Its grand to say that both space shuttle and Space station were
mistakes...but what would / should have been done instead knowing
what was
known at that time?

Its grand to say that both space shuttle and Space station were
mistakes...but what would / should have been done instead knowing
what was
known at that time?

Quickie question.... although technically solids aren't throttle-able, and therefore inherently more dangerous, has any of the issues with the shuttle failures been directly linked to solid problems? The latest was 'foam' from the liquid fuel tank, before that some ""o" rings.... so have the solid boosters actually been a problem? ******* The "O" rings are part of and inherent to the solids. The "Piggy back" configuration is the issue. Shep

The Shuttle and the ISS were not the mistakes. The mistakes were permitting narrowminded politicians to nickel and dime both projects. The orginal design of the Shuttle was to have a 2 stage design, a manned piloted winged booster attached to the orbiter. But thanks to Richard Nixon who hated the space program because he thought of it as a "Democratic program", we got the present expensive system with the solid boosters. Richard Nixon "nickeled and dimed" the space program. As for the Space Station, congress did the same. How many times has the ISS gone thru a redesign? Best Regards, Pete

panamabob, And the techies at the Russian design lab, would they have 'stolen" inherently bad ideas as far as designs? Would they have looked at the design and decided that it would not work and try something different? Or adapt what they DID see that they liked and used that as a base? ******* I am sure you are correct. I'm only reporting what I heard! Shep

the mistake is not the shuttle itself which
represented an important step forward from the Apollo
system, despite the fact that it didn't accomplished ,
for budgetary reasons, its intended 100% reusability.
After all we started landing on the sea and mobilizing
the fleet at the end of every landing while with the
shuttle we landed in airports and it was possible to
carry average passengers.
The real mistake IMO is the fact that we are not
capitalizing on the shuttle experience.
Its successor should include all the improvements,
capabilities and goals that 30 years of aerospace
progress have achieved.
A two stage, hotol type of vehicle to orbit, all
reusable, with an unmanned booster that would land on
the takeoff airport after separation and a manned
orbiter that would do the same after completing its
mission.
Without complete reusability and commercial airline
type of operations the space frontier will never be
reached.
--- glbriley glb_31@... ha scritto:

giorgio gaviraghi giogavir@... wrote The real mistake IMO is the fact that we are not
capitalizing on the shuttle experience.
Its successor should include all the improvements,
capabilities and goals that 30 years of aerospace
progress have achieved.
A two stage, hotol type of vehicle to orbit, all
reusable, with an unmanned booster that would land on
the takeoff airport after separation and a manned
orbiter that would do the same after completing its
mission.
Without complete reusability and commercial airline
type of operations the space frontier will never be
reached. ******** Very Good! Shep

ForDutyAndHumanity IAmSpacebearAICDA astrobear@... Wrote The Shuttle and the ISS were not the mistakes. The mistakes were permitting narrowminded politicians to nickel and dime both projects. The orginal design of the Shuttle was to have a 2 stage design, a manned piloted winged booster attached to the orbiter. But thanks to Richard Nixon who hated the space program because he thought of it as a "Democratic program", we got the present expensive system with the solid boosters. Richard Nixon "nickeled and dimed" the space program. As for the Space Station, congress did the same. How many times has the ISS gone thru a redesign? ********* Right on! Shep

The fundamental problem with the shuttle concept is that -- the big cost
is getting material into orbit, and once it is there it is foolish to
return it (other than, say, humans or processed goods). Every time the
shuttle launches, the effort puts a huge orbiter up there, plus an
external tank. And then, stupidly, it is all brought back down (or the
tank is let burn up, but SSI showed could be saved and used in space). All
this to return a few people back to earth? Stupid, stupid, stupid, given
the energetics of building a space infrastructure. What goes into space
(Even poop) should stay in space -- to be used as the raw material of
future development efforts. But NASA keeps bringing it all back down. So,
what makes sense is an Apollo like big lifter, with a very small crew
return capsule. That makes sense energetically and cost wise. Sure, in
some ideal world we would all use Star Trek shuttle craft with
anti-gravity thrusters, but for the technology we have had for the last
forty years, rockets and capsules were what made sense. It was politics
and organizational dynamics that built the shuttle and kept if flying,
while it crippled NASA by sucking up all the money that could have gone to
R&D on self-replicating automation, mass drivers, comet & asteroid fly bys
and landings, and so on.

Paul D. Fernhout pdfernhout@... Wrote: I think it is a false analogy to bring up the airport cost thing (though
people do all the time, and not to say there is no merit in it, but it is
misleading) -- because products carried and the value of the airliner
don't increase 100X - 1000X in value just because an aircraft travels from
the USA to France. But they do when a spacecraft goes from the Earth's
surface to LEO or GEO or L5. If the same economics held for aircraft, if
say a 7474 worth US$1 billion was worth US$100 billion after being flown
to France, everyone would say it was stupid, stupid, stupid to fly the
whole thing back to the US instead of just sending the aircrew back to the
US on a lifeboat. You are correct, however the analogy is still valid in itsconcept. One of the biggest cost is not being able to reuse a major part of the launch vehicle. Technology to accomplish this and significantly reduce cost have existed for years and even more so today with remote controls and higher performance rockets and Jets. To keep NASA in the launch business is the really stupid part and adds most significantly to the cost! Shep

ISS was a mistake if you look at it from the point of view of if it
accomplished anything to further our concept of what a space program
should be. However if you look at it from the point of view of NASA
managers at the time it was a roaring success. It kept them employed in
their highly paid administrative jobs until they could retire. There
was real concern in NASA at the time that there wasn't a big new project
for the management structure to manage. So they searched for just the
right sized project. It couldn't be too small or it wouldn't last long
enough for them to retire. It couldn't be too large or Congress would
balk at the price tag for what members of Congress view as a engineering
welfare program. And it couldn't be modular (where progress could be
measured in small successes) because that would require going back to
Congress and explaining why the next step was required again and again.
So we got ISS.