For Me, Shuttle Comes Full Circle

Well almost. I remember when I was a high school kid in
Shreveport, LA. On one sunny day after the first shuttle
mission, the shuttle Columbia landed at Barksdale AFB near
Bossier City, LA. All the kids in my high school were lead out
to watch it circle and land. I remember I had seen nothing so
white in all my life. Now sitting here in Oakland, CA, we're
making a big deal of the space shuttle Endeavor on it's farewell
tour as it makes it's way to a museum in LA. It's flying over
the Bay Area slowly so everyone can get a peek. I'm watching it
on TV this time though. So I guess it comes full circle for me.

BTW. Now that I look back on it with adult eyes, I can
see a few things. To me the shuttle was majestic back when I was
in high school. Now that I think of the shuttle, it seems it was
a huge waste of money. Just to say that we were able to glide
back to Earth rather than use more economic rockets and modules
to do the tasks. The shuttle was mainly built to show up the
Russians. They have old looking capsules that they don't glide
back with a pilot. During the shuttle program 14 astronauts have
died in preventable accidents. During that time, not one Russian
space capsule has crashed or caused the death of a single
Russian astronaut. Not one Russian death since 1971. To top it
all off, we now have to rely on those old-style Russian capsules
to get US astronauts in space.

Imagine where we would be if we had stuck with what worked
well instead of trying to show everyone else up. We lost years
of space exploration due to accidents when they knew it wasn't
safe. But hey, "We can fly ours back and the Russians can't!"

John

For a 1970's project the STS sure was ambitious. I remember NASA had
many problems with development that led to delays that amounted to
a launch that was many years behind schedule.
Wasn't the Shuttle supposed to dock with Skylab? That just shows how
delayed it was. And delay equals money. Even when launching at a
regular schedule the costs were far in excess of the
designer's estimates.
It's always tempting to look back and wonder what they would have
done differently had they known what was going to transpire. Myself
these days I just say 'what happened, happened'.


--
T

Actually, the Shuttle was only a problem because they put cargo and people
in one lump. It would with hindsight, which of course is a wonderful thing,
have been better to have made some kind of automated system for the cargo up
and back and sent people on a different vehicle.
I still think that gliding back is a perfectly viable thing to do. Whatever
you use the energy used at launch has to be dissipated or used. It would be
real cool (pun intended) if the re entry energy could be harvested for some
useful work, but storage of energy is a very inefficient thing at this time
in our history, as expending it and wasting it have been the way we have
always operated, due to abundant natural resources in the past. We need to
rethink it a bit.

Yes people died who should not have done, and it is very regrettable, but I
don't think they were in any doubt of the risks. The failings were not
actually in the engineering but in the ignoring of warnings about flaws
already known about which were fixable. This unfortunately is part of the
learning curve and to some extent, down to human nature as well. The old it
worked last time it will go on working thing.


Brian

--
From the Sofa of Brian Gaff Reply address is active
"John Slade" wrote in message
...
Well almost. I remember when I was a high school kid in Shreveport,
LA. On one sunny day after the first shuttle mission, the shuttle Columbia
landed at Barksdale AFB near Bossier City, LA. All the kids in my high
school were lead out to watch it circle and land. I remember I had seen
nothing so white in all my life. Now sitting here in Oakland, CA, we're
making a big deal of the space shuttle Endeavor on it's farewell tour as
it makes it's way to a museum in LA. It's flying over the Bay Area slowly
so everyone can get a peek. I'm watching it on TV this time though. So I
guess it comes full circle for me.

BTW. Now that I look back on it with adult eyes, I can see a few
things. To me the shuttle was majestic back when I was in high school. Now
that I think of the shuttle, it seems it was a huge waste of money. Just
to say that we were able to glide back to Earth rather than use more
economic rockets and modules to do the tasks. The shuttle was mainly built
to show up the Russians. They have old looking capsules that they don't
glide back with a pilot. During the shuttle program 14 astronauts have
died in preventable accidents. During that time, not one Russian space
capsule has crashed or caused the death of a single Russian astronaut. Not
one Russian death since 1971. To top it all off, we now have to rely on
those old-style Russian capsules to get US astronauts in space.

Imagine where we would be if we had stuck with what worked well
instead of trying to show everyone else up. We lost years of space
exploration due to accidents when they knew it wasn't safe. But hey, "We
can fly ours back and the Russians can't!"

John

On Sat, 22 Sep 2012 10:34:17 +0500, Hg wrote:

For a 1970's project the STS sure was ambitious. I remember NASA had
many problems with development that led to delays that amounted to
a launch that was many years behind schedule

Not many, 2 1/2.

When it got the go ahead in 1972, Shuttle's first launch was targeted
for November, 1978. STS-1 actually launched on April 12, 1981.

That's less behind schedule than the Airbus A400M, A380, Lockheed
F-22, F-35, and Boeing 787.

Wasn't the Shuttle supposed to dock with Skylab?

Not dock, but rendezvous and send the TRS robot over to dock with and
reboost it. But that was planned for circa 1980-81. At the time SkyLab
(launched 1973) was expected to remain in orbit in for ten years. It
actually deorbited in 1979 due to greater than expected atmosphere
expansion during that solar maximum. The Shuttle TRS mission kept
moving up in the schedule as SkyLab's orbital life contracted and
Shuttle's first flight slipped, until they finally passed each other
going in opposite directions.

Brian

In article , says...

Well almost. I remember when I was a high school kid in
Shreveport, LA. On one sunny day after the first shuttle
mission, the shuttle Columbia landed at Barksdale AFB near
Bossier City, LA. All the kids in my high school were lead out
to watch it circle and land. I remember I had seen nothing so
white in all my life. Now sitting here in Oakland, CA, we're
making a big deal of the space shuttle Endeavor on it's farewell
tour as it makes it's way to a museum in LA. It's flying over
the Bay Area slowly so everyone can get a peek. I'm watching it
on TV this time though. So I guess it comes full circle for me.

BTW. Now that I look back on it with adult eyes, I can
see a few things. To me the shuttle was majestic back when I was
in high school. Now that I think of the shuttle, it seems it was
a huge waste of money. Just to say that we were able to glide
back to Earth rather than use more economic rockets and modules
to do the tasks. The shuttle was mainly built to show up the
Russians.

The origins and motivations behind the space shuttle are much more
complicated than "mainly built to show up the Russians". Besides,
Apollo/Saturn was meant to show up the Russians.

The space shuttle was originally intended to be a cheaper alternative to
the expensive Apollo/Saturn method of getting into space.
Unfortunately, it morphed into something far larger and far less
reusable than originally intended and the motivation to build and fly it
also morphed as well, even though NASA continued to "sell" it as the one
true way forward, despite the mounting evidence to the contrary.

Eventually, the Challenger disaster gave D.O.D. the excuse it needed to
pull out of the shuttle program and restart the Titan program (i.e.
Titan IV). Even though Titan IV wasn't cheap, it was completely under
*their* control and could fly out of Vandenberg far easier than the
shuttle could.

They have old looking capsules that they don't glide
back with a pilot. During the shuttle program 14 astronauts have
died in preventable accidents. During that time, not one Russian
space capsule has crashed or caused the death of a single
Russian astronaut. Not one Russian death since 1971. To top it
all off, we now have to rely on those old-style Russian capsules
to get US astronauts in space.

Imagine where we would be if we had stuck with what worked
well instead of trying to show everyone else up. We lost years
of space exploration due to accidents when they knew it wasn't
safe. But hey, "We can fly ours back and the Russians can't!"

Unfortunately, the political will wasn't there in the mid to late 60's
to continue the "cost is no object" space program which was intended to
show up the Russians. The beginning of the shuttle program (design and
development) clearly followed the end of what Henry Spencer called the
"waste anything but time" mantra that drove Apollo/Saturn.

One need only look at a chart of NASA funding to spot the end of that
era. Funding dropped considerably once Apollo/Saturn V development was
coming to an end. It's interesting to note that the budget cuts were
happening well before the first successful lunar landing.

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

In article , says...

For a 1970's project the STS sure was ambitious. I remember NASA had
many problems with development that led to delays that amounted to
a launch that was many years behind schedule.
Wasn't the Shuttle supposed to dock with Skylab?

Yes, but to be fair, Skylab also fell victim to increased solar activity
(i.e. solar maximum). That and the Skylab Rescue Mission was done on a
shoestring budget to begin with. I'm sure it was stuck on an early
shuttle test mission because the shuttle was going to fly anyway, not
because NASA had money to fully fund the mission in the first place.

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

In article ,
says...

Actually, the Shuttle was only a problem because they put cargo and people
in one lump. It would with hindsight, which of course is a wonderful thing,
have been better to have made some kind of automated system for the cargo up
and back and sent people on a different vehicle.

Not really. The shuttle was originally envisioned as much smaller to
support resupply of a space station. It always had a cargo bay, but
early proposals had a small payload bay with a corresponding small
payload mass.

The payload bay size and payload mass grew significantly to launch D.O.D
payloads. This was done specifically to gain the support of D.O.D.
Without that support, the program would have died.

I still think that gliding back is a perfectly viable thing to do. Whatever
you use the energy used at launch has to be dissipated or used. It would be
real cool (pun intended) if the re entry energy could be harvested for some
useful work, but storage of energy is a very inefficient thing at this time
in our history, as expending it and wasting it have been the way we have
always operated, due to abundant natural resources in the past. We need to
rethink it a bit.

Possibly, but I'm glad that there is currently competition between
horizontally gliding vehicles and vertical landing vehicles. If winged
vehicles were always superior in every way to vertical landing vehicles,
then helicopters would not exist.

Yes people died who should not have done, and it is very regrettable, but I
don't think they were in any doubt of the risks. The failings were not
actually in the engineering but in the ignoring of warnings about flaws
already known about which were fixable. This unfortunately is part of the
learning curve and to some extent, down to human nature as well. The old it
worked last time it will go on working thing.

Unfortunately, I believe that much of the design was flawed once SRB's
were chosen for use with the parallel staging concept. The other major
flaw was putting the relatively fragile orbiter on the side of the
externally insulated external tank. Certainly there were reasons that
these decisions were made, but the combination of all of them resulted
in a system which was not only prone to failure, but provided a very
rough ride (hard on payloads and astronauts) until SRB separation.

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

In article m,
says...

Brian Gaff wrote:
Actually, the Shuttle was only a problem because they put cargo and people
in one lump.


Without the shuttle, how would experience on operation of robotic arms
have been gained ?

Hard to tell, but I'd say that the arm(s) would have been attached to
the space station and/or the orbital maneuvering vehicle instead.
Keeping the arm(s) in orbit, where they're useful, is arguably better
than launching them again and again on each and every flight.

Without robotic arms, we'd still be stuck with tiny hatches like the
russians, no CBM. And that means no HTV or Dragon abilities to send and
remove large objects from station. Without arms, no ability to really
assemble a space structure such as the truss, large scale solar panels etc.

Again, this is more of a function of the station design than the design
of the shuttle. Note that HTV launches on an ELV and berths with a CBM
via the station robotic arm. No shuttle arm is necessary for this to
happen.

The experience gained from the shuttle operation is invaluable. It is
that experience that allowed the canadarm2 to be build for the station.
(and that experience which allowed the software to run the arms to be
greatly improved over the years).

The experience is "invaluable", but the shuttle was not the only way to
gain that experience.

The shuttle also thought lessons on how to really design a reusable ship
to make sure maintenance betwene trips can be done easily. And it tought
serious management lessons about safety.

I'd argue it taught us more about what *not* to do in this area. Large
segmented SRB's are costly to reuse, vibrate more than liquids, and have
catastrophic failure modes. Toxic hypergolic propellants complicate
ground workflows and pose risks to crews and payloads in orbit. Fragile
TPS ought not to be used on a vehicle attached to the side of a tank
which has spray on external insulation. LH2 poses processing issues and
leaks are *hard* to find, especially in a cramped compartment which is
hard to access.

The list goes on, but everyone gets the point.

I wouldn't mind the loss of the Shuttle if it were replaced by something
just as capable. But it isn't being replaced. Instead of having a solid
construction truck, all that is left are dumb delivery trucks
(Progress, Dragon, ATV, HTV) and tiny telephone booths (Soyuz) without
any ability to built/assemble structures in space.

I'd argue that we *don't* need something "just as capable", because much
of that capability is "nice to have", but not "necessary to have".
Paying a premium for functionality that is "nice to have" isn't a smart
thing to do.

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

Originally Posted by Brian Thorn[_2_]

On Sat, 22 Sep 2012 10:34:17 +0500, Hg wrote:


That's less behind schedule than the Airbus A400M, A380, Lockheed
F-22, F-35, and Boeing 787.

Wasn't the Shuttle supposed to dock with Skylab?

Not dock, but rendezvous and send the TRS robot over to dock with and
reboost it. But that was planned for circa 1980-81. At the time SkyLab
(launched 1973) was expected to remain in orbit in for ten years. It
actually deorbited in 1979 due to greater than expected atmosphere
expansion during that solar maximum. The Shuttle TRS mission kept
moving up in the schedule as SkyLab's orbital life contracted and
Shuttle's first flight slipped, until they finally passed each other
going in opposite directions.

Brian

It seems that the fact that you put some european aircraft first in your list
of delayed programs is not random ; in fact most recent us military programs
were behind schedule , seriously over budget , or cancelled : kiowa warrior
replacement , c-17 , v-22 osprey . We will see how the boeing tanker
evolves .

On Mon, 24 Sep 2012 19:34:15 +0000, michael rizk
wrote:


That's less behind schedule than the Airbus A400M, A380, Lockheed
F-22, F-35, and Boeing 787.

It seems that the fact that you put some european aircraft first in your
list of delayed programs is not random

No anti-Euro slant intended. It was originally just Airbus and Boeing,
then I added the fighters and just stuck them in ahead of the "and".
I forgot the V-22! The programs that were canceled for political
reasons (tankers, CSAR-X, Presidential helicopter) I wouldn't really
put in the same category as Shuttle, which was largely technical
delays. F-22 was probably a half and half.

Brian