could a retired shuttle be reflown?

lets imagine some deerp pockets $$$$ deciding to make a shuttle space
worthy again;0

would it be possible? has nasa sent all the tooling to a scrap yard or
put it in storage?

i know its not going to happen but a discussion on this would be far
better than this board being dominated with spam.......

bob haller wrote:
lets imagine some deerp pockets $$$$ deciding to make a shuttle space
worthy again;0

would it be possible? has nasa sent all the tooling to a scrap yard or
put it in storage?

i know its not going to happen but a discussion on this would be far
better than this board being dominated with spam.......

Why in the world would you want them to fly again since you were such a
foreteller of doom and gloom when they did fly. I thought you'd be happy
now that they've quit.

OK humouring him..
Tanks, I don't know what happened to the tooling but the infrastructure for
the construction and shipping is gone as are the bits and pieces in the VAB
and the support for Shuttles on the pad I imagine by now.
So its not just the main vehicles its the rest of the system. I imagine
that will be the issue. Smaller components can be made I'm sure, but a lot
of the innards of Shuttles are being taken to bits to learn about wear and
tear, so I'd be very dubious unless you wanted to start afresh.

Brian

--
Brian Gaff....Note, this account does not accept Bcc: email.
graphics are great, but the blind can't hear them
Email:
__________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ __________


"Barbara Needham" wrote in message
...
bob haller wrote:
lets imagine some deerp pockets $$$$ deciding to make a shuttle space
worthy again;0

would it be possible? has nasa sent all the tooling to a scrap yard or
put it in storage?

i know its not going to happen but a discussion on this would be far
better than this board being dominated with spam.......

Why in the world would you want them to fly again since you were such a
foreteller of doom and gloom when they did fly. I thought you'd be happy
now that they've quit.

In article 30543542-0b9c-40d9-bc37-1bb9674abb71
@z8g2000yql.googlegroups.com, says...

lets imagine some deerp pockets $$$$ deciding to make a shuttle space
worthy again;0

would it be possible? has nasa sent all the tooling to a scrap yard or
put it in storage?

i know its not going to happen but a discussion on this would be far
better than this board being dominated with spam.......

The idea of continuing shuttle operations was examined in great detail.
Not possible, largely because there was no interest and because NASA has
been converting ground facilities for use with its new heavy lift
launcher.

Sorry Bob, but you can't unring this bell.

Jeff
--
"the perennial claim that hypersonic airbreathing propulsion would
magically make space launch cheaper is nonsense -- LOX is much cheaper
than advanced airbreathing engines, and so are the tanks to put it in
and the extra thrust to carry it." - Henry Spencer

On Wed, 3 Oct 2012 14:22:37 -0400, Jeff Findley
wrote:

The idea of continuing shuttle operations was examined in great detail.
Not possible, largely because there was no interest and because NASA has
been converting ground facilities for use with its new heavy lift
launcher.

Sorry Bob, but you can't unring this bell.

Well, not quite. Most of the infrastructure is still there and still
relatively easily brought back for Shuttle service, were some bizarre
chain of events initiated that the Shuttles were needed to be
reactivated. Only one of the two VAB High Bays (that were used by
Shuttle) is being overhauled for SLS, the other is sitting idle,
pending "21st Century Spaceport" decisions. There were three Shuttle
MLPs, and they're all still intact (SLS uses the new one built for
Ares I.) LC-39A is still intact with its RSS. The SRB plant is sitting
idle, awaiting Five Segment SRB production, and NASA would probably
simply use the FSB instead of the old one (that's what FSB was
originally designed for, after all.) The SSMEs are in storage pending
use by SLS. The ET plant is preparing to build SLS cores of the same
diameter, so it isn't irreverisbly changed.

It would be much more expensive and take more time than putting Orion
on Atlas 5, and funding CST-100, DragonRider and DreamChaser combined
through to flight, but there have been no irreverisble actions that
money couldn't put Atlantis or Discovery (most likely) back in orbit
in two or three years (Endeavour gave up her MPS to SLS-1.)

Brian

On Oct 3, 8:05*pm, Brian Thorn wrote:

Well, not quite. Most of the infrastructure is still there and still
relatively easily brought back for Shuttle service,


No, it isn't. It is being gutted.

In article 41da502a-af03-428c-a8ee-
,
says...

On Oct 3, 8:05*pm, Brian Thorn wrote:

Well, not quite. Most of the infrastructure is still there and still
relatively easily brought back for Shuttle service,


No, it isn't. It is being gutted.

Brian has the details right, at the engineering level. But, the
political and economic gutting overshadows the idle infrastructure that
has not yet been gutted. It is vanishingly unlikely that the shuttle
will ever fly again.

Jeff
--
"the perennial claim that hypersonic airbreathing propulsion would
magically make space launch cheaper is nonsense -- LOX is much cheaper
than advanced airbreathing engines, and so are the tanks to put it in
and the extra thrust to carry it." - Henry Spencer

On Oct 4, 8:44*am, Jeff Findley wrote:
In article 41da502a-af03-428c-a8ee-
,
says...



On Oct 3, 8:05*pm, Brian Thorn wrote:

Well, not quite. Most of the infrastructure is still there and still
relatively easily brought back for Shuttle service,

No, it isn't. *It is being gutted.

Brian has the details right, at the engineering level.

No, he is wrong

In article , bthorn64
@suddenlink.net says...

On Wed, 3 Oct 2012 14:22:37 -0400, Jeff Findley
wrote:

The idea of continuing shuttle operations was examined in great detail.
Not possible, largely because there was no interest and because NASA has
been converting ground facilities for use with its new heavy lift
launcher.

Sorry Bob, but you can't unring this bell.

Well, not quite. Most of the infrastructure is still there and still
relatively easily brought back for Shuttle service, were some bizarre
chain of events initiated that the Shuttles were needed to be
reactivated. Only one of the two VAB High Bays (that were used by
Shuttle) is being overhauled for SLS, the other is sitting idle,
pending "21st Century Spaceport" decisions. There were three Shuttle
MLPs, and they're all still intact (SLS uses the new one built for
Ares I.) LC-39A is still intact with its RSS. The SRB plant is sitting
idle, awaiting Five Segment SRB production, and NASA would probably
simply use the FSB instead of the old one (that's what FSB was
originally designed for, after all.) The SSMEs are in storage pending
use by SLS. The ET plant is preparing to build SLS cores of the same
diameter, so it isn't irreverisbly changed.

It would be much more expensive and take more time than putting Orion
on Atlas 5, and funding CST-100, DragonRider and DreamChaser combined
through to flight, but there have been no irreverisble actions that
money couldn't put Atlantis or Discovery (most likely) back in orbit
in two or three years (Endeavour gave up her MPS to SLS-1.)

In other words, commercial alternatives are currently being developed at
a fraction of the cost it would take to reverse course and bring back
shuttle flights. Don't forget to add to that the continuing Orion
program. I don't see how any sane person would ever want to bring the
shuttle program back from the dead, especially in this era of growing
debt and tight budgets.

We're in the same situation we were in after Saturn V production was
stopped and the last Saturn V put Skylab into orbit. Yes much of the
infrastructure was still in place for Saturn V. Yes it was still
theoretically possible to restart production. On top of that, surely
there were still some people within NASA that still held out hope that
this would happen since the shuttle would never be the HLV that Saturn V
was. But, the ugly reality of politics and economics dictated
otherwise.

On top of that, proposal after proposal was made for a cargo version of
the shuttle (e.g. Shuttle-C and the like). That never materialized in
parallel with the shuttle. The costs were deemed too high, even when
the designs shared much in common with the shuttle.

Now that NASA has been traveling down the road of a shuttle derived HLV
for some years now, it seems equally unlikely that the shuttle will ever
fly again. The facilities could theoretically handle both programs at
the same time, but NASA simply cannot afford the cost of two, huge,
parallel programs. They would have even less in common than Shuttle-C
and the shuttle, so they would cost far more than even that failed
combination.

Jeff
--
"the perennial claim that hypersonic airbreathing propulsion would
magically make space launch cheaper is nonsense -- LOX is much cheaper
than advanced airbreathing engines, and so are the tanks to put it in
and the extra thrust to carry it." - Henry Spencer