Last night I happened across this picture which led to the article linked below. It's amazing all
that went into building the shuttle program. Irish
Space Shuttle Artist Conception, Photo Courtesy NASA
Born in 1968 at the height of the Apollo program, the Space Shuttle was designed to fulfill two basic roles in NASA post-Apollo manned flight objectives. The first goal of the Space Shuttle program was to provide NASA with an efficient, re-usable method of carrying astronauts to and from a permanently manned space station. At the time, NASA envisioned a space station which would be staffed by 12 to 24 people. The space station was intended to assure a permanent manned U.S. presence in space following the Apollo lunar landings. The space station would support a plethora of scientific research objectives, plus act as an engineering and support base for manned journeys to the planets. In addition, NASA believed that Space Shuttles could serve as multi-purpose satellite delivery vehicles with the potential to completely replace Atlas-Centaur, Delta and Titan rockets. The words “cheap” and “routine” were the words which most closely matched the objectives for Space Shuttles as expressed by NASA. Of course, history would prove otherwise.
The piggy back combination flew low over the elementary school our kids attended on its landing approach to the nearby AF base.
ReplyDeleteMy small part was doing atmospheric studies research funded by NASA using the laser doppler method to characterize the upper atmosphere so NASA could determine how much heat resistant material was needed for their re-entry vehicles.
Government spending: try to make sure everybody gets something. The kids got out of class and lots of people were gainfully employed, and some of us actually did useful work!
Perspective: I live within easy watching distance of the cape, watched just about every launch, have known many people who worked on the shuttle on the Cape (my wife is one) and have read a few histories. I watched Challenger on TV and went outside to see the contrails. I was waiting for Columbia's sonic booms that never came.
ReplyDeleteThe Shuttle program was a giant Cluster***. It started out with some great ideas and then compromised them away in the need to get funding to do anything. It never met any of its goals: it was far more likely to lose vehicle and crew than expected, cost to orbit never got cheap enough, and time between missions was too long. NASA's management view on safety was along the line of "we played Russian Roulette with that revolver five times and it hasn't killed any one of us yet, so we can do that forever."
It's amazing it worked well enough to accomplish some great things.
NASA's contractors were still of a generation that could make anything, even the shuttle fly. NASA's post-apollo management was the sort of committee that could turn any workable concept into an incoherent team-ridden disaster.
DeleteThe situation has since degraded. Now the subcontractors are managed by the same sort of people that screwed up the shuttle, and NASA management communicates entirely in powerpoint and couldn't find a workbench or lab if their life depended on it. And Congress is now making architectural design decisions. SLS is the best they can do.
MadRocketSci
The DoD managed to worm its way into the Shuttle Program, and "Cluster****" doesn't even begin to describe the modifications DoD insisted on that made the original idea a Frankenstein creation.
ReplyDeleteDoD is now looking at Starship because 100 TONS to orbit (or anywhere else!) is just too enticing for them - here's hoping Elon can go tell 'em to pound sand if the (DoD) gets too uppity!
Beg to differ with you, Shuttle was designed, planned, and executed to be a limited flight test bed prototype for the low earth orbit vehicle they were designing. Never intended to be used as it was. Much like Mercury & Gemini were designed to learn how to build Apollo.
ReplyDeleteThe Endeavor was piggy-backed on a jet transport for her final flight to L.A. The flight route had been posted, and we thought we might get a distant glimpes of it. The route planners altered the entire route loops to stymie assholes taking pot shots at it, and it flew almost directly over our house, low snd slow - we could see the pilot of the transport.
ReplyDeleteBTW, your new banner remined me of a slightly different angle of the waterfall.
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