Discussion Space Shuttle in Retrospect

[Scruce]

Well, It's been seventy seven days since STS-135 landed at KSC, the Space Shuttle is complete. But, was it worth it?

Had NASA avoided the Shuttle program and instead continued to use Saturn and commercially available boosters, costs might have been lower, freeing funds for manned exploration and more unmanned space science.

The Saturn program, if continued, could have provided six manned launches per year (two of them to the Moon) at the same cost as the Shuttle program, with an additional ability to loft infrastructure for further missions.

The cost of a Saturn V including launch was $185 million ($1.11 billion in 2011 Dollars).

The average cost per flight for the Space Shuttle has been about $1.3 billion (2011 Dollars) over the life of the program and an extra $750 million over its most recent five years of operations.

If we had continued the Saturn Program, we would be on Mars today, not writing about it as a subject for "the next 50 years." We would have decades of experience operating long-duration space systems in Earth orbit, and similar decades of experience in exploring and learning to utilize the Moon.

 

[Saturn V]

The question is something of a double-edged sword.

It would be ridiculous for me to say that the Shuttle did no valid, useful work, or that there have been no gains based on its technology.

But given the direction we were headed at the peak of Apollo, I believe that's where our future & destiny truly lie.

Aside from the obvious technical proliferation it would've borne, I can't help thinking back to Dave Scott's comment on the human condition (appropriately enough, delivered as he stepped onto the moon), "Man MUST explore," or his reminder of Plutarch's observation (delivered to congress on 15's return), "The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be lighted."

 

[Scruce]

It would be ridiculous for me to say that the Shuttle did no valid, useful work, or that there have been no gains based on its technology.

This PDF Document highlights some of the "down to Earth" benefits of the Space Shuttle, such as:

Landmine detonation:
• Princess Diana feared for the children who live in the 70 countries strewn with
landmines. The Marshall Center and Thiokol Propulsion, Science and
Engineering Division in Brigham City, Utah, have produced an easy and safe
way to detonate them. The demining device uses NASA Reusable Soild
Rocket Motor scrap propellant packed inside a high-temperature flare. The
flare is used to burn a hole in the landmine’s case and ignite its explosive.
When the explosive burns away, the mine is disabled.

 

[Sanford]

(Bias alert) I know people who worked with the shuttle program directly so I'm a little biased. Financials aside, the shuttle couldn't be beat for a LEO craft. With spacelab/spacehab modules installed it was like a mini-station. The shuttle itself was very different than anything tried before. It was not a capsule, it was not a manned module, it was not a nosecone on a rocket, it was a plane that rode a rocket into LEO and came back home like a airliner.

That doesn't mean I hate Apollo or the other manned capsules. The saturns took us beyond LEO and still remain the (bias alert) most awe-inspiring machines built by mankind. I never understood why the Apollo program was killed after just a few strolls on the moon.

 

[Scruce]

It was not a capsule, it was not a manned module, it was not a nosecone on a rocket, it was a plane that rode a rocket into LEO and came back home like a airliner.

Yes, parts of the Space Shuttle are reusable. But they have to be reused with a great cost.

After landing, the orbiter would be checked out and start "mating" to the rest of the system (the ET and SRBs), and be ready for launch in as little as two weeks. Instead, this turnaround process usually takes months; Atlantis set the pre-Challenger record by launching twice within 54 days, while Columbia set the post-Challenger record of 88 days. Naturally, the Shuttle program's goal of returning its crew to Earth safely conflicts with the goal of a rapid and inexpensive payload launch.

Furthermore, because in many cases there are no survivable abort modes, many pieces of hardware simply must function perfectly and so must be carefully inspected before each flight. The result is high labor cost, with around 25,000 workers in Shuttle operations and labor costs of about $1 billion per year.

How complex and time consuming do you think this is?:

So there, just for the labour of checking the Space Shuttle for reusability, you could have launched yet another Saturn V.

 

[Saturn V]

This PDF Document highlights some of the "down to Earth" benefits of the Space Shuttle, such as:

True enough, but in all probability, those spin-offs would just as likely have come out of the Saturn program (had it continued) as well.

The difference being that we'd have retained the ability to break free of Mother Earth. Something we haven't been able to do (in terms of manned missions) in 40 years (as of December 2012).

It's just the regressive nature of political thinking. Ruminating the merits of either program is moot since they're both finished, and as a nation, we're effectively without direction (or funding) for a manned space program of any kind.

And no, pipe dreams & paying Russia to haul our pink little fannies into orbit doesn't count.

 

[Sanford]

And no, pipe dreams & paying Russia to haul our pink little fannies into orbit doesn't count.

Which is why I wish we would have kept the shuttle going at least until constellation was up and running, but no that had to be killed too. I did hear that they are still working with the Orion capsule though.

 

[Urwumpe]

Please ignore this stupid "we could have been at Mars by now". We couldn't. No Super Saturn V would have solved the technical problems that had to be solved for going to Mars. What the Apollo program gave you, was a maximum mission duration of 84 days. Not really close to the 700 days for a fast Mars mission.

But the ISS does help solving it. And the ISS was best assembled by a Space Shuttle. We already have missions of up to one year with the modular space stations of today.

And what is more important: We have already an ISS that is manned permanently since 2001 - for over ten years now.

Forgot all those idiotic talking about how the Apollo program could have resulted directly into going to Mars. Even von Braun didn't know how to do it, he only knew that it would have been possible. And there is no denying. It can work.

But no Apollo hardware based mars mission profile did really care about bringing humans to Mars. The first such mission profiles that addressed life support and maintenance requirements to make it more than a kamikaze mission, had been done based on the Space Shuttle.

 

[Ark]

I'd rather the Nixon administration never happened and NASA continued with the programs they had in mind at the end of Apollo.

 

[Scruce]

But the ISS does help solving it. And the ISS was best assembled by a Space Shuttle. We already have missions of up to one year with the modular space stations of today.

As the Russians demonstrated, capsules and unmanned supply rockets are sufficient to build and supply a space station.

Russian Proton Rockets put up Zarya, Zvezda, Pirs and Poisk modules up into orbit.

A Saturn V (which costs less than a Space Shuttle) could have put a payload the size of Unity into a Lunar orbit, as opposed to the Space Shuttle risking five to seven astronauts and a higher cost to put a Unity sized module up in LEO.

 

[Urwumpe]

I'd rather the Nixon administration never happened and NASA continued with the programs they had in mind at the end of Apollo.

Nixon was just president by chance, when NASA arrived at the conclusion that a Space Shuttle would be the better future for it. Nixon didn't wake up and say "We need a Space Shuttle". Engineers did it, mostly people who already worked on Dyna-soar.

And seriously: Compared to what NASA had on their "Phase 0"-Bench between 1983 and 2003, the Apollo fantasies had been pretty boring and unrealistic.

 

[Scruce]

Please ignore this stupid "we could have been at Mars by now". We couldn't. No Super Saturn V would have solved the technical problems that had to be solved for going to Mars. What the Apollo program gave you, was a maximum mission duration of 84 days. Not really close to the 700 days for a fast Mars mission.

Forgot all those idiotic talking about how the Apollo program could have resulted directly into going to Mars. Even von Braun didn't know how to do it, he only knew that it would have been possible. And there is no denying. It can work.

But no Apollo hardware based mars mission profile did really care about bringing humans to Mars. The first such mission profiles that addressed life support and maintenance requirements to make it more than a kamikaze mission, had been done based on the Space Shuttle.

What could have changed in the forty years that the Shuttle had been in operation? We could have developed:

Better Hardware - That came from proven, reliable and existing systems and the methods that were proved to work in the Apollo Missions.

Trained Astronauts - Those with experience (The Lunar 12) and the training to return to the Moon prepare for a manned Mars mission.

Better Rocket Systems - Instead of switching to new designs, we could have kept to what was true and proven. The Saturn V was proven to work, it worked 14 times to bring Astronauts into Lunar Orbit. Why did we have to switch to the Space Shuttle?

 

[Urwumpe]

As the Russians demonstrated, capsules and unmanned supply rockets are sufficient to build and supply a space station.

Russian Proton Rockets put up Zarya, Zvezda, Pirs and Poisk modules up into orbit.

A Saturn V (which costs less than a Space Shuttle) could have put a payload the size of Unity into a Lunar orbit, as opposed to the Space Shuttle risking five to seven astronauts and a higher cost to put a Unity sized module up in LEO.

Right - you can do that. But do you know what the problems of the Russians had been then?

All their space station modules had to be independent spacecraft, with all the needed and unneeded subsystems. Which meant for a few tiny research racks, you needed already a 25 ton module.

The US side with their Shuttle delivered modules was way more effective in terms of module costs and number of rack positions per volume or mass of the whole module.

The Russians still have no reusable tug to replace their old space station module concept and do something that the Space Shuttle did in terms of making space station modules more economic.

Also, the assembly operations of the ISS would have been way more complicated without the Space Shuttle - the Russians would not even have been able to do that with their own technology. The sad reality of the Russian modules: If it can't fit around a standard docking port, it is not possible to install as module.

 

[Scruce]

The US side with their Shuttle delivered modules was way more effective in terms of module costs and number of rack positions per volume or mass of the whole module.

That's perfectly fine, but what about the method of delivery? As I said before, you could get a modules the size of Unity and Destiny into Lunar Orbit for a less cost and lower risk that sending them up by Shuttle.

Also, the assembly operations of the ISS would have been way more complicated without the Space Shuttle - the Russians would not even have been able to do that with their own technology. The sad reality of the Russian modules: If it can't fit around a standard docking port, it is not possible to install as module.

Standard docking port? You mean the CBM?

We would not have ever needed a CBM if we would have kept to Apollo Hardware, the standard Hybrid Docking System (HDS) that is used by the Russian ISS modules, can be adapted to use with the Apollo Docking Mechanism.

CBM:

HDS:

EDIT: 800th post!

 

[Urwumpe]

What could have changed in the forty years that the Shuttle had been in operation? We could have developed:

Better Hardware - That came from proven, reliable and existing systems and the methods that were proved to work in the Apollo Missions.

Trained Astronauts - Those with experience (The Lunar 12) and the training to return to the Moon prepare for a manned Mars mission.

Better Rocket Systems - Instead of switching to new designs, we could have kept to what was true and proven. The Saturn V was proven to work, it worked 14 times to bring Astronauts into Lunar Orbit. Why did we have to switch to the Space Shuttle?

Better hardware as the shuttle? Not even the Space Shuttle had as many close calls as the Saturn V in the same number of flights beginning with the first.

The core of the Space Shuttle astronaut corps had been Apollo veterans. Not even a Saturn V mark II would have been better.

The Space shuttle as also the better rocket system as the Saturn V by far. Especially by the costs - can you even imagine how expensive the Saturn V had been? Even with the excessive costs for overhaul of the Shuttle, it was still a few hundred million USD cheaper than the Saturn V. And that does not even include the R&D costs that only got spread over 14 flights. The Saturn V was the brute force solution to the moon, nothing that had any use for economic spaceflight.

Look: The Saturn V did only 14 flights. The Space Shuttle did 24 equally "flawless" flights (Yes, that is ironic) before Challenger was destroyed. Like the Space Shuttle in its first 14 flights, you had many close-calls in the Saturn V, some even more dramatic as the exploding APUs on STS-9.

And stop repeating this fallacy of "proven design". 14 flights prove nothing at all. The Saturn V actually got its first big safety upgrade for its last three missions - before that upgrade, it nearly disassembled itself for a few missions.

The Space Shuttle did 135 flights until its retirement and achieved way more for the people on Earth than Apollo did its short life.

The big errors of the Space Shuttle were only two things: The extremely optimistic promises of the NASA managers, that not even the Space Shuttle managed to get, and the fact that it was used in operational environment, despite still being a prototype until its retirement. It never got the needed upgrades and improvements to become a full productive spacecraft. But then, only Soyuz is a spacecraft that achieved this state of managed capability.

---------- Post added at 07:28 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:20 PM ----------

That's perfectly fine, but what about the method of delivery? As I said before, you could get a modules the size of Unity and Destiny into Lunar Orbit for a less cost and lower risk that sending them up by Shuttle.

You can? Really? Now that is something that I would like to see.

Standard docking port?

Probe-Drogue docking system.

We would not have ever needed a CBM if we would have kept to Apollo Hardware, the standard Hybrid Docking System (HDS) that is used by the Russian ISS modules

Wrong. The HDS is used only for a few modules and is non-standard.
Also wrong, the CBM is not there because it was impossible to use Apollo hardware. The CBM is bigger as the old docking ports and especially designed for long-lasting connections.

Even with Apollo, you would have needed CBMs at one point - because CBMs are the only connection between spacecraft or modules, that permit transporting complete experiment racks through them.

Which is important because these racks are standard units and can carry bigger hardware as you can fit into a package that can be moved through Probe-Drogue docking units like Apollo or Soyuz use(d).

 

[Mojave]

Yes, I believe that the shuttle was worth it. The shuttle gave use what we needed which was to be able to reuse a spaceship over and over again, and allowed us to perform long tests in space.

 

[Scruce]

Look: The Saturn V did only 14 flights. The Space Shuttle did 24 equally "flawless" flights (Yes, that is ironic) before Challenger was destroyed. Like the Space Shuttle in its first 14 flights, you had many close-calls in the Saturn V, some even more dramatic as the exploding APUs on STS-9.

But the Saturn V can launch unmanned, the Shuttle needs a crew, adding to the risk of a Columbia or a Challenger disaster. A crew death like the one on STS-107 has extremely bad repercussions for NASA. But on the other hand, who remembers the failure of Pioneer 3? No one...because it was launched unmanned.

It boils down to the risk, would you risk seven astronauts on STS-107 to put a communication satellite in orbit, when you can do it unmanned atop commercially available boosters?

The Space Shuttle did 135 flights until its retirement and achieved way more for the people on Earth than Apollo did its short life.

But if the Saturn V would have been able to do more than 13 flights, then it sure would have done better for us in terms of long duration experience.

You can? Really? Now that is something that I would like to see.

Sure, a LEM is 32,399 lb (14,696 kg) in total weight, while Unity is 25,600 lb (11,612 kg). Lets say the weight used in the CSM would have been used for a booster to do LOI and Orbit Stabilization.

And stop repeating this fallacy of "proven design". 14 flights prove nothing at all. The Saturn V actually got its first big safety upgrade for its last three missions - before that upgrade, it nearly disassembled itself for a few missions.

You said it yourself, the Saturn V design was constantly making itself better. Why start from scratch on new designs?

 

[Urwumpe]

You said it yourself, the Saturn V design was constantly making itself better. Why start from scratch on new designs?

You terribly misunderstand me - the Saturn V had as much inertia in its design process as the Space Shuttle had. The Pogo problem had been known from early test flights and it needed many more flights until the fix was eventually installed.

And this was just a tiny upgrade, the shuttle did see much bigger upgrades in its lifetime, simply because it flew for more than just 5 years.

EDIT: And being able to fly unmanned is no advantage. Many more and cheaper rockets than the Saturn V can also fly unmanned. It is much harder to make something fly manned.

 

[T.Neo]

Gee, where do I start;

- It might have been better, if NASA took a more incremental, lower-risk approach to STS.

- It might have been better, if STS did not have some of the requirements in it that it did, due to Air Force involvement.

- It might have been better, if NASA did not promise the sky immediately with what was an experimental, entirely new concept.

- It might have been better, if NASA did not attempt to combine a high performance, staged-combustion engine and reusability on the first try.

- It might have been better, if there was post-Saturn "1970s EELV" technology development alongside STS, as a backup.

- It might have been better, if there was less political involvement in STS development.

But even within what we got, I can think of several things;

- It would have been nice, if we saw some proposed upgrades to STS, like the ASRM.

- It would have been nice, if Main Engine refurbishment was simplified somewhat (the Health Monitoring System on the Block III SSMEs would have done this).

- It would have been nice, if we saw some of the proposed Orbiter upgrades, such as electrical APUs and non-toxic propellants.

- It would have been nice, if we saw attempts to improve the ET debris/TPS fragility problem.

And probably a whole long list of other things as well.

But keeping Saturn around would have achieved extremely little. It sure would not have gotten us to Mars.

You need far, far more than just a big rocket, to get to Mars. This is why the current heavy lift vehicle being developed by NASA will never, ever get to Mars. It is simply not possible... unless actual Mars mission elements and study are mandated and funded, of course.

Even the Saturn Ib was incredibly expensive for what it did. The Saturn V did something that is dubiously useful.

If the push to the Moon was not as urgent, I bet that the first manned lunar landing would have been launched to LEO on three to four Saturn C-3 vehicles, as advocated by the Saturn V's designer. And we would have gained valuable knowledge about on-orbit integration that we still do not posess.

If the Apollo program was continued to this day, sending two-person teams to the lunar surface? I doubt we would have learnt much.

If NASA pursued evolved expendables in the 1970s? I doubt manned spaceflight would have progressed in the same way it did in reality (at least without appreciable in-space elements for human exploration).

I still don't think you need a space shuttle to assemble things on orbit. The Russian way isn't the only way... it's just that the other alternatives to a spaceplane space-tug, have never been experimented with in reality.

Of course the Shuttle was an utter failure. It was advertised to do so many things, and it did not achieve those goals. If I was a customer and I bought STS as a product, I'd want a refund.

But it doesn't matter, because you don't need to be resoundingly successful to be beneficial or useful. The failures of STS are lessons, that anyone designing a RLV in the future ought to look at and learn from.

The worst failure of STS is that there is nothing being developed to replace it, learn from those mistakes, and improve on those weaknesses...

 

[Scruce]

simply because it flew for more than just 5 years.

There you are, the Saturn could have gone on for longer, maybe using less "budget intensive" launches like two a year instead of six to match the Space Shuttle.

We don't know what would have happened in this alternate universe though?
Maybe they invented a way to get to mars using Saturn V upgrades.

We don't and never will know how it would have turned out though...

---------- Post added at 19:23 ---------- Previous post was at 19:21 ----------

EDIT: And being able to fly unmanned is no advantage. Many more and cheaper rockets than the Saturn V can also fly unmanned. It is much harder to make something fly manned.

Yes, that is actually what I am actually trying to point out. The Space Shuttle needs crews, the Saturn does not.