Inside a Last-Ditch Effort To Save the Space Shuttle 134
SkinnyGuy writes "NASA's Space Shuttle could have flown again as early as 2014 if a secret effort to repurpose them for commercial flight had succeeded. From the article: 'Though secret, the plan quickly gained support and Dittmar described how funding and interest grew dramatically. "Initially skeptical," she wrote, "people became caught up in the vision of a Commercial Space Shuttle funded entirely by private and institutional investors and put back into service to shape new markets." ...In the end, two crucial factors made it all but impossible to revive the shuttle program as a commercial enterprise or in any fashion. One was that so much of the Shuttle infrastructure has already been shifted to other efforts that the revival team could never pull together sufficient funds to return those resources to the Space Shuttles. Two: The SLS program.'"
Re:Three (Score:5, Informative)
Not only is the cost prohibitive but restarting Shuttle Operations would require, in essence, taking virtually all the support personnel (the thousands of them), hire them off of whatever they are doing now and re organize them back in the Shuttle team. The system is incredibly complicated and relied on a truly enormous ground team to manage it. That's what I don't get about Dittmar - she was the lead for that group. Unless she felt she really could hire everybody or come up with a smaller, more 'efficient' group, it was never going to fly.
It isn't just the hardware. The wetware is probably more important.
Same reason we couldn't restart the Saturn V - by the time you rebuild the engineering team, you might as well start with a new design.
First learn how the Shuttle came about... (Score:5, Informative)
... and why it was designed the way it was. What was their intentions (flight every two weeks) but what resulted (astronomical operating costs). Cannot really blame those that made the decisions as Shuttle was the ***first*** attempt for a lowcost reusable spaceship. It was a huge effort requiring lots of work and tough decisions, the kind that mentally cripples most folks*. Consider the first "reusable" airplanes for transport of multiple passengers and cargo had their host of problems (i.e. Tri-motors).
Here it from the guys that made the decisions in these MIT lectures (there are many, below just a few). What moved me the most is much of talent, infrastructure and companies that designed, built, and tested items of the Shuttle no longer exists. I say give it up on trying to revive Shuttle. First rebuilt the industrial base, otherwise we will struggling like Korolev trying to get resources.
MIT 16.885J Aircraft Systems Engineering, Fall 2005
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/aeronautics-and-astronautics/16-885j-aircraft-systems-engineering-fall-2005/lecture-notes/ [mit.edu]
Lecture 1: The Origins of the Space Shuttle by Dale Myers
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/aeronautics-and-astronautics/16-885j-aircraft-systems-engineering-fall-2005/lecture-notes/lecture-1/ [mit.edu]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiYhQtGpRhc [youtube.com]
Lecture 2: Space Shuttle History by Aaron Cohen
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/aeronautics-and-astronautics/16-885j-aircraft-systems-engineering-fall-2005/lecture-notes/lecture-2/ [mit.edu]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJ2H06sseLM [youtube.com]
Lecture 3: Orbiter Sub-System Design by Aaron Cohen
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/aeronautics-and-astronautics/16-885j-aircraft-systems-engineering-fall-2005/lecture-notes/lecture-3/ [mit.edu]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDMbBjH8ZSs [youtube.com]
Lecture 4: The Decision to Build the Shuttle by John Logsdon
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/aeronautics-and-astronautics/16-885j-aircraft-systems-engineering-fall-2005/lecture-notes/lecture-4/ [mit.edu]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOAyzURugaw [youtube.com]
*I talked to someone that worked on wind tunnel tests of various Shuttle configurations in the early 70s (his work was dynamic pressure measurements from shockwaves). There was a period when people were working double shifts in the wind tunnel facility (16 hours on, 8 hours off instead of usual day, swing, grave shift crews) while people at NASA HQ were arguing with the OMB. Idea of SRBs meant they drilled holes and mounted SRB segments on the ET portion of wind tunnel model (didn't bother to remove it from test section for work in machine shop). This double-shift work went on and on. Finally after (I think it was months) and on a Friday, they said "alright, we can go back to regular single shifts and will see you Monday." This person I spoke with said him and another guy he worked with went to have some pizza and beer. The other guy died the next day, he was only 49 years old.
Re:Seems like an obvious money-maker to me (Score:5, Informative)
The shuttle was brilliant in it's moment
Not even that really. The Shuttle was a compromise between two programs: one for a cheap reusable launcher, and one for a craft that could be launched in one orbit, cross track itself over the soviet union and then back again to land. Dumping this cross-track requirement onto the shuttle crippled the program to achieving the original launcher goals, and the damn thing never did go sneaking over the USSR anyway!
Thing sort of went thus: The shuttle design was meant to launch a lot, and thus amortise the up-front costs over many launches to launch cheap. The Air Force wanted to get in on this cheap launcher, but needed it to do some Other Stuff. The up-front costs rose. The increased cost meant fewer launches, and the design changes meant fewer launches. The cost per launch rose dramatically.