What if the Space Shuttle Program had done its job?

[Albert VDS]

The military did require that the space shuttle could change it's landing location, to fulfill this requirement they needed to have big enough wings to make those maneuvers.

It wasn't a requirement of having wings, but having bigger wings. It was always meant to be a glider. The military didn't make them use tiles.

Umm... it's not quite so simple as that. People seem to forget that Morton Thiokol had been telling NASA for years that the O-ring was safe. (Despite ongoing problems caused by joint rotation which arose from a faulty joint design. O-ring failure was a symptom, not the cause.) NASA was understandably confused when they changed their tune and recommended against launching - but couldn't actually provide a rationale for the change.

They told them the O-ring was safe, because it was albeit in normal launching conditions. It wasn't tested for the low temperatures, like on that launch day. They only went ahead with the launch because they couldn't prove that the O-ring would be unsafe in those conditions.

Edited August 11, 2013 by Albert VDS

[metaphor]

The Shuttle was an inefficient design, partly because it had so many requirements it had to fulfill. In the 70s, they didn't have the computers and automated technology we have now, so launching both astronauts and cargo on the same flight sounded like a good idea. But nowadays, it's not needed. The Shuttle couldn't even land without manual control like the Buran.

The Shuttle was basically using a 105-ton capable lift system to launch an 80-ton orbiter and 25 tons of cargo. Then it was returning that 80-ton orbiter to the ground.

A much more efficient way to do it would be to separate the crew and cargo flights. A crewed spacecraft capable of carrying 7 astronauts for 20 days in low Earth orbit with an airlock would only weigh maybe 20 tons (like a bigger version of the crewed Dragon). So the crewed spacecraft could be launched on a much smaller rocket. A reusable cargo version, which also has the important downmass capability of the Shuttle, could be launched with the same 105-ton launch system, but without the crew cabin it could probably carry 50 tons of cargo into orbit on a flight. And most importantly, it would not have to be human-rated, which significantly increases complexity and cost. And if the downmass capability was not required, it could launch 100 tons of payload into orbit. With that capability the ISS could have been flown up in just 5 flights (instead of the 26 Shuttle flights and 70 Progress flights it required). If the astronauts were required in-orbit to assemble parts (it would need a lot less assembly if flown up in fewer parts), the crewed capsule could be launched separately and dock with the cargo.

[Motokid600]

Can someone tell me if NASA subbed out the dive team that recovered the SRB's from the ocean? If so then I imagine that had to make for a huge dent in NASA's wallet. Offshore recovery is one of the most cost demanding operations out there. Not to mention..how long do these boosters sit in that salt water before there pulled out? Going through and cleaning those things again can't help the financial situation. Then on top of that those SRBs have to be repacked with solid fuel which is very dangerous. They should've been doing what spaceX has been working on. Not to that extent maybe, but atleast have the SRB's land on the ground. All in all the shuttle did its job, but I think we can all say it could've been done better.

[DerekL1963]

A much more efficient way to do it would be to separate the crew and cargo flights.

Well, not really. Doing it that way doubles the programmatic risk because you now have twice as many launches. It also considerably increases the cost because you have twice as many launches and two different launchers. (Remember the Shuttle only costs about $150-200 million to launch.*) It also has major impacts on payload design, mostly increasing dead weight because they now how to provide their own maneuvering, support, and control systems. It impacts scheduling because now you have to have two launches salvoed in close order so as to deliver the assembly crew to the payload. Etc... etc... TANSTAAFL.

With that capability the ISS could have been flown up in just 5 flights (instead of the 26 Shuttle flights and 70 Progress flights it required).

Well, no. You're comparing apples-to-oranges here... A notional Shuttle type/derived launcher without downmass capacity won't put 100 tons into ISS orbit - more like 35 to 45. The ISS is in a high inclination orbit, which eats heavily into your cargo capacity.

* That's the cost to add a flight to the manifest.

[AlamoVampire]

No, we could not have reasonably launched a rescue mission - there was no Shuttle even close to ready. Nor could it have gone to ISS.

actually, yes we could have. not the shuttle, you are right about that, the next one up was still in the VAB I think, but, the Soyuz takes considerably less time to prepare and Columbia had enough supplies on hand to hang out while they got it ready. Keep in mind, at this point we already had the ISS up there and Soyuz/Shuttle were dock compatible IIRC.

Umm... it's not quite so simple as that. People seem to forget that Morton Thiokol had been telling NASA for years that the O-ring was safe. (Despite ongoing problems caused by joint rotation which arose from a faulty joint design. O-ring failure was a symptom, not the cause.) NASA was understandably confused when they changed their tune and recommended against launching - but couldn't actually provide a rationale for the change.

The few days that lead up to the disaster, Morton Thiokol were screaming at NASA that it was way way too cold to launch, and that cold caused the failure in the O-Ring, which was the problem as it was the O-Rings failure that provided the SRB enough lateral thrust to snap the docking points of the SRB - External Tank and force the SRB to nose over into the Tank, which ruptured it and sent the fuels into the exhaust causing that god awful explosion. Yes, it was a symptom of a larger issue, but that day, the O-Ring WAS the leading cause. That and a perception that they had to do anything after so many scrubs to get that mission into space.

Edited August 11, 2013 by AlamoVampire

[Van Disaster]

There's some video of SRB recovery on youtube somewhere, they have the ships out waiting for them to splash. NASA had ( have?) a couple of ships, I don't know if they own & run or subcontract the actual operation though.

[AlamoVampire]

thats a good question. I know that when launches went to plan, the SRB's splashed down like 6-8 minutes post launch and were taken ashore by 2 ships, but the day of the disaster NASA had no choice but to abort the SRB's. Footage of which was only recently declassified in the last few years.

[Thaniel]

Well, they (NASA) could have made a single-use cargo canister/vehicle with flight computer, docking ring, RCS and OMS engines. That part could possibly be housed in a returnable and reusable part that could be dropped, while the rest of the cargo canister with doors and such could be made intended for docking/dismantling into usable pieces for assembling a station. That way, all they'd need would be inflating an inner shell inside it to get a pressurised hull, or tank, or use parts from several to put together larger structures.

And if the cargo lofted on a mission where to go into orbits it could not reach a favorable orbit from, well, atleast the valuable parts could be salvaged.

Humanoid beings launched separately ofcourse.

[Drunkrobot]

I know I'm delving into sci-fi here, but in the Mars Trilogy, the vehicle that takes the first 100 colonists to Mars is constructed in orbit, Mainly from Space Shuttle external fuel tanks. This would've required an up scaled Shuttle program.

[Diche Bach]

Its a very interesting question. I was in High School when the shuttle was just getting going. Certainly no expert on it. But if I reflect on my memories of the rhetoric at that time, and what has ultimately come of it . . . I think the opinion I'd arrive at if I had to arrive at one is that the shuttle must have been a failure or perhaps a nominal success at best. I suspect that is too harsh a conclusion, simply because they probably learned a great deal about space travel from all those years of it, and it certainly seems to have accomplished most of its missions. However, I can't shake the naïve 'non-expert' sense that, "Yes, it did not do its job. After all, it had those two disasters, and now they've just discontinued it and its successor doesn't seem to be using it as a foundation. In sum, it didn't work right, even though they kept trying for a long time, so they've finally gone back to the drawing board." Those ideas might be oversimplifications. But in order to realize that, one likely needs to be an insider to the Astronautics and Space Flight fields, so it shouldn't be surprising if a lot of people think like that.

My recollection of what this thing was supposed to be was to revolutionize space travel and make it commonplace, easy, quick, efficient and mundane. It obviously did not achieve that. I don't specifically recall 'safe' as an expectation that was put into my head by the rhetoric during the shuttle's early days, but certainly the other standards would largely depend on safe. It seems to me that two catastrophic failures and the death of what? 15 people? Two catastrophic failures out of 135 missions, that is an averaged failure rate of 1.48% over less than 500 flights.

That seems to be substantially higher than the rate of accidents for specific commercial airliner vehicles per millions of flights.

If anything, it seems like Soyuz and/or whatever system the Soviets then Russians chose to adopt has proven to be more impactful, revolutionary and instrumental in making space travel cheap, easy and commonplace (although I seem to recall that their space program has a rather high rate of catastrophic failures overall?).

NASA clearly did wonders with Apollo, but what came after seems to have been a bit less clear. I can tell you this, and I suspect some of the other older guys in this forum will concur; if you were a teen or juvenile in the late 1970s and 1980s, you probably expected that one day you would get to visit the small town-sized, and populated space station that we were being led to believe was just a matter of time.

Edited August 11, 2013 by Diche Bach

[Albert VDS]

Well, not really. Doing it that way doubles the programmatic risk because you now have twice as many launches. It also considerably increases the cost because you have twice as many launches and two different launchers. (Remember the Shuttle only costs about $150-200 million to launch.*) It also has major impacts on payload design, mostly increasing dead weight because they now how to provide their own maneuvering, support, and control systems. It impacts scheduling because now you have to have two launches salvoed in close order so as to deliver the assembly crew to the payload. Etc... etc... TANSTAAFL.

NASA estimated it at $ 450 million. But if you divide the total project cost with the number of launches, then you'll get $ 1.3 billion per flight.

Well, no. You're comparing apples-to-oranges here... A notional Shuttle type/derived launcher without downmass capacity won't put 100 tons into ISS orbit - more like 35 to 45. The ISS is in a high inclination orbit, which eats heavily into your cargo capacity.

* That's the cost to add a flight to the manifest.

90,000 kg which you return to earth + 25,000 kg of payload, subtract engines and maneuvering from that number and you'll have a big payload capacity.

Now let's say the engines and maneuvering would cost 25,000 kg(just make it simple), that's still 90,000 kg.

The weight of the ISS is 450,000 kg, that's 5 launches.

Now if it could only lift 45,000 kg, like you said, then it would need 10 launches.

[Valley]

I assume you mean its job of being cheaper (which it was not) to allow more missions into space? To be honest, I don't think much would have changed. What with the changes every four or eight years of our head of state, NASA being controlled by a government more worried about money and being reelected, and such...no, I doubt we would have seen much more than what we have right now on the plate.

[DerekL1963]

actually, yes we could have. not the shuttle, you are right about that, the next one up was still in the VAB I think, but, the Soyuz takes considerably less time to prepare and Columbia had enough supplies on hand to hang out while they got it ready. Keep in mind, at this point we already had the ISS up there and Soyuz/Shuttle were dock compatible IIRC.

Let's add up the ways your wrong...

- Soyuz can't reach the orbit the Columbia was in without dropping spent stages on China. (That's why ISS is in the insane high inclination orbit it's in.) The crew would be long dead before China let *that* happen.

- Columbia didn't carry a docking module.

- Soyuz can only carry one passenger... and they're built pretty much on demand. The crew would be long dead before a seventh Soyuz could arrive.

[B787_300]

- Soyuz can only carry one passenger

uuuuummm what are you on bro, Soyuz can carry 3 total, and they can send it up unmanned see Progress, so that would be 3 launches and the better way would be the shuttle launched with 2, to pick up..., now that does leave one person, but they COULD be picked up with a soyuz

[Sandworm]

It's job? Or do you mean its public purpose?

Shuttle was a very large program, filled with political and defense wrangling that affected design decisions (ie choosing SRBs over liquid boosters). Shuttle also allowed a great many engineers to remain "in the fold", trained and available for military programs with and without shuttle. So part of the program's job was to satisfy those aspects, which it did. Shuttle was meant to encourage science, as best exemplified by the teacher in space program. Again, mission accomplished.

The fact that shuttle did not live up to the "spaceplane" ideal doesn't mean that the program didn't do exactly what it was meant to do.

What is the goal of the next craft? Is it a return to the Moon? Or is it, like shuttle, a large program that will adapt to whatever purpose is needed at the time.

[King Arthur]

What is the goal of the next craft? Is it a return to the Moon? Or is it, like shuttle, a large program that will adapt to whatever purpose is needed at the time.

Unfortunately, absolutely nobody has a single clue what we're even developing SLS for at the moment. The goal keeps jumping back and forth between LEO, Mars, Moon, or an asteroid, and there doesn't appear to be a definitive "Kennedy moment" coming any time soon where we firmly decide on something and stick to it.

Pardon the offtopic, but I felt the question needed answering as it's a legitimately very important question that those of us here who are Americans should be asking ourselves.

[DerekL1963]

uuuuummm what are you on bro, Soyuz can carry 3 total, and they can send it up unmanned see Progress

Where do you get this stuff?

Let's count the ways you're wrong:

- Soyuz has three seats, but requires two (trained) crew. You do the math on how many passenger seats that leaves available per Soyuz flight.

- Soyuz isn't Progress, any more than Progress is Soyuz. Soyuz has no ability to fly unmanned.

[Mr Shifty]

Where do you get this stuff?

Let's count the ways you're wrong:

- Soyuz has three seats, but requires two (trained) crew. You do the math on how many passenger seats that leaves available per Soyuz flight.

- Soyuz isn't Progress, any more than Progress is Soyuz. Soyuz has no ability to fly unmanned.

There has perhaps been some confusion because the Soyuz rocket is used to launch Progress (and other) space vessels. While it's the Soyuz spacecraft that is incapable of autonomous flight.

[Kryten]

There has perhaps been some confusion because the Soyuz rocket is used to launch Progress (and other) space vessels. While it's the Soyuz spacecraft that is incapable of autonomous flight.

Soyuz has flown uncrewed a number of times, the last time TM-1 in '86. I can't find anything that explicitly says current-gen Soyuz has or doesn't have the capability, but the level of automation in current flights suggests it does.

Edit: it's even flown the kind of launch uncrewed/land uncrewed emergency mission b787 was implying (Soyuz 34), admittedly with much laxer time constraints.

Edited August 13, 2013 by Kryten

[B787_300]

thank you Kryten, beat me to it. Also the Soyuz TMA (current Soyuz) is much better than the old soyuz that did that particular mission (btw, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_34) so it is even better and thus could do it faster.

On a side note Progress is a soyuz capsule that has had its heat shield removed along with the separation device, so if Progress can do it unmanned, so can Soyuz, ostensibly and from an engineering standpoint.

[jwenting]

no, because the increased weight from the stuff removed from the Soyus craft to turn it into a Progress cargo container can impose limits to what it can do.

[DerekL1963]

thank you Kryten, beat me to it. Also the Soyuz TMA (current Soyuz) is much better than the old soyuz that did that particular mission (btw, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_34) so it is even better and thus could do it faster.

He didn't beat you to anything - because neither of you have shown the current version is capable of flying unmanned. And even if it were, there simply aren't laying around to conduct a rescue. And even if there were, Columbia didn't have a docking system. (Nor did Columbia have enough EVA suits.)

On a side note Progress is a soyuz capsule that has had its heat shield removed along with the separation device, so if Progress can do it unmanned, so can Soyuz, ostensibly and from an engineering standpoint.

On a side note, yes. At an elementary school level, a Progress is a Soyuz capsule without a heatshield. In reality, the two are *very* different. That one can do it unmanned says nothing about the ability of the other to do it.

Give it up.

[Kryten]

My point is it effectively does fly uncrewed. The input from crew is routine flight is minimal. They're effectively cargo, not pilots.

[Albert VDS]

Why not put all the "Yes, they could save them by.." and "No, they couldn't because..." aside and focus on the actual problem.

Let's say they found out that they couldn't land. Now the choices NASA has is to somehow fix the Space Shuttle or send up a rescue mission.

Well there is a third option, leave them in space, but thats not a very popular thing to do.

[jwenting]

well, that's of course always the case. Had an Apollo capsule developed a flaw that made it impossible to reenter safely, they'd have had the same 3 options.

In fact they came very close with Apollo 13 and I think at least once more of having to make the decision to either abandon or send up a rescue mission (it was considered more than plausible that Apollo 13 would burn up during reentry).