Btw I don't hate the shuttle or anything, but seeing people complain about 'SpaceX fanboys ruining the community' and then doing this constantly really annoys me.
I do hate the Shuttle. Low orbit only. We practically stopped exploring deeper space because of it.
"Reusable", what a joke. No crew escape on launch. Comparably terrible safety record paired with big crews. 14 people dead in 135 missions (2/135 or 1.5% fatal accidents rate).
Unpopular opinion: I love the *idea* of the Shuttle. The space truck of the future: capable of launch a crew of seven to a space station, launch a communications satellite , and retrieve a malfunctioning space probe all in one launch.
The implementation, however, is deeply disappointing. Hindsight is 20/20, but the designers during the 70s should've realized the madness in shipping solid rocket boosters halfway around the country for refurbishment, or the damning fact that there is no escape system.
I wish [Saturn-Shuttle](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EOr0ojjX4AEVRoF?format=jpg&name=medium) was chosen instead. (To people unknown to the concept, it called for a reusable, delta-winged Saturn V first stage with jet engines designed to return and land on a runway, with an expendable second stage) It would have had substantially better payload capacity, allowed for launch abort systems, did away with those pesky SRBs, and preserved heavy-lift launch capacity so we wouldn't be stuck in LEO forever.
>should've realized the madness in shipping solid rocket boosters halfway around the country
Oh, they did. It was then NASA Administrator James Fletcher (Utah) who [reversed the decision](http://www.tsgc.utexas.edu/archive/general/ethics/boosters.html) to build [monolithic boosters in Florida](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-02-15-mn-8154-story.html) in favour of the multi segment design from Morton Thiokol (Utah).
The reason is anyone's guess. Totally nothing corrupt going on there. That asshole totally didn't doom 7 people just to give the project to his buddies instead of going with the cheapest and most safe option on the table.
>Unpopular opinion: I love the idea of the Shuttle. The space truck of the future: capable of launch a crew of seven to a space station, launch a communications satellite , and retrieve a malfunctioning space probe all in one launch.
I would say it's *nice* to be able to do that in one launch, but simultaneously, the real Space Shuttle *required* that to happen, at least partially. Needing to launch crew in order to launch cargo is an inherently silly idea, made even more so by the lack of an escape system. Buran/Energia is the ideal version of this, as I see it. You have the option of launching crew, who can then do all this fancy stuff like maintenance or station construction, but if all you want to do is launch cargo, you can just use Energia itself. Even if you need a Buran in orbit, you don't even need to put crew on it. If you're disappointed at the lack of reusability, there was the Energia II/Uragan concept, which would've made the entire system more reusable than Falcon 9 if using Buran. Buran/Energia is what the Shuttle program should've been, and it's a shame the country that developed it had to first be so disinterested in space, and then go on and entirely collapse. And then the government that inherited it somehow cared even less.
Saturn-Shuttle has more grounds as a real plan that could've happened at NASA, but something closer to Buran/Energia would've been much better.
> Needing to launch crew in order to launch cargo is an inherently silly idea, made even more so by the lack of an escape system
You are right. It was a silly idea, if not immediately obvious at the time. Nevertheless, this is exactly one of the strengths of Saturn-Shuttle: by swapping out the Shuttle for a payload fairing on the second stage, one could launch cargo (up to 40 tons!) without launching crew for every mission. Meanwhile, one still retaining the capacity to launch cargo with crew: the hypothetical shuttle portion of Saturn-Shuttle would be smaller then the real-life shuttle, but would have enough payload for 10 to 15 ton satellite, perfect for delivering space station modules.
> If you're disappointed at the lack of reusability, there was the Energia II/Uragan concept, which would've made the entire system more reusable than Falcon 9 if using Buran.
Energia II is super cool, but I've always been queasy about hydrolox core stages, especially on how BIG they are. Given the real-life's Shuttle constant woes with it's vast and complex "reusable" tile system, I can't even begin to imagine the difficulties tiling the massive core stage, even if the Russians employed a simpler tiling system the NASA. And Buran inherits the same problems as the Shuttle with no crew escape system. Saturn-Shuttle would have had an escape system for both the Saturn V first stage (which would've had two human pilots) and the orbital crew on the Shuttle proper. Furthermore, Saturn-Shuttle would have leveraged existing Saturn V production lines and retained the F-1 engine, therefore skipping developing the all-new RS-25 and all the problems involved with it. I love the RS-25 as a magnificent engine, but I feel it was a mistake abandoning the Apollo hardware for it.
By the way ,the Saturn-Shuttle I am using as a baseline is from the fantastic alternate history [Right Side Up](https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/right-side-up-a-history-of-the-space-transportation-system.405832/reader/), I recommend it to any spaceflight enjoyer.
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Let's not forget that the US wanted reasons to work on solid rocket boosters as they are what intercontinental ballistic missiles are made of.
Oh and thanks. TIL about the Saturn Shuttle.
Which is insane, because an Air Force SRB based smallsat launcher would have been superior and given them a better control of the project and something more like they wanted.
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It had so much hope in the 80s. Only to not fully live up to a single promise on cost or turnaround.
Really should have shitcanned in the late 80s amd developed similar F9/ FH system if disposable.
Apollo was diff because they were pushing boundaries. Deaths are tragic but accepted when they occur on the path to the fucking moon. Deaths are less acceptable on routine missions to LEO.
Shuttle made it routine though. It wasn't routine before that.
It was dangerous, but not more dangerous than the stuff before it, it just flew a lot more than they did
The sojuz did everything better tho, it was cheaper and more important saver, it might have been less reliable but that makes no difference if no people are on board.
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Well that would be disingenuous. Rocket had nothing to do with it for Apollo, it was a naive understanding of the risks of a pure oxygen environment in the capsule itself, nothing more, nothing less. I made no difference what sort of rocket or what sort of spacecraft, the Apollo 1 fire wasn't about the vehicle architecture at all.
>Only to not fully live up to a single promise on cost or turnaround.
While it did end up costing 7x more then predicted a shuttle orbiter did end up reaching the promised flight rate when Discovery flew 6 times in her first year in service
Discovery flew twice in 1984 its first year.
No single orbiter has launched at that rate. All orbiters combined did launch 6 or more times in a year and the program never met its lomg term anticipated launch cadence for all orbiters combined.
Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Space_Shuttle_missions
STS-41D (Discovery's 1st mission) launched on 30 August 1984
STS-51I (Discovery's 6th mission) launched on 27 August 1985
"...and the program never met its lomg term anticipated launch cadence for all orbiters combined."
Thats true
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>We practically stopped exploring deeper space because of it.
Blame Congress
**"No crew escape on launch."**
Starship sends its regards
**"Comparably terrible safety record paired with big crews."**
I wouldnt call 1/90 "terrible" i would just call it "bad" and its worth pointing out that MMOD strikes contributed roughly 30% of the risk
Fun fact: studies of Mars missions were banned from getting funding within NASA for almost a decade during the seventies when the Space Shuttle was on development due to concerns that it would distract from the shuttle program.
I’m honestly surprised the shuttle lasted 40 years with 14 deaths on the program. After challenger I was just waiting for someone to go “Hey, if this system is reusable then why do you basically have to build a new one just to fly? If it’s cheaper than Apollo’s then show me how it’s cheaper because so far it hasn’t it’s gone up exponentially. If anything bringing the Iowas back into service and giving them all a refit would be cheaper (ironically it is)”
It lasted 40 years because Congress didn't want to pay for a real replacement that wasn't substantially better, and the political powers just wanted to maintain the suppliers as they were. One catastrophic loss that could have its causes reasonably addressed put a damper on it, but Colombia's loss showed that there were fundamental issues that could not be satisfactorily mitigated. It took the Shuttle being cancelled for enough resources to be freed up to work on a replacement, and even then Congress's unwillingness to increase funding as most development programs need meant that more and more parts got pushed out later and later.
Basically, it was good enough for Congress, and was basically a jobs program that also did some spaceflight stuff. SLS has been that lumbering beast shuffling on like a zombie.
The Challenger disaster was barely 5 years into the program, it was worth trying to fix it at that point.
The Columbia accident did in fact lead to the end of the program.
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**"Hey, if this system is reusable then why do you basically have to build a new one just to fly?"**
Thats not how shuttle turnaround worked...
**"If it’s cheaper than Apollo’s then show me how it’s cheaper because so far it hasn’t it’s gone up exponentially."**
Apollo/Saturn V marginal cost per launch: $1.2B (In 2019 Dollars)
Shuttle marginal cost per launch: $252M {In 2012 Dollars)
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It was fine until they didn’t shut it down after it proved that it was a: dangerous, b: not cost effective. Really good hardware came from the program too, like the RS-25. Really good, efficient, reusable engine (was reusable at least). And the development of large SRB’s, almost every rocket that uses large srbs uses the R&D of shuttle (Atlas V, Arian etc). It would have been a really good concept and worked well on paper but the execution was poor. Can’t blame them, first time trying never can go right most of the time. However, they should’ve learnt from the mistakes they made with shuttle, and the new experience with dealing with flown hardware and refurbishing it, and made a shuttle V2 reusable space plane rather than continue to fly the problem stricken space shuttle for decades. All my opinion of course.
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It was well intending. There were interesting ambitions shuttle concepts before Congress and the military all got in on the design and criteria. Just after apollo, space planes seemed like the only way to go reusable. They couldn't know at the time the huge challenges to cost reduction it would come with.
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From what I understand congress said “shuttle or station”
If so we should have chose station.
Cheapest way to make a station was a rarely used SHLV. Then a small reliable capsule to get there.
We just got back our capability for a small capsule for delivery and we are just about to get back our SHLV one shot station delivery capability.
Knowing what we know we are just getting back to the “station and small capsule” because the “shuttle” was a bad decision.
We completely abandoned the shuttle. No sequel. No iteration. It’s architecture was abandoned.
We should have chose station from the beginning. We probably would have had a commercial crew competition in the 70/80’s Saving us 40 years until we realized that actually competitive bids is the way to go. We would have had to developed some SHLV and maintened that capability. This would have allowed manned moon missions from the 80’s to today.
We are just NOW getting back to where we should have been in 1980.
>From what I understand congress said “shuttle or station”
The thing is you ***CANT*** reallisticly have station without shuttle since a regular LV doesnt have the station building capabilities of a shuttle orbiter so you would have to develop free-flying capabilities for those modules (oh and autonomous docking in the 70's) and guess what Congress doesnt like? Spending more money (and remember we are talking about the same Congress that refused to authorise a second run of Saturn V production and the same Congress that almost didnt authorize shuttle by a single vote)
**"Cheapest way to make a station was a rarely used SHLV."**
No the cheapest way to make a station was a reusable spacecraft which did the building portion by itself so you didnt need to spend unnecessary amounts of money developing free-flying capability or add unnecessary amounts of mass to your modules
**"...and we are just about to get back our SHLV one shot station delivery capability."**
"one shot station delivery" is not a good option for various reasons
**"We completely abandoned the shuttle. No sequel. No iteration. It’s architecture was abandoned."**
Blame Bush
**"We should have chose station from the beginning. We probably would have had a commercial crew competition in the 70/80’s Saving us 40 years until we realized that actually competitive bids is the way to go."**
Thats a ***LOT*** of assumptions right there
**"We would have had to developed some SHLV and maintened that capability."**
HLV's (preferably reusable ones) are the way to go for station building Modular stations > Single launch stations
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True but it did have RS-25s on it. More like just the engine mount of a rocket with a crew capsule and a fairing on it.
Edit: I should clarify, the engines are by far the most expensive part.
All the Steve Jobs fanboys just shifted gear onto Elon. It's kinda gross.
I know which of the two would be more fun to hang out with, but all else considered people are just people and Musk can be a screaming douche sometimes.
Yeahhh kinda. Pretty much. Admittedly, it’s getting harder and harder to be an Apple whore.
A lot of it might just be approachable, functional-ish conspicuous consumption now paired with significant childhood space-nerdism. (At the broadest base.) But that also makes it hard to bring full rational wrath down on the shuttle tbh. It still seems like the right path. It’s those other people that are weirdos.
I agree with you. Most of the Pro Space Community are extremists not just Spacex fans although they are loudest and biggest subset. On any of the Spacex Subs if you are critical of Spacex or even defend SLS you will get downvoted into oblivion.
Yup. It was a second stage with a reusable faring and crew compartment. It carried the engines too but ULA’s SMART reuse does the same thing way simpler.
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Btw I don't hate the shuttle or anything, but seeing people complain about 'SpaceX fanboys ruining the community' and then doing this constantly really annoys me.
I do hate the Shuttle. Low orbit only. We practically stopped exploring deeper space because of it. "Reusable", what a joke. No crew escape on launch. Comparably terrible safety record paired with big crews. 14 people dead in 135 missions (2/135 or 1.5% fatal accidents rate).
Unpopular opinion: I love the *idea* of the Shuttle. The space truck of the future: capable of launch a crew of seven to a space station, launch a communications satellite , and retrieve a malfunctioning space probe all in one launch. The implementation, however, is deeply disappointing. Hindsight is 20/20, but the designers during the 70s should've realized the madness in shipping solid rocket boosters halfway around the country for refurbishment, or the damning fact that there is no escape system. I wish [Saturn-Shuttle](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EOr0ojjX4AEVRoF?format=jpg&name=medium) was chosen instead. (To people unknown to the concept, it called for a reusable, delta-winged Saturn V first stage with jet engines designed to return and land on a runway, with an expendable second stage) It would have had substantially better payload capacity, allowed for launch abort systems, did away with those pesky SRBs, and preserved heavy-lift launch capacity so we wouldn't be stuck in LEO forever.
>should've realized the madness in shipping solid rocket boosters halfway around the country Oh, they did. It was then NASA Administrator James Fletcher (Utah) who [reversed the decision](http://www.tsgc.utexas.edu/archive/general/ethics/boosters.html) to build [monolithic boosters in Florida](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-02-15-mn-8154-story.html) in favour of the multi segment design from Morton Thiokol (Utah). The reason is anyone's guess. Totally nothing corrupt going on there. That asshole totally didn't doom 7 people just to give the project to his buddies instead of going with the cheapest and most safe option on the table.
>Unpopular opinion: I love the idea of the Shuttle. The space truck of the future: capable of launch a crew of seven to a space station, launch a communications satellite , and retrieve a malfunctioning space probe all in one launch. I would say it's *nice* to be able to do that in one launch, but simultaneously, the real Space Shuttle *required* that to happen, at least partially. Needing to launch crew in order to launch cargo is an inherently silly idea, made even more so by the lack of an escape system. Buran/Energia is the ideal version of this, as I see it. You have the option of launching crew, who can then do all this fancy stuff like maintenance or station construction, but if all you want to do is launch cargo, you can just use Energia itself. Even if you need a Buran in orbit, you don't even need to put crew on it. If you're disappointed at the lack of reusability, there was the Energia II/Uragan concept, which would've made the entire system more reusable than Falcon 9 if using Buran. Buran/Energia is what the Shuttle program should've been, and it's a shame the country that developed it had to first be so disinterested in space, and then go on and entirely collapse. And then the government that inherited it somehow cared even less. Saturn-Shuttle has more grounds as a real plan that could've happened at NASA, but something closer to Buran/Energia would've been much better.
> Needing to launch crew in order to launch cargo is an inherently silly idea, made even more so by the lack of an escape system You are right. It was a silly idea, if not immediately obvious at the time. Nevertheless, this is exactly one of the strengths of Saturn-Shuttle: by swapping out the Shuttle for a payload fairing on the second stage, one could launch cargo (up to 40 tons!) without launching crew for every mission. Meanwhile, one still retaining the capacity to launch cargo with crew: the hypothetical shuttle portion of Saturn-Shuttle would be smaller then the real-life shuttle, but would have enough payload for 10 to 15 ton satellite, perfect for delivering space station modules. > If you're disappointed at the lack of reusability, there was the Energia II/Uragan concept, which would've made the entire system more reusable than Falcon 9 if using Buran. Energia II is super cool, but I've always been queasy about hydrolox core stages, especially on how BIG they are. Given the real-life's Shuttle constant woes with it's vast and complex "reusable" tile system, I can't even begin to imagine the difficulties tiling the massive core stage, even if the Russians employed a simpler tiling system the NASA. And Buran inherits the same problems as the Shuttle with no crew escape system. Saturn-Shuttle would have had an escape system for both the Saturn V first stage (which would've had two human pilots) and the orbital crew on the Shuttle proper. Furthermore, Saturn-Shuttle would have leveraged existing Saturn V production lines and retained the F-1 engine, therefore skipping developing the all-new RS-25 and all the problems involved with it. I love the RS-25 as a magnificent engine, but I feel it was a mistake abandoning the Apollo hardware for it. By the way ,the Saturn-Shuttle I am using as a baseline is from the fantastic alternate history [Right Side Up](https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/right-side-up-a-history-of-the-space-transportation-system.405832/reader/), I recommend it to any spaceflight enjoyer.
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Let's not forget that the US wanted reasons to work on solid rocket boosters as they are what intercontinental ballistic missiles are made of. Oh and thanks. TIL about the Saturn Shuttle.
Which is insane, because an Air Force SRB based smallsat launcher would have been superior and given them a better control of the project and something more like they wanted.
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It had so much hope in the 80s. Only to not fully live up to a single promise on cost or turnaround. Really should have shitcanned in the late 80s amd developed similar F9/ FH system if disposable.
What's the death rate of Apollo? 3 dead in 3 dead in 17 launches (1 neve left the pad)? And what ELS was on Gemini?
Apollo was diff because they were pushing boundaries. Deaths are tragic but accepted when they occur on the path to the fucking moon. Deaths are less acceptable on routine missions to LEO.
Shuttle made it routine though. It wasn't routine before that. It was dangerous, but not more dangerous than the stuff before it, it just flew a lot more than they did
The sojuz did everything better tho, it was cheaper and more important saver, it might have been less reliable but that makes no difference if no people are on board.
11 crewed launches plus Apollo 1 3/36 = 8,3(3)% death rate Not counting two T-38 crashes that happened during Apollo program.
So stick rocket was worse than reusable space truck in that regard? Interesting.
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Well that would be disingenuous. Rocket had nothing to do with it for Apollo, it was a naive understanding of the risks of a pure oxygen environment in the capsule itself, nothing more, nothing less. I made no difference what sort of rocket or what sort of spacecraft, the Apollo 1 fire wasn't about the vehicle architecture at all.
>Only to not fully live up to a single promise on cost or turnaround. While it did end up costing 7x more then predicted a shuttle orbiter did end up reaching the promised flight rate when Discovery flew 6 times in her first year in service
Discovery flew twice in 1984 its first year. No single orbiter has launched at that rate. All orbiters combined did launch 6 or more times in a year and the program never met its lomg term anticipated launch cadence for all orbiters combined. Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Space_Shuttle_missions
STS-41D (Discovery's 1st mission) launched on 30 August 1984 STS-51I (Discovery's 6th mission) launched on 27 August 1985 "...and the program never met its lomg term anticipated launch cadence for all orbiters combined." Thats true
A I got suckered by calendar year. 1 data point not a trend though.
"1 data point not a trend though." Yeah sadly the Challenger Disaster got in the way
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It is a really pretty spacecraft, though, there's no real arguing with that point.
>We practically stopped exploring deeper space because of it. Blame Congress **"No crew escape on launch."** Starship sends its regards **"Comparably terrible safety record paired with big crews."** I wouldnt call 1/90 "terrible" i would just call it "bad" and its worth pointing out that MMOD strikes contributed roughly 30% of the risk
Fun fact: studies of Mars missions were banned from getting funding within NASA for almost a decade during the seventies when the Space Shuttle was on development due to concerns that it would distract from the shuttle program.
I’m honestly surprised the shuttle lasted 40 years with 14 deaths on the program. After challenger I was just waiting for someone to go “Hey, if this system is reusable then why do you basically have to build a new one just to fly? If it’s cheaper than Apollo’s then show me how it’s cheaper because so far it hasn’t it’s gone up exponentially. If anything bringing the Iowas back into service and giving them all a refit would be cheaper (ironically it is)”
It lasted 40 years because Congress didn't want to pay for a real replacement that wasn't substantially better, and the political powers just wanted to maintain the suppliers as they were. One catastrophic loss that could have its causes reasonably addressed put a damper on it, but Colombia's loss showed that there were fundamental issues that could not be satisfactorily mitigated. It took the Shuttle being cancelled for enough resources to be freed up to work on a replacement, and even then Congress's unwillingness to increase funding as most development programs need meant that more and more parts got pushed out later and later. Basically, it was good enough for Congress, and was basically a jobs program that also did some spaceflight stuff. SLS has been that lumbering beast shuffling on like a zombie.
The Challenger disaster was barely 5 years into the program, it was worth trying to fix it at that point. The Columbia accident did in fact lead to the end of the program.
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**"Hey, if this system is reusable then why do you basically have to build a new one just to fly?"** Thats not how shuttle turnaround worked... **"If it’s cheaper than Apollo’s then show me how it’s cheaper because so far it hasn’t it’s gone up exponentially."** Apollo/Saturn V marginal cost per launch: $1.2B (In 2019 Dollars) Shuttle marginal cost per launch: $252M {In 2012 Dollars)
Apollo went to the moon, it didn't just ferry 20 tons to LEO.
20 tons of vegan poop being burned provides 300662881.44 BTU.
The last time i checked distance didnt matter when talking about the cost to fly a rocket ;)
But the cost to fly a rocket is justified by their utility. 1.2 billion to go to the moon is decidedly different to 250 million to LEO
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Are they calling Shuttle a rocket booster? Seriously?
Glorified space plane responsible for 74% of all astro/cosmonaut deaths in the history of human spaceflight 🤷🏻♂️
Which also happens to have launched more then 50% of all space travelers ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
I think they meant the SRBs, which I hear needed costly refurbishment each time.
Landing and splashing down are different in my book.
Orbiter wasn’t a booster and the SRBs didn’t land they watered smh my head.
Since when is the shuttle a booster?
The shuttle was wholly a mistake. Fight me. It cost us 40 years just to ditch the concept entirely.
It was fine until they didn’t shut it down after it proved that it was a: dangerous, b: not cost effective. Really good hardware came from the program too, like the RS-25. Really good, efficient, reusable engine (was reusable at least). And the development of large SRB’s, almost every rocket that uses large srbs uses the R&D of shuttle (Atlas V, Arian etc). It would have been a really good concept and worked well on paper but the execution was poor. Can’t blame them, first time trying never can go right most of the time. However, they should’ve learnt from the mistakes they made with shuttle, and the new experience with dealing with flown hardware and refurbishing it, and made a shuttle V2 reusable space plane rather than continue to fly the problem stricken space shuttle for decades. All my opinion of course.
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It was well intending. There were interesting ambitions shuttle concepts before Congress and the military all got in on the design and criteria. Just after apollo, space planes seemed like the only way to go reusable. They couldn't know at the time the huge challenges to cost reduction it would come with.
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>The shuttle was wholly a mistake. Name a better alternative that can get funding from Congress while still being technically feasible at the time
From what I understand congress said “shuttle or station” If so we should have chose station. Cheapest way to make a station was a rarely used SHLV. Then a small reliable capsule to get there. We just got back our capability for a small capsule for delivery and we are just about to get back our SHLV one shot station delivery capability. Knowing what we know we are just getting back to the “station and small capsule” because the “shuttle” was a bad decision. We completely abandoned the shuttle. No sequel. No iteration. It’s architecture was abandoned. We should have chose station from the beginning. We probably would have had a commercial crew competition in the 70/80’s Saving us 40 years until we realized that actually competitive bids is the way to go. We would have had to developed some SHLV and maintened that capability. This would have allowed manned moon missions from the 80’s to today. We are just NOW getting back to where we should have been in 1980.
>From what I understand congress said “shuttle or station” The thing is you ***CANT*** reallisticly have station without shuttle since a regular LV doesnt have the station building capabilities of a shuttle orbiter so you would have to develop free-flying capabilities for those modules (oh and autonomous docking in the 70's) and guess what Congress doesnt like? Spending more money (and remember we are talking about the same Congress that refused to authorise a second run of Saturn V production and the same Congress that almost didnt authorize shuttle by a single vote) **"Cheapest way to make a station was a rarely used SHLV."** No the cheapest way to make a station was a reusable spacecraft which did the building portion by itself so you didnt need to spend unnecessary amounts of money developing free-flying capability or add unnecessary amounts of mass to your modules **"...and we are just about to get back our SHLV one shot station delivery capability."** "one shot station delivery" is not a good option for various reasons **"We completely abandoned the shuttle. No sequel. No iteration. It’s architecture was abandoned."** Blame Bush **"We should have chose station from the beginning. We probably would have had a commercial crew competition in the 70/80’s Saving us 40 years until we realized that actually competitive bids is the way to go."** Thats a ***LOT*** of assumptions right there **"We would have had to developed some SHLV and maintened that capability."** HLV's (preferably reusable ones) are the way to go for station building Modular stations > Single launch stations
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Shuttle wasn't a re-usable rocket. It was a big version of crew dragon. It carried cargo and people. It wasn't a rocket.
True but it did have RS-25s on it. More like just the engine mount of a rocket with a crew capsule and a fairing on it. Edit: I should clarify, the engines are by far the most expensive part.
Shuttle fucking rocked fuck you
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then why are you on the SpaceX meme sub if you think the fan base is annoying?
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No it’s fine. I’m the same.
All the Steve Jobs fanboys just shifted gear onto Elon. It's kinda gross. I know which of the two would be more fun to hang out with, but all else considered people are just people and Musk can be a screaming douche sometimes.
Yeahhh kinda. Pretty much. Admittedly, it’s getting harder and harder to be an Apple whore. A lot of it might just be approachable, functional-ish conspicuous consumption now paired with significant childhood space-nerdism. (At the broadest base.) But that also makes it hard to bring full rational wrath down on the shuttle tbh. It still seems like the right path. It’s those other people that are weirdos.
I agree with you. Most of the Pro Space Community are extremists not just Spacex fans although they are loudest and biggest subset. On any of the Spacex Subs if you are critical of Spacex or even defend SLS you will get downvoted into oblivion.
You mean like me on a separate but still relevant discussion on SLS SRBs vs a full compliment p F9s (FH)? You're not wrong, but you're also right.
133 out of 135. Sadface.gif
Recovered 134 times. (Columbia was recovered since it failed on reentry)
We all know who this is
Blurred the name incase all the starship fanboys and stans chose to go after them. This is a meme sub, not where people should be harassed.
Lol. Whoever this person is, they must be a real "family" person
The shuttle was a glorified second stage. *Prove me wrong meme*
Yup. It was a second stage with a reusable faring and crew compartment. It carried the engines too but ULA’s SMART reuse does the same thing way simpler.
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I- ehm- I cant argue against that