Was the Space Shuttle Doomed From the Beginning ?
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When the space shuttle was announced in 1972 it was seen as the space vehicle to make low earth orbit space travel and living in space an everyday reality. But in hindsight many now believe that it was a failed project that was hamstrung by lack of funding and interest by government and sky high expectations from NASA that led them to sideline safety to ensure scheduled launches continued on time in order to secure future funding. Instead of expanding man’s horizons, it in fact limited them and stopped the development more effective, safer forms of both manned and unmanned space transport. It ultimately become the deadliest space vehicle in history and more expensive than the expendable rocket systems it was meant to replace. But wasn’t meant to be like this, NASA had originally proposed the Space Transport System or STS as it was known, which was a system of reusable manned space vehicles in 1969 as the successor to the Apollo program. The STS was going to consist of a permanent space station in low earth orbit, a small cheap space shuttle to transport astronauts to and from the earth and the space station, a space tug to move men and equipment to different earth orbits but could also double up as a lunar lander and a nuclear powered space craft to go between the low earth orbit and the moon or to other planets in the solar system. The two main goals of the STS were to reduce the cost of spaceflights by replacing the then current rockets like the Saturn 5 that took men to the moon and that could only be used once, with reusable spacecraft. The second was for it to act as support for NASA’s more ambitious goals of permanent manned space stations around the earth and the moon and then manned missions to Mars. Werner Von Brown, architect of the moon missions, wanted NASA to follow up Apollo and go to Mars and the military liked the idea of the of a reusable shuttle to deliver its satellites and do other things, However, after the success of the Apollo missions and the race to put a man on the moon was over, public and political interest in further manned missions waned and congress became unwilling to maintain the huge funding which had peaked at 4.5% of the Federal budget in the late 60’s, so it was cut to a fraction of that in the early 70’s. Based on this the Nixon chose to reject the STS and manned missions to Mars and go for just the space shuttle but in an upgraded form that allowed it to carry both men and payloads. This suited the military and the Nixon administration but due to the cost cutting and the need for the shuttle to be seen as an all-purpose transport system, the design has in hindsight, become to be seen, as not only compromised but also inherently unsafe and in the long run exceedingly expensive, the very things it was supposed to avoid. The shuttle system was to use external solid rocket boosters (SRB’s) to help it get in to space whilst the Shuttles main engines were supplied with liquid fuel from a massive external tank which the shuttle and the SRB’s would be attached to, unlike the previous space launch vehicles which were self-contained liquid fueled rockets with the main modules and crew at the top and away from the fuel and exhaust. The use of the SRB’s and the external fuel tank were down to the Pentagon wanting a high capacity payload for its satellites and the Nixon administration to keep the costs down by reusing parts. Some say that trying to achieve reusability with early 1970’s technology forced design decisions that compromised both safety and reliability. Reusable main engines were made a priority which meant a new design with new materials were required. The refurbishing of these after each flight turned out be more expensive than building new existing designed ones like the those used on the Saturn 5 and allowing them to burn up on re-entry. Because the main engines were mounted to the shuttle and not the launcher, the payload area was significantly reduced. This design of having the shuttle strapped to giant super cooled fuel tank and having two effectively uncontrolled solid rocket motors, that once fired could not be turned off, in time lead to the failure of two of the five shuttle craft and pushed the operating costs almost as high as the flights themselves. Compared to the Russians and Chinese, the only other nations to operate manned missions, the shuttle has turned out to be the deadest space vehicle in history so far, with the loss of 14 crew, two of the five shuttles and two of the 135 missions........ Video credits to NASA for footage of the shuttle via creative commons. Space Night Drumming by Frank Dorittke is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/) Source: http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Frank_Dorittke/Mare_Tranquillitatis/pcr018_cd02_06_fd_project_space_night_drumming_1369
Comments
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I enjoyed this video. I read news recently that a number of NASA buildings overseas are used for covert activities and spying not what space funding was meant for. American military are known to lose billions of dollars that no one has been able to account for. Corruption in America seems to equal "banana" country corruption .
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Both America & Russia showed how both Capitalism & Communism can be both a Success & a Failure. Capitalism focuses more on being Competitive which is why the Soviets had a Slight Lead on the Space Race (The Drive and/or Desire to beat America), but its Communist Ways (Especially on putting a Higher Restriction and/or Regulation on the Economy) eventually lead to its Downfall. However the Opposite can be said about Capitalism, we've advanced so much that we've become over confident &... Well you know how the Roman Empire actually fell, right?
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If you were close enough when it landed you could hear the jet engines on it, it wasn't gliding in like people think they had just following up to cover up the sound of its engines it was all fake
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It was a race so so many was forgotten.
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It was not doomed because many success were accomplished. But the basic layout of mixing solid and liquid engines and having no way of escape during launch severely compromised safety. But they were not making spaghetti here. They were breaking new ground and once committed meant they really could not be changed. Challenger/Enterprise failures were human failures of judgement, not technical.
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Great video. Just something to add... The Challenger disaster could have easily been avoided if the SRB's were manufactured near the launch site because they could have been made as one complete unit. Because they were manufactured elsewhere they had to be made into separate parts for transportation reasons. They were then joined together with the 'O' rings near the launch site and it was the failure of the 'O' rings which caused the disaster. The moral of the story is that if you want something doing properly, do it yourself and don't sub contract work out to the cheapest bidder.
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The comment about the Russian Soyuz having a flawless record is incorrect just before the Apollo Soyuz docking a Soyuz capsule failed decompressing and killing the crew
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Very Interesting.... makes you wonder about a lot of other things about the space program. I guess we can blame arrogance for the loss of life and equipment... getting there at all costs maybe isn't the best philosophy.
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Does SpaceX count as MURICAN lol
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Best not tell those who do not believe that such craft can enter space, as they will have a fit.
It sadly was somewhat of a white elephant, but what it did could not then have been done by any other means, even the Soviets copied the Space Shuttle, but because of cost could not launch any, Reagan having destroyed the oil economy of the Soviets by signing a pack with Saudi Arabia for more oil to be pumped out, so driving the price of the barrel of oil down. -
Cant take any more of this crap!
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You still believe those astronauts died??? WAKE UP!
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This is very interesting. I always thought that Space shuttle was a disaster for mankind space exploration, and you've pretty much gathered all the evidences in one place. What idiots we have guiding this country...
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the British never designed it for space missions - they designed it for short term low orbit flights.
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for god sake sto with this bullshit, earth is flath all apace program are fake!
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usa will fail because u r one damn greedy nation....who created mess. in this beautiful world...nd ur filthy policies.
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its too confusin!!!! its like rocket science n shit to me!!!
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Those fake astro nots are all still alive, everything NASA has ever done has been fake.
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i like space science this was helpful
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