Jeff Findley wrote:

In article ,
says...

On Saturday, January 28, 2017 at 5:39:54 PM UTC-6, Stuf4 wrote:
My original speculation in this thread about how the shuttle
might have been used in brewing up any kind of attack plan
was referring only to the planners. It was their job to
dream up crazy things.


As it was, the only shuttles that were disintegrated happened
as a result of lack of care, rather than anything intentional.

Correct, they were management failures, not technological failures.

To be fair, middle level shuttle managers were put in a bad spot by the
higher ups. They had to manage what amounted to an experimental program
and pretend it was an "operational" program after five test flights.
The higher ups put a huge amount of pressure on middle management to
increase the flight rate. This created the management culture of "if
we're going to ground it, you have to prove to me it will fail", which
doomed the Challenger crew.

Middle managers were also forced to do this with a budget which was
smaller than it should have been. An example of this was right before
Challenger there was a distinct lack of spare parts. They were pulling
parts from recently returned orbiters so they could be installed on
another orbiter which was being prepared to fly. Imagine if you had two
cars and had to pull the cylinder head from one and install it on the
other when you wanted to use it. Insane, right?

To begin with, the SRBs ought to have been replaced with reusable liquid
boosters, but that would have been *quite* expensive to develop (which
is why SLS is still using solids). Other improvements, like non-toxic
OMS/RCS propellants and replacing the APUs and hydraulics with
electrically operated actuators would have improved the turn-around time
and reduced the risks to ground crews.

Unfortunately, SLS/Orion seems to have given up on reuse which creates a
vicious cycle of low flight rates and high launch costs. The very low
flight rate is bad for safety for a variety of reasons. Imagine a job
where every task you perform has to be done perfectly, but you only do
each task every other year, so you are assigned hundreds of tasks to
perform for each mission. You'd have little chance to get better at
your tasks, since by the time you have to repeat a task, you will have
forgotten most of what you learned from doing it the last time.


There are times when I think Usenet needs a 'Like' button...


--
"Adrenaline is like exercise, but without the excessive gym fees."
-- Professor Walsh, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"