Positive Aspects from Shuttle Program?

Yeah, there's a lot of talk these days about how terrible the space
shuttle is. While I can understand that view, I'm curious as what
positive aspects have come from the shuttle program. Has it advanced
specific technologies or knowledge of space flight? What lessons
(besides learning from Columbia and Challenger) has Nasa learned that
will help them advance spaceflight?

Brandons of mass destruction writes:

Yeah, there's a lot of talk these days about how terrible the space
shuttle is. While I can understand that view, I'm curious as what
positive aspects have come from the shuttle program. Has it advanced
specific technologies or knowledge of space flight? What lessons
(besides learning from Columbia and Challenger) has Nasa learned that
will help them advance spaceflight?

A short answer: *Everything* NASA has learned about manned spaceflight
in the last 20 years or so it has learned from the shuttle. And since
this means more than hundred flights with about one week each and about
6-7 crew members each, it's quite a lot.

But the key question is in how far the companies chosen to build the CEV
will have access to this knowledge and in how far they can apply it.


Jochem

--
"A designer knows he has arrived at perfection not when there is no
longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away."
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Brandons of mass destruction wrote:

Yeah, there's a lot of talk these days about how terrible the space
shuttle is. While I can understand that view, I'm curious as what
positive aspects have come from the shuttle program. Has it advanced
specific technologies or knowledge of space flight? What lessons
(besides learning from Columbia and Challenger) has Nasa learned that
will help them advance spaceflight?

Well, obviously NASA has learned a lot more about the challenges and
issues involved in making manned space flight safe and cost-effective.

And NASA has learned a lot more about doing EVAs for working,
retrieving, repairing, etc., than they knew before the Shuttle.


--
Steven D. Litvintchouk
Email:

Remove the NOSPAM before replying to me.

Brandons of mass destruction wrote:

What lessons
(besides learning from Columbia and Challenger) has Nasa learned that
will help them advance spaceflight?

We've learned a whole lot about the believability of NASA.

Paul

Brandons of mass destruction wrote:

Yeah, there's a lot of talk these days about how terrible the space
shuttle is. While I can understand that view, I'm curious as what
positive aspects have come from the shuttle program.


A LOT has come from the programme.

NASA has learned about the flaws of the Shuttle and in many cases has fixed
them, or would fix them if granted approval (budget) from Congress. This is
knowledge which could only have been acquired through real life experience of
the shuttle.

We won't go from Apollo to NCC 1701-D overnight. It will be a slow evolution.
And the Shuttle was definitely a big step ahead of Apollo.

Consider all of the experience of working in space that has been acquired. The
software to run the remote manipulator arm, all the tools that were developped
to allow astronauts wearing big suits to perform very precise work in space.
Not only on the ISS, but also on Hubble, a very valuable and fragile satellite
that has received much maintenance and upgrades to electronics in space.

NASA has also learned from the Shuttle's less than desirable designs as well,
for instance use of hypergolics for APU which causes maintenance headaches. It
has also learned about how vehicle age and what sort of maintenance is
required with time (for instance, wiring). NASA learned a LOT from the tile
system and developped thermal blankets that cover most of the top surface of
the orbiter now.

And if you look at Shuttle-Mir, NASA also learned to build a docking system to
allow the Shuttle to dock to another vehicle in space. (While you can say that
this was also done for Apollo-Soyuz, the shuttle implementation is more
sohpisticated, and for the ISS for instance, they have software and hadrware
to make it easier to perform the manual docking. NASA doesn't have automated
docking capability yet).


NASA also has very good knowledge on how this vehicle behaves for landing, and
probably has very realistic simulators to provide training to crews. When you
consider the about of training that goes on, the training infrastructure is
almost as important as the vehicle itself.

They also learned some lessons on how bad managemnent can lead to
disaster.

I hope they dont forget that!

"Bob Haller" wrote in message
oups.com...
They also learned some lessons on how bad managemnent can lead to
disaster.

I hope they dont forget that!

But they are and they will!

It seems that NASA "management" doesn't learn until things are obvious to
anyone who reads a newspaper headline.

It's common knowledge now that the problems that destroyed the two shuttles
were known by "management" but were swept under the carpet.

The BIG mistake was made by Ike back when he decided that the "space effort"
would be basically a civilian project. The basic nature of the task at
hands involves the types of risks that only military pilots and crew should
be expected to routinely accept.

That's doesn't mean than civilians could not have taken a few trips but it
does mean that the civilians and the public would have been well informed
that the risks were on the order of flying into fire bases in VN or driving
in a military convoy in Iraq. The loss of human life in the shuttle is as
nothing compared to the loss of live in the development of the STOL aircraft
the USMC was pushing (Osprey?).

John Doe wrote in :


We won't go from Apollo to NCC 1701-D overnight. It will be a slow
evolution.

I disagree. Every spaceflight done by people so far has been propelled
using primitive rockets. To get anywhere near "NCC-1701" craft will
require the discovery of some completely fundamentally new propulsion
technology. Using newer rockets doesnt do it.

So, not "slow evolution", but perhaps more like Goulds "punc eek".