The Space Shuttle: A Remarkable Flying Machine

[ZooNamedGames]

I say this quite a lot and face a lot of resistance when saying these things- but objectively, the Space Shuttle not only did more buy in large than even Apollo (Apollo only went to the moon, launched and flew to a space station). Apollo merely has the prestige of the feat that is landing men on the moon. But the Shuttle has a lot of little achievements that ultimately to me, add up to be more. My second opinion is that the Shuttle was also the most versatile spacecraft ever designed. Reusable, capable of launching crew and cargo (a feat we can't replicate today). Noting that as time goes on, this feat seems more and more misplaced. But in the 70s and 80s, having a crew supervise payload deployment was a wise choice. Automation was still young (pretty sure we were still collecting film canisters from spy satellites in the 70s), so having humans standing by to correct any computer issues and ensure that your 100+ million dollar satellite deployed correctly and without damage, was worth the extra $$$ to launch both crew and the payload. Today, we can release 60 satellites without much of a sweat. But it still may be in need for the occasional satellite or payload. Just, not as much of a demand as there used to be.

The Space Shuttle is also NASA's longest term commitment to date. Running the vehicle for 30 years! Apollo was only 7 years worth of commitment. Lot's changed since 1975 and the last Apollo mission launched... hell 6 years later STS-1 flew. (Only 3 years less than it'll (hopefully) take SLS to launch and kickstart the Artemis program).

[razark]

36 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

...capable of launching crew and cargo...

And also, still the only craft capable of returning both to Earth, including satellites recovered from orbit.

[SRB]

9 hours ago, razark said:

capable of launching crew and cargo...

That great, except when you only need to launch one or the other..

 

[razark]

13 minutes ago, SRB said:

That great, except when you only need to launch one or the other..

 

(Not sure why that quote was under my name.)

True.  But when you do, the capability exists.

[StrandedonEarth]

38 minutes ago, razark said:

 

True.  But when you do, the capability exists.

Especially when you need that crew to assemble, troubleshoot, and fix said cargo 

[wumpus]

52 minutes ago, razark said:

(Not sure why that quote was under my name.)

True.  But when you do, the capability exists.

I have to wonder if this wasn't a better idea than I typically thought when I first learned of deep issues in the Shuttle.  Designing rockets is expensive.  Designing rockets while being micromanaged by Congress is vastly more expensive.  The Shuttle's launch cadence never allowed the costs to drop to the marketing used to justify the shuttle, why would anyone assume that building an additional heavy lift craft would make sense?

Obviously, grounding all non-Shuttle rockets between the original Columbia launch and the Challenger disaster was a mistake, but that doesn't mean that designing a Shuttle-C could possibly make economic sense.

[ZooNamedGames]

 

1 hour ago, StrandedonEarth said:

Especially when you need that crew to assemble, troubleshoot, and fix said cargo 

and micromanage to ensure it deploys correctly in an era where satellites were still a new field of development.

[ZooNamedGames]

47 minutes ago, wumpus said:

I have to wonder if this wasn't a better idea than I typically thought when I first learned of deep issues in the Shuttle.  Designing rockets is expensive.  Designing rockets while being micromanaged by Congress is vastly more expensive.  The Shuttle's launch cadence never allowed the costs to drop to the marketing used to justify the shuttle, why would anyone assume that building an additional heavy lift craft would make sense?

Obviously, grounding all non-Shuttle rockets between the original Columbia launch and the Challenger disaster was a mistake, but that doesn't mean that designing a Shuttle-C could possibly make economic sense.

I don't know why the Space Shuttle gets a bad wrap for failing to meet goals. Has no one looked at the Apollo Applications Program? Mercury 2? Gemini lunar lander concepts? Big Gemini? Gemini MOL? Hell, even if looking to concepts that actually were built and flown, the lunar module has so many shortcomings that no one seems to acknowledge. The lunar module was not only massively overbudget, but also behind and delayed on development. The costs were expected to be less than $200 (can't find the exact number) million (in 1960s $) but ended up exploding to over two billion. Plus the lander wasn't even ready for to fly, and led to NASA creating a brand new mission profile just so that they could procede with the Apollo program. With Apollo 8's original plans being pushed to become what we now know as Apollo 9's. Creating a brand new C Prime mission profile.

So, even by 1980- a year before the Shuttle ever flew- NASA already had a history of overselling their expectations. Because that's how the mafia politics works. To get anything done, you have to oversell your ideas. Politicians don't buy into ideas like landing men on the moon for the scientific benefit or achievement/advancement of mankind. They buy into it because they see how it can benefit their side in government (oh dear, nearing 2.2b territory). Even John F. Kennedy, the man who's accredited with the push to land men on the moon- didn't care about the advancement of mankind or the scientific achievement landing a man on the moon would bring. He knew it would benefit the economy and would be a great sticker for his campaign trail. So he supported NASA.

In the end- oversell will always be present. But it's important to know the difference between what NASA actually intends and what NASA sells to get their budget. NASA had never launched multiple vehicles from one location at a cadence they were proposing with the Shuttle. Even if the vehicle was capable of such turn around times, they wouldn't have met them as there was no need to launch that frequently. Payloads could be stacked and launch multiple on one mission. This is again in an era where a company was considered "cutting edge" for having a team of engineers designing a satellite that could remain in orbit for decades and offer high speed data communication- much less the actual achievement of launching the vehicle and having it work. Which was even more new. There's a reason why satellite TV and satellite services were such a big deal in the 70s and 80s- it's simply because nothing like it had existed before, and especially not on the scale that we were going to grow into. Literally every step, thought and idea was new and had to be tested, and that's not even acknowledging the testing for the actual vehicle itself, merely just the idea. This is the era the Space Shuttle was born into. An era where deploying satellites for other entities was an honor and came with an edge of reliability, and was preferable over unmanned rockets like the Titan II/III, Delta and Atlas launchers. Even after the demise of Challenger in 1986, the Space Shuttle was still seen as a better option simply because again- payloads needed help. This is again, a mere 11 years after the final launch of an Apollo spacecraft, vehicles which relied on massive football field (both American and international definitions of the sport) sized warehouses to house and run the computers needed for the vehicles to operate and the achievement of packing a super complex computer into the size of a briefcase (the AGC). Though post Challenger a lot of trust was lost- but it was still preferable to risking damage from a booster. We were still new to how spacecraft would react to being shaken, rattled and rolled during launch. With a crew onboard, any dings could be repaired or at least indepth examined by crew members more familiar with the spacecraft than the engineers who designed it. 

Could the Space Shuttle been built better? Made Cheaper? What about the costs? All of these questions are fair. We could've built it better. But the Space Shuttle, even with age old hardware, was still cutting edge in every way. Unique in every way. It was the first spacecraft with wings! It was the first with reusable engines! It was the first to have a reusable re-entry protection system (the thermal tiles)! It was new in literally every way. So it's no surprise a lot of errors were made. The Space Shuttle was NASA's first steps into a reusable spacecraft, and like any first steps- they look weird and are wobbly and stupid looking. But we learn from our first steps and can learn to run, and even gain some style in our swagger (see the Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, New Shepard). Costs may not have been the best, but that's why it was a government vehicle. NASA can get away with poor cost returns because they don't have to worry about profit, or return investment into an endeavor. NASA has funding guaranteed to them by Congress. As long as Congress is happy, NASA will fly. And no Congress person wanted to be the person to be known for killing NASA's ability to fly... least not until 2010, and by then, we had SpaceX, ULA, and several other American organizations ready to pick up NASA's slack.

And lastly- for anyone sitting on their high horse thinking "NASA could've fixed the issues with the Space Shuttle, hell it was proven with the Buran", the Buran had time to see the Space Shuttle's issues manifest before it even flew. And though yes, NASA could've fixed those issues, NASA never had the surplus funding to put these things into action as changing even 1 part of the Space Shuttle required a massive change in documentation, planning, values for calculations and more. And yes, it's easy to say "that's why NASA sucks, because they are government run and have so many little people to keep in check with every change and why SpaceX rules" but initial RnD costs for a reusable vehicle in the 70s would've bankrupted any and just about every major corporation. No matter the approach. So instead NASA managed to get the brightest and best from across the industry to work and build one of the most complicated and advanced spacecraft ever built by mankind.