Posted on 01/29/2016 8:03:15 AM PST by rktman
In the aftermath of Challenger, there was never any doubt about continuing, never the thought of quitting. After the Columbia accident almost seventeen years later, however, the program was wound down over the next eight years. Once construction of the International Space Station was completed, the Shuttles were grounded and the shuttle program ended.
I think that was a mistake. Space Shuttle was and remains the most capable flying machine ever conceived, built and operated. We learned much from the thirty years of Shuttle flights, and in my opinion, we should still be flying them. Shuttle carried a crew of seven, plus nearly sixty thousand pounds of payload to low earth orbit. After transforming from a rocket into an orbital research or construction platform, it entered the atmosphere and landed on a conventional runway at the end of its mission. After around one hundred days of processing, it was ready to fly again.
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.scientificamerican.com ...
Only used a third of their design life. Space flight is NOT safe regardless.
A very small problem.
The shuttles were designed for 100 missions each. The high-time shuttle is Discovery, with 39 flights.
There were some aging issues, specifically the discovery of the frayed wire bundles. But the spaceframes themselves were in good shape and could have gone to at least the 100 mission mark and probably a good ways beyond. Just with a LOT more intensive and expensive maintenance.
First stepping stone, but should have upgraded the shuttle design, increasing throw weight, engines, etc. Cancelling the shuttle was a BAD decision. Just one of many made. Now we are just rebuilding the old Moon Capsules as the Aurora. No imagination in NASA
They should have never been built. The concept just didn’t make sense, given the amount of time and money that had to be put into turning them around.
Trying to combine manned flight with a cargo hauler proved to be a bad model, given the amount of money it takes to get a pound into orbit. It was like shipping all of your USPS packages in a steel box with return shipping on the box, so that you can use it again.
Reusable capsules and boosters aren’t a bad idea, but that can be done without taking all the extra weight into orbit.
There is also the matter of the extra cost of manned flight being attached to everything. Decouple the cargo from the people and launches get a lot cheaper.
I think I read that the first “populatedâ€(can’t say ‘manned’ anymore due to PC rulings and regs) launch has been pushed to 2021 now.
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That’s for the deep space Orion capsule.
I believe SpaceX and Boeing will have unmanned test launches later this year and manned launches in early 2017.
The original idea was to have a fleet of these, several, ready to go at any time so that if there were an emergency there were others that could go to their assistance.
That never materialized. They never had more than one ready to go at any one time as far as I know.
But we needed to money for Sharia law.
I have never heard this before. So it goes up, snags a satellite, and re-enters over thee Pacific, and glides to CA?
We should never have stopped making the Saturn V.
We could have launched the entire ISS in a just a few launches saving BILLIONS with Capital B.
Only used a third of their design life. Space flight is NOT safe regardless.
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That’s because they weren’t used as often as intended due to shortcomings in their operational efficiency. They were still intended to be retired in the early 90’s.
Wasn’t the ET one that was old, and that had been handled several times to reapply the new foam?
About 10 years into it(pre challenger) we were ramping up to do 2 a month. Obviously never happened.
And built by the lowest bidder, or more likely, the largest campaign contributor.
I think they had some problems with the splashdowns...at least one went to the bottom of the ocean, I believe...and there was always the risk of Soviet interference, if the Navy couldn’t get there first. So I think there was some legitimacy to the desire to land on soil instead of ocean.
But I certainly do remember the kumbyah atmosphere of the early shuttle program...which never really stopped.
Yeah, but check out the F-35...
Leftist democrats in Congress always hated the space program, ranted against it, sought to destroy it. They wanted to spend the money on gibsmedat programs.
Challenger simply exposed a vehicle with major flaws and a NASA culture that was too risk-tolerant for what the public would accept.
Even if she wasn’t launched that morning there WOULD have been a fatal accident with loss of vehicle and crew within a few years.
I don’t know all the details. The Shuttle did have more debris strikes after the chemical change. Although the EPA eventually gave NASA an exemption, they chose not to use it. They took other measures to make sure the piece that destroyed Columbia would be less likely to fall off again. Perhaps someone else would like to put in the time to research it.
They keep making this sound like it is rocket science!
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