read up on Shuttle history at all---I'll add that book to my large "to be read" pile next to the bed.

[wumpus]

14 hours ago, Ultimate Steve said:

Related to a comment quite some time ago, way up the thread, 127 million to refurbish each SSME? Wow. I mean, I understand that we no longer have the assembly line to build the SSME, but first off, I've seen serious talk of restarting production, and various estimates I've seen online range from 40-50 million for each new one during the program.

How does refurbishment get to be twice the cost of a new engine?

It gets that high to justify the cost of a "simplified" expendable SSME costing more than twice the original.  The plan is to run out of available SSMEs, but it doesn't look likely to happen (I can't imagine SLS trying to launch often once either BFR or New Glenn exist).

2 hours ago, Xd the great said:

What about 2 FHs?

I should get some sleep.

If you want to launch a shuttle, your best bet is a dream chaser (which I suspect FH or F9 could manage if they had to.  Especially if you could wrap a fairing around it).  You'd probably have as good of a chance launching a Buran (isn't there an engine in production that is basically half an Energia?) as a STS Shuttle, basically zero.

14 hours ago, YNM said:

I didn't ask for an entirely different and bonkers attitude. For a while USAF considers their own space station (MOL) before they have autonomous spy cameras on satellites. Perhaps they could've something that would require a manned station up in orbit.

I mean, the soviets thought the large size of the IRL shuttle was perfect to have a returnable spy satellite, but if it was smaller that'd mean they're just serving to something, same as Soyuz/TKS - Almaz.

I always thought that "returning a spy satellite" was from unclassified Congressional debate, and a real thing.  Certainly Hubble was basically an inverted spy satellite (except that the mirror didn't require adaptive optics).  In fact, I've assumed that was roughly the point when the US spy agencies stopped pretending that the existence of adaptive optics was a big secret: the US was obviously using spy satellites with mirrors greater than ~30cm diameter and they were useless without some highly specialized technology.

While the Shuttle eventually returned 52 "space items" (which might include bits from ISS) totaling over 100 tons, it never launched from Vandenburg, thus never launched into a polar orbit.  I doubt any of them were spy satellites.

I'd maintain that the internal cargo hold was source of most of the Shuttle's woes (an external fairing would have made infinitely more sense).  While BFS's re-entry and landing profile might be the wave of the future, there's no way it could have been done with 1970s tech: they were stuck with wings for re-use (and certainly far too many spaceplane fanboys have tried to make winged spacecraft regardless of how silly it is IRL).

4 minutes ago, tater said:

I thought the advisory office had wanted Aerojet (that was the monolithic design, right?), and the Administrator went with MT anyway. I remember there was an argument about it, but I thought there was no clear reason established for going with the MT bid.

That's odd.  I thought the AJ-260 was monolithic and certainly tested.  It did have the issue of blowing off the first nozzle applied to it, but that might have had to do with its extreme-thrust design (it was far more powerful than the shuttle boosters).  No idea if trying to extend the burn length would have been an issue.

[tater]

2 hours ago, DerekL1963 said:

his is all in Jenkins (Space Shuttle: Developing an icon), which I highly recommend to anyone interested in the  Shuttle and it's history.  (Get and read the three volume final edition, which has a ton of stuff not in the earlier editions.)

I went to Amazon to buy this... it's over $100. Yikes. I was interested but not that interested.

Is this worth it (it's literally only $4 used) instead?:

Space Shuttle: The History of Developing the National Space Transportation System (Jenkins)

Edited October 23, 2018 by tater

[magnemoe]

6 hours ago, Ultimate Steve said:

FH Reusable can get 23 tons to LEO, and that's with the second stage being expended. If you managed to attach three Falcon Heavies (9 cores!) symmetrically around the shuttle without second stages, and did some tricky throttling and maybe midair ignition of some cores (we don't have crossfeed) then you could probably reach orbit. But some cores would be expended because they are now in orbit...

Maybe if you used 4 to 6 Falcon Heavies you could leave enough fuel in those cores to de-orbit and land, but at this point you're better off strapping the shuttle orbiter to the BFR or something, if BFR didn't already do everything the shuttle did.

FH with disposable core is around 50t if boosters land on barges. still short of the shuttle and its an totally different system in so many ways. 
Pretty much like then I put Soyuz boosters on an Saturn 5 core in KSP, yes its something you just has to do, obviously with cross-feed. 

Nice to launch stuff like this with style. 

Here the large core double as an fuel tank. 

[DerekL1963]

4 hours ago, tater said:

I went to Amazon to buy this... it's over $100. Yikes. I was interested but not that interested.

Is this worth it (it's literally only $4 used) instead?:

Space Shuttle: The History of Developing the National Space Transportation System (Jenkins)

I don't own a copy either...  I get it via inter-library loan every year or so.  Inter-library loan is an useful service, I get all kinds of amazing stuff via my local library.  I've got a stack of academic works on Restoration/Meji era Japan on my coffee table that I wouldn't be able to get otherwise.

If it's only $4 used, and shipping is reasonable, I'd say go for it - though that's almost certainly one of the earlier single volume editions.  There's good stuff in them, but it's been long enough since I that I can't vouch for what is or isn't in there or it's accuracy.  Dennis put in a ton of work on the final, three volume, edition to make it as definitive as possible with the material available at the time.
 

4 hours ago, wumpus said:

That's odd.  I thought the AJ-260 was monolithic and certainly tested.  It did have the issue of blowing off the first nozzle applied to it, but that might have had to do with its extreme-thrust design (it was far more powerful than the shuttle boosters).  No idea if trying to extend the burn length would have been an issue.

Yes, large monolithics were tested...  and IIRC the tests served mainly to uncover issues that could be dodged with a single fixed test grain but could not be dodged with paired mobile operational grains.  Basically the problems were casting and handling.

In normal practice, all of the ingredients for a single grain are mixed and poured all in go to maintain consistency.  A monolithic was too big to safely do this with a single grain, yet alone enough propellant for two matched grains.  (Two Shuttle segments, a LH and RH pair, were much easier and safer to manufacture and would match within the required 5%.)  There was some work done on continuous processing, and one of the big grain tests was produced this way...  but it burned extraordinarily roughly.  This was blamed on the bonding between the "ropes" of propellant as they merged under the weight of the grain above them.  I've seen some hints over the years that stratification was also a problem due to the high pressures (from the weight of the grain) and extended cure times, but nothing definitive.  I've also seen hints that stopping the grain from flowing as it sat (again, due to extreme weight) was also foreseen as a problem.   Segments were small enough that they suffered none of these problems.

The other big issue was simply handling the darn things.  At the time, 1.3 million pounds was out at the extreme edge of technology...  Not just for getting out of the casting pit, but for transporting it from the casting pit to storage, then to the Cape for storage, then to the VAB, then erecting it on the MLP.  (And remember, it was cast nose down, handled horizontally, then nose up for installation and flight - all without flexing the tube and potentially damaging the grain.)

Then there's the VAB cranes.  At the time, the biggest crane was 250 tons, now there's a pair of 375 ton cranes added in the 90's...  a monolithic weighs in excess of 500 tons.  Upgrading the cranes and the VAB would have been very expensive.

[tater]

3 minutes ago, DerekL1963 said:

I don't own a copy either...  I get it via inter-library loan every year or so.  Inter-library loan is an useful service, I get all kinds of amazing stuff via my local library.  I've got a stack of academic works on Restoration/Meji era Japan on my coffee table that I wouldn't be able to get otherwise.

If it's only $4 used, and shipping is reasonable, I'd say go for it - though that's almost certainly one of the earlier single volume editions.  There's good stuff in them, but it's been long enough since I that I can't vouch for what is or isn't in there or it's accuracy.  Dennis put in a ton of work on the final, three volume, edition to make it as definitive as possible with the material available at the time.
 

Thanks!

I always forget about the library as the only thing I actually collect (aside from years) is books... I have thousands, lol. I'll buy the $4 version, and look into getting it at the library (can't go wrong for $4, except for running out of bookshelves).

Edited October 23, 2018 by tater

[YNM]

8 hours ago, Xd the great said:

FH with space shuttle.

That's like putting a plane on top of a straw.

Soviets made one like that (Buran) but their main stage (Energia) are much larger.

5 hours ago, wumpus said:

I'd maintain that the internal cargo hold was source of most of the Shuttle's woes (an external fairing would have made infinitely more sense).

That's just Buran.

Edited October 23, 2018 by YNM

[DerekL1963]

20 minutes ago, YNM said:

That's like putting a plane on top of a straw.

Soviets made one like that (Buran) but their main stage (Energia) are much larger.

Buran was side mounted - just like the Shuttle.

[YNM]

32 minutes ago, DerekL1963 said:

Buran was side mounted - just like the Shuttle.

But the main engines are beneath the tanks, and so they can be used without the shuttle (ie. Polyus).

If you were referring to the FH comment then thinking of topwise placement that's worse off. At best the shuttle is going to be somewhat larger than Dream Chaser but not much larger.

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

They should make a scaled up UR-700 made of Falcons.

Imagine twenty Falcons landing at once.

 

https://nick-stevens.com/2017/04/17/new-reference-information-ur700/

 

[wumpus]

15 hours ago, DerekL1963 said:

Yes, large monolithics were tested...  and IIRC the tests served mainly to uncover issues that could be dodged with a single fixed test grain but could not be dodged with paired mobile operational grains.  Basically the problems were casting and handling.

It looks like a monolithic design would require 4 SRBs, and wind up looking a lot more like Buran (I'm not sure there is room for them plus the main tank.  Especially if you want them to stage at different times.  I suspect that "kerbal design" would  go right out for real life safety).

I'm sure there were tons of "I told you so" from the monolithic people after the Challenger disaster, but somewhat muted since doubling the number of SRBs isn't exactly improving safety.  I'm sure it wouldn't help that Aerojet's monolithic building facility (had to be) not only in Florida, but close enough to KSC to certainly be in the same Congressional district.