Do you miss the Space Shuttle Program

[lobsterbark]

They were a massive waste of money, unsafe, and used for an unnecessarily long period of time, but they were big, and epic.

[Godot]

while I liked the shuttles, it seemed to have been clearly mismanagement that led to the 2 big desasters (well, definitely mismanagement in case of the challenger, where the decision was done to star despite the warnings about the effect the cold temperatures would have ... but arguably a mismanagement in the 2nd case as well with the decision to not inform the astronauts about the possible damage (to verify the damage and maybe then make an emergency plan).

So, considering the high probability that a third dangerous situation in the future would have handled the same way by the management, it probably is better that they stopped the program.

[(An Original Name)]

The shuttle probably did limit NASA's scope for manned space missions, but I would mostly attribute that to chronic funding problems brought on by a frankly idiotic Congress over the past 30-40 years. Politics has been a joke for a very long time, this especially being true in funding and space exploration, and I hope that Congress gets its head together over the next 10-20 years by eventually weeding out most of the obscenely greedy bigots that make up practically all of it by now... Back on topic, I loved the shuttle as a spacecraft, though the program itself could have been run quite alot better.

[simonh]

I was born in 1966 and still remember looking up at the moon as a 5 year old and thinking that there were people walking on it's surface at that very moment. I remember Skylab and the Apollo-Soyuz docking mission.

No, I don't miss the shuttle program. It killed any hope of the kind of space program kids like me dreamed about back in the 70s. We could have had a continuing lunar exploration program and a space station construction program based on Skylab for less than the cost of the shuttle. Even back in the late 70s I was reading articles about how thoroughly crippled the shuttle design was, and they were right.

Sure it was pretty, and the technology that went into it was impressive, but even as a child I clearly remember thinking that this thing was setting us back a generation at least. My generation.

Now I'm 46 and at last, at long last, SpaceX is developing the kind of rocket technology we need. At last there's a real prospect that within my lifetime the US might have a strong, affordable, technically sound space program.

Simon Hibbs

[EndOfTheEarth]

While it is fun watching private companies get into space, the SLS is absolutely useless in my opinion, as it would be easier for another private contractor to build one

Why is it useless? It will be able to get more up that the Falcon Heavy will, and more than the Delta-Heavy and Ariane-5 currently can.

[SargeRho]

...at several times the cost.

[bigdad84]

They should of allowed at least one Space Shuttle to remain in action, so we could at least say that we're a country that has a way to space, besides buying tickets from Russia

[Nibb31]

The cost of keeping one Shuttle active would be more or less the same as keeping the fleet. The bulk of the cost of the Shuttle program was the workforce. You have to pay the hundreds of highly skilled technicians and engineers, the administrative support personnel, the facilities, the equipment, the computers, the spare parts, etc... every year, whether you fly once with one Orbiter or 10 times with the whole fleet.

It is still much cheaper to hire a few seats on Soyuz than than to maintain one Shuttle. If they had maintained the Shuttle program, there would be no money to develop any new systems.

[EndOfTheEarth]

...at several times the cost.

If we're working purely by cost, Soyuz is still somewhere below $80M per launch while the unmanned version of SpaceX's dragon is currently upwards of $100M per launch, and this number is certain to go up with the manned version. New tech and spacious capsules mean high cost. Old tech and capsules the size of a phone booth mean low cost. If we follow that line of thought, we should have stuck to launching Saturn 1Bs; by now the price would be significantly lower.

[simonh]

If we follow that line of thought, we should have stuck to launching Saturn 1Bs; by now the price would be significantly lower.

Yes. Yes we should. By now we could probably have manned bases on the moon and a Skylab derived space station programme for less than the cost of the shuttle programme. The shuttle was a death sentence for manned space development beyond LEO.

Well, you would because I'm a Brit and thankfully not a single one of my tax dollars went towards the shuttle because I don't pay American taxes, and the taxes I do pay aren't in dollars anyway. But still....

Simon Hibbs

[PaperLemon]

Why is it useless? It will be able to get more up that the Falcon Heavy will, and more than the Delta-Heavy and Ariane-5 currently can.

I believe SpaceX has discussed plans for HLLVs larger than Falcon Heavy should a market for them open up. Given all the hype currently surrounding Mars and Elon's own passion for making flights to Mars a reality, I think it's likely that they've at least put it through an analysis and talked to their engineers about what kind of systems will need to be developed to make it happen.

I remember a mention in an article about a potential successor to FH that would use Merlin 2 engines and be capable of lifting around 120-140 mT, which is right in the ballpark of SLS's capabilities. Of course I'll be the first to admit that I'm biased in favor of SpaceX and I'm pretty skeptical of the defense and aerospace industry's ability to deliver SLS on time and within the original budget.

For what it's worth, neither vehicle exists anywhere but on paper in the present, so what will or won't happen is still up in the air and priorities change quickly when politics get involved.

[Canopus]

Imagine the Americans had just kept their saturn fleet in service. They could have used the Saturn 1 to get into LEO, modify the CM/SM by giving it a lighter heat shield and a smaller service module for LEO missions. The Saturn V would get a few different versions and upgrades for different tasks. But no they had to develop a completely useless shuttle.

[Nobody_1707]

Yes. Yes we should. By now we could probably have manned bases on the moon and a Skylab derived space station programme for less than the cost of the shuttle programme. The shuttle was a death sentence for manned space development beyond LEO.

Well, you would because I'm a Brit and thankfully not a single one of my tax dollars went towards the shuttle because I don't pay American taxes, and the taxes I do pay aren't in dollars anyway. But still....

Simon Hibbs

The decision to let Skylab fall was unforgivable. NASA as a whole has been a complete joke ever since, despite the heroic efforts by many engineers at the ground level of the agency to try and actually do useful work. The only thing keeping it from being the worst waste of taxpayer money is the fact that we spend a significant portion of the federal budget funding a Department of "Education" that spends no money actually educating people and, in fact, seems to only exist to artificially inflate the cost of education by keeping lending agencies unaccountable for bad student loans.

And yes, reusing our rockets developed for the Apollo program would have been cheaper, more efficient, and more effective than the Shuttle program. Mind you, the original plans for the Shuttle would have reused much of the Saturn rockets and actually had reasonable design goals and would have been usable for real operations and not just the busywork NASA actually ended up using them for.

Also, we didn't stop flying Titans until 2007, so I don't see why we would have had to use the Saturn 1 just to get into LEO. We could easily have used the much nicer Gemini capsule for that.

Edited April 26, 2013 by Nobody_1707

[Merinsan]

It looked so cool when it came in for landing.

Other than that, it was cancelled for very good reasons. It was meant to be more cost effective - it was more expensive (and that's being kind).

It also increased the danger to crews because of things like falling foam and need to maintain the shuttle.

[Nibb31]

The decision to let Skylab fall was unforgivable.

It wasn't a decision, it was an uncontrolled deorbit due to orbital decay. Skylab did not have any propulsion to boost itself, and NASA was in a gap with no manned spaceflight capability, like it is now. There were no Saturn rockets left, pads 39A and B were being converted for the Shuttle, and the Shuttle itself was late on schedule.

There was also no budget to develop an unmanned spacecraft to boost the station because at the time, it seemed stupid to spend money refitting old 60's technology in orbit, when they were designing this new Space Shuttle that could fly to orbit on a weekly basis and build a new larger station for a fraction of the cost.

The plan was that Skylab would stay aloft until the second or third Shuttle flight in 1982, but NASA underestimated the orbital decay factor and Skylab's reentry occured earlier than planned in 1979. The Shuttle was also late on schedule, so there was no way they could have saved Skylab.

And then there is another factor; Skylab and Shuttle didn't use the same air pressure, so they would have needed extra resources to design a specific airlock, like for ASTP. It wasn't in a great orbit for Shuttle operations and there was also a lot of outdated and broken equipment, and most of the consumables were empty and the tanks weren't all designed to be replenished.

Edited April 26, 2013 by Nibb31

[simonh]

Skylab itself was essentially a prototype. It probably would have been allowed to de-orbit anyway even in the absence of the shuttle programme, but keeping the Saturns around or developing a successor would have allowed the basic principles Skylab demonstrated to be used to put up successively better and more useful station modules.

As it stands NASA does do some very good work. Their robotic solar system exploration programmes are a huge success. I think for now this is where they should be devoting their resources. Even if we do eventually send people to Mars or beyond, we will need to use robotic missions to very thoroughly chart out their path and test the technologies such a mission would rely on.

[The Jedi Master]

It was THE way to get men into space. I'm not entirely sure if the ISS crew will be returning home...

[NASAFanboy]

It was THE way to get men into space. I'm not entirely sure if the ISS crew will be returning home...

We use Soyuz now. But the dreamchaser and manned dragon will be done in 4 years. The dreamchaser is.awesome.

[wolfedg]

We should have kept the Saturn IB and V in service. They were much safer and much more capable.

Edited April 26, 2013 by wolfedg

[Jokurr]

I don't miss the shuttles themselves, but I do miss having the capability of manned spaceflight and it's unfortunate that lack of planning and foresight (I blame this more on politicians than NASA) has led to the gap we are in.

[RuBisCO]

In nearly every way the space shuttle was inferior to its predecessor: the Saturn V. It was less safe with not escape tower, crew on the side rather then top of the highly flammable/explosive fuel/ox tanks, large solid fuel boosters. It could only haul a 1/5-1/6 of the cargo to orbit and could not bring cargo beyond LEO. Worse off either with or without development cost counted the Space Shuttle turned out to be TWICE as expensive per lbs to orbit as the Saturn V. Sure had the space shuttle worked as promised with 50 flights a year per shuttle and all, then its cost would have been low enough to make it worth it but as it turn out it did not fly much more per year then its predecessor and because it was a far more complex and costly machine ended up costing more. How the engineers and adminstators at the time could claimed such turn over and safety was possible with the shuttle was possible is amazing: it was either a bold face lie or pure unadulterated delusion, or most likely a combination of both. Richard Feynmann's comments post Challanger is all to clear on this: "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."

By the end of the Apollo program they had already made Apollo capsules that could have held 5 people, potential 6 (at the sacrifice of cargo) and studies to enlarge the capsule to hold even more. Saturn V could and did launch a space station, and just 5 of such launched could have assembled a station of weight equal to or greater then IST, compared to 50+ shuttle flights! There was even plans to make a skylab II by reusing a S-II stage of the Saturn V after depleting it of fuel to get to orbit to make a habitable 10 m in diameter gigantic space station that would have weighed over 100 tons and had the habitable volume of over 4-5 skylabs or 2 international space stations! There was much study into making downgraded Saturn V that would have skipped on the second stage, and reduced the number of engines on the first stage to 4 or 3 depending on engine upgrades and had a lift capacity of ~45 tons perfect for launching a Apollo command module plus +20 tons of cargo to orbit. Such a "Saturn IV/III" could have hauled modules to a spacestation just like the shuttle. In fact the only thing the Saturn V could not do was return large amounts of cargo from orbit, a capacity which was not needed much anyway, unmanned Apollo could have returned 1-3 tons of pressurized cargo but no unpressurised cargo. In exchange the Saturn V could (did) haul mission straight to the moon and could have thrown 45 tons to earth escape, potentially to Mars. Upgrades to the Saturn V F1 engine was already available by the end of the Apollo program that combined with extensions to each stage could have raised the life capacity from ~120 tons to 137, 145 and 160 tons to LEO or over 60 tons to Earth Escape. Even LEO capacities beyond 200 tons with solid fuel boosters attached were examined and optional all that was needed was the funding. Thus a whole family of rockets could have been built off the same assembly line with a range of capacities that could have fit different mission, many of which far beyond anything the space shuttle could have done. All that was needed was instead of wasting the money on developing and building the space shuttle, focusing it instead on keeping the Saturn V assembly alive and diversifying it functions plus continued manned exploration of the moon and beyond, for the same price!

So in short the space shuttle ruined us, it was the wrong decision to drop billions of dollars in infrastructure invested in the Saturn V to gamble it all on the space shuttle, we lost that bet, all of humanity in fact. The space shuttle convinced everyone that space travel for humans is too expensive and too unsafe, robotic missions have faired better but will ultimately lead to the obsolescence of humans in space and thus trapping humanity on earth forever until our eventual extinction. Because we did not build an initial foot hold in space for humanity over the last decades, we may never now. thus quite possible the Space Shuttle is the greatest failure for humanity EVER.

[Temstar]

Hindsight is 20/20, so some leeway should be given to the original decision to go for the shuttle. The unfortunate thing is after NASA decided to go for the shuttle and proved that spaceplane technology could work (per launch cost not withstanding) everyone and his mother caught onto the spaceplane fad and it resulted in a long string of dead ends for other space programs trying to imitate:

• Buran
  
• Hermes
  
• Tianjiao
  
• HOPE
  

In fact even in KSP, just hop on to the Spacecraft Exchange and have a look around at the ratio of spaceplanes to booster rockets. Spaceplanes are dime a dozen on there even though the majority achieves little other than getting their lone pilot to LKO and maybe dock with a station.

[RuBisCO]

Hindsight is 20/20, so some leeway should be given to the original decision to go for the shuttle.

No no no this is not a hindsight issue this a common sense issue: you don't drop BILLIONS of dollars of infrastructure to build it all over again just because on paper it will be better. That like having a working car but throwing it away, spending several years saving and buying a new car that ON PAPER is superior to the old one, in the mean time you throw away a perfectly good car and spent several years without one.

The unfortunate thing is after NASA decided to go for the shuttle and proved that spaceplane technology could work (per launch cost not withstanding) everyone and his mother caught onto the spaceplane fad and it resulted in a long string of dead ends for other space programs trying to imitate:

• Buran
  
• Hermes
  
• Tianjiao
  
• HOPE
  

The concept is not a bad idea, the problem is money: you need a hell of a lot to develop a true 2 or 1 stage to orbit fully reusable spaceplane, and it turned out no one was willing to fit the bill in the end, not even NASA which turned a cruelly awesome idea of a 2 stage duel fly back fuel H2/LOX fueled booster/orbiter into the monstrosity of a throwaway fuel tank and strap on solid rocket boosters. Venture Star was a great idea but yet again no one was willing to pay to make it work, and it would have had they been willing to get passed the teething of making reliable composite fuel tanks.

In fact even in KSP, just hop on to the Spacecraft Exchange and have a look around at the ratio of spaceplanes to booster rockets. Spaceplanes are dime a dozen on there even though the majority achieves little other than getting their lone pilot to LKO and maybe dock with a station.

Agree I got a huge SSTO ROCKET, NO JETS, NO WINGS, just straight up to orbit and back landing on landing gear with/without parachutes, that lifts ~20 tons to 100 km orbit, it works, can carry awkward loads, I named it the "Elon Musk Express"

Edited May 10, 2013 by RuBisCO

[m1919]

Not really going to miss the Shuttle program. Like others in the thread have already expressed, I think it held us back. Perhaps we'd be better off if we'd stuck with Saturn V and derivations of it evolved and streamlined for lower production costs. There were multiple intermediate designs like the INT-20 and INT-21 that would have been quite versatile and probably more cost effective than the Shuttle ended up being.

[Fel]

While we're talking about the Saturn V...

Isn't the "Merlin Engine" just knocking off the F-1 Engine? And Space-X is all gloaty about using modern fabrication processes to get a few more ISPs than decades old technology.

So NASA basically is paying a company to make (and screw up) "stylized Saturn Rockets" all because we made an exceptionally cool piece of technology that had only a few practical applications.

Meh, it was exceptionally cool but... I wonder if we would be having more interplanetary missions without it. (Which are cooler)