Space Shuttle a Failure?

[packman]

Points out that perhaps the Space Shuttle, which America is proud to point out as a glowing success, was really a boondoogle and a waste of lives,energy and money which never really accomplished its intended mission -


http://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/26j2bq/5_facts_about_the_space_shuttle_that_may_surprise/

[PoliticAverse]

1. It failed its original mission to be a cost-effective, safe, 'space truck'. n/t

[hunter]

2. Yes, it was.

A wretched machine, like so much of the engineering of the time -- cars and nuclear power plants that were crap, bridges that fall down, wars that were pointless. But U.S.A. "exceptionalism" blinded us to the reality.

[Xipe Totec]

6. That's why superior technology from other countries has replaced the shuttle

Right?

Like for example... Um... Ah...

I got nothing.

Help me out here.

[hunter]

9. Why would we want to "replace" something so dangerous?

I think the shuttle proved that sending people into space in a heavy cargo vehicle is a bad idea.

In space especially, it is best not to violate the KISS rule.

The bigger a spacecraft is the more likely it is to explode going up or burn coming down. The Space Shuttle did both.

[Xipe Totec]

11. So, nothing?

Pathetic.

[hunter]

15. What's "superior" about a technology that kills astronauts?

Seriously.

There are better ways of pushing the boundaries of science and technology forward.

What's wrong with launching people and cargo separately?

[Art_from_Ark]

21. Three astronauts were burned to death in an Apollo rocket in 1967

but that didn't stop the US from going to the moon.

The technology was superior in that the US made it to the moon and back, safely, the next year, then landed on the moon and made it back, safely, the year after that. Although the Russians tried, they never came close to accomplishing that. And certainly no one else had the technology.

[baldguy]

19. Are you equally as willing to get rid of cars, planes & ships?

Those things have killed far more people in far less hazardous environments than any crewed space launch vehicle from any country ever has.

[CBGLuthier]

20. 2 out of the total 135 missions killed all of their occupants.

Do the math with cars, planes and ships and if it is even close you may have a point but we all know you don't.

Bad design. Bad management. Bad america.

[baldguy]

22. Actually, there have been about 300 missions, 5 of which lost their crew.

And those are certainly odds that Wiley Post or Glen Edwards would have accepted.

[hunter]

24. Why, yes, thank you, I am, but mostly for environmental reasons.

Especially cars. They kill, maim, and blow greenhouse gases and carcinogens.

[Agschmid]

3. I disagree I think much of the associated research which led to products we use today is important.

[n2doc]

4. No, it wasn't

Has any other country come close to having something with its capabilities, let alone exceed them? Yes, it did have issues (so did Apollo and all other major rocket platforms). Yes, it could have been better. No it wasn't cheap. And cutting costs led to both of it's major catastrophes. I think it was more the victim of inflated expectations, sort of like expecting that we would have a giant space ring above earth by 2001. Maybe had we given NASA the same resources we gave the DOD, some of those expectations might have been met.

Russia is still using 1960's tech to go up in space. China can barely match Gemini. The private co's have yet to match Mercury.

[hunter]

12. Yep. And Kalashnikov automatic rifles are still pretty popular too.

They don't have to be pretty, just reliable.

SpaceX has far surpassed the capabilities of the Mercury program.

[n2doc]

13. Spacex hasn't put a single human into space

I suppose they will get there, eventually. Nasa did it with 1950's tech, in far less time.


Not arguing that technology hasn't improved over what the shuttle had, in every way, but no one has yet built a working machine that exceeds it's capabilities. I think those that denigrate it are doing a disservice to those who built it and kept it going.

[hunter]

16. If SpaceX was willing to accept the risks of the Mercury program...

... they could do it. They are rightfully cautious, no?

I'm not denigrating anyone who worked in the Shuttle program. The program failed in the political process at the earliest stages.

My grandfather was an engineer in the Apollo Project, BTW.

One of my wife and my earliest dates was hanging out at JPL with friends, and dinner afterwards. We saw the Galileo spacecraft up close. They were still fussing with it while the shuttle was delayed again and again.

[caraher]

5. The binary thinking required for a yes/no answer is inappropriate

It was a technological triumph in a rudderless program. When it was conceived the expectation was that it would support a robust manned spaceflight program that the government no longer wished to fully fund. It was in many ways a bridge to nowhere; something like ISS today is essentially what they'd hoped to put in orbit in the '80s.

[Jenoch]

7. If anyone thinks the U.S. Space Shuttle was a failure,

do an internet search on the Soviet Space Shuttle Program.

[hunter]

10. They wisely abandoned it.

[El Supremo]

8. And so was the Apollo program.

After all, we went to the moon and didn't find anything of value.

[Leme]

14. After we proved the Moon was not made of cheese, much was just a waste

We could have used that brainpower and money for local, earthly things. Things within the gravitational pull of the earth, with occasional excursions beyond.

[davidpdx]

17. No, the Space Shuttle was not a failure

I grew up watching the Space Shuttle go up from the time I was about 10 until the program ended a few years ago. Often the launches were in the early hours of the morning (I grew up on the west coast) and I would get up at 4 or 5 in the morning to watch the launch (and often the landings as well). For many people like myself as a kid, the Space Shuttle provided endless possibilities. I dreamed of being an astronaut growing up. The Space Shuttle program also created technologies that improved and saved lives.

Did the program have problems? Yes. Did people die? Yes. Out of 135 launches 133 were successful and 2 failed. For a 30 year program I would say that did more good than harm.

Personally I would have liked to see the program go through 2016, but all of the vehicles were getting old: Atlantis 25; Discovery 26; Endeavor 19, Enterprise (test vehicle).

[jakeXT]

18. It kind of lives on in the X-37, and the Pentagon has an "infinite" amount of money

The multibillion-dollar X-37, in development since the mid-1990s, is a re-usable, unmanned spacecraft that enters orbit atop a standard Air Force heavy rocket and re-enters the atmosphere as a glider. The new craft is similar in layout to the (now-retired) manned Space Shuttle but only quarter the size — just 30 feet from tip to tail.
https://medium.com/war-is-boring/ade275a9ef85

According to GlobalSecurity.org’s John Pike, the U.S. military “could even be using the cloak of mystery to deliberately bamboozle and confuse rival militaries.” Pike told Space.com that “the X-37B and HTV-2 projects could represent the tip of a space weapons program hidden within the Pentagon’s secret ‘black budget,’ or they might be nothing more than smoke and mirrors.”

Pike said that current work “leaves plenty of room for misinterpretation or even outright deception, which could be a ploy to distract other nations with military space projects.”

“‘One of them could be a deception program and the other could be the spitting image of the real thing,’ Pike noted. He said that such misdirection could force other nations’ militaries to waste money chasing down dead ends.”

While Pike’s assertions sound plausible, given the Pentagon’s track record and an annual $50 billion black budget directed towards research on new weapons and surveillance systems, the X-37B, the Falcon HTV-2 or other systems on the drawing board would certainly be useful assets if the military chose to deploy them as offensive weapons.

http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/05/black-world-space-shuttle-air-force-raises-the-stakes-for-a-new-arms-race/

[hunter]

23. The Pentagon played a large part in screwing the Shuttle up.

There are plenty of reasons the U.S.A. ought to get rid of the Air Force -- discharge the religious freaks, incompetents, tweakers, misogynists... and then reassign all the competent people who have suffered under the flying penis mentality to other services.

In a U.S. military establishment that reeks of bullshit, the Air Force (especially the nuclear "Triad&quot is extreme bullshit. If not dissolution entirely, the Air Force needs serious reforming.

Ah, but now we are getting political and this is not GD.

Star Trek: Enterprise, or even "Star Trek: Voyager, are preferable to the recent J.J. Abrams Star Trek "reboot" which blows chunks. I hope Abram's Star Wars reboot is wildly successful and they dump the vomit he left on the Star Trek Universe into a black hole, never to be seen again.