It was way past it's prime and needed to be retired. I respect and understand that it was an amazing vehicle, but it's time had come. We should have been developing other forms of transport during the past 40 years; we just let the program stagnate with this thing.

For the amount of money that has been thrown at NASA for development of the next generation of rockets, they should have been able to come up with something. (Though I do recognize that their budgets have been slashed, and that's not okay either.)

The space shuttle was an over-priced tool for nationalistic fervor, and we're probably better off with it retired. Yeah, it was cool, but there were and are better methods of getting payload and people into orbit. That NASA and congress dithered about finding a replacement sucks, but private companies are already hot on the trail of our next spacecraft.

TLDW

Meatzilla: [conservativedatingsite.com image 430x430]
[www.politifake.org image 430x430]

Thread shiatters gotta thread shiat

Drew, seriously? Do these idiots pay you extra?

Dont' rip on the Space Shuttle.

There were lots of times when it didn't kill the entire crew.

For those of us that miss the badass "boldly go" days of the Apollo program, SpaceX will be headed to the ISS at the end of this month.

They have a ship on the drawing board that can make it to the moon in two launches. They want to go to Mars, and have said so from day one.

Knowing them, they'll do it.

Meh Shuttle was low orbit we should have been working on more deep space projects.

It's a machine that went nowhere really fast and did that at an outrageous cost in money and lives. Get over it. I've taken longer bike rides than this thing went "up". The difference is during my bike rides there was stuff along the way *and* a destination.

dustlesswalnut: It was way past it's prime and needed to be retired. I respect and understand that it was an amazing vehicle, but it's time had come. We should have been developing other forms of transport during the past 40 years; we just let the program stagnate with this thing.

For the amount of money that has been thrown at NASA for development of the next generation of rockets, they should have been able to come up with something. (Though I do recognize that their budgets have been slashed, and that's not okay either.)

They have, but every last one of them has been scrapped for various reasons, many of them political.

DarthBrooks

+1

The shuttle was a spectacular bit of engineering, but ultimately way too expensive and dangerous for what it did. It's only unique capability was that it could bring big things back from orbit. And it turned out we really didn't need that capability.

It would have been far cheaper and just as useful to launch a space tug permanently into orbit, and service it in orbit (refuel/repair/etc.), give it a manipulator arm, living quarters, and use it for building the space station, service Hubble, etc. Launch capsules, cargo toward it, meet up with the cargo, and do your thing.

Overly expensive "Space Truck" designed by a committee.

Will miss it all the same

Andromeda: And then I realized that he was born in the 1930s as were all the other Apollo astronauts if not earlier, and we're not too far off from a world where no one knows what it's like to visit the moon. That is a thought to make me cry.

That's pretty much the best lead in for an XKCD, ever. Link (new window). If you aren't familiar, mouseover for additional text.

The shuttle was designed after Apollo, where a re-usable vehicle sounded like a good idea.

We didn't predict the siliicon revolution of the 1980's. Or that it would make satellites cheaper than the cost to fly a manned mission to go get them.

We also seem to have forgotten why Apollo was manned in the first place - it HAD to be, to beat the Russians to the Moon, so they couldn't legally claim it for themselves. Men in space were a source of nationalistic pride, but not needed for anything at all.

Once we won the Moon, we needed to keep going to Mars, not stick around in low Earth orbit wasting money and time on easy missions with over-engineered equipment.

Anyway, it's over. Now we can get back to proper space exploration, and send men to other worlds.

dustlesswalnut: It was way past it's prime and needed to be retired. I respect and understand that it was an amazing vehicle, but it's time had come. We should have been developing other forms of transport during the past 40 years; we just let the program stagnate with this thing.

For the amount of money that has been thrown at NASA for development of the next generation of rockets, they should have been able to come up with something. (Though I do recognize that their budgets have been slashed, and that's not okay either.)

"Hey! Look at this new thing we just came up with!"
"That's no good! You started during the previous administration and he'll take credit for it! Cancel it!"
"What?! But we've already spent all this..."
"CANCEL IT."
"Sigh. Fine. what should we do?"
"Something NEW!"
"Look at NASA. All they do is waste money."

erveek: dustlesswalnut: It was way past it's prime and needed to be retired. I respect and understand that it was an amazing vehicle, but it's time had come. We should have been developing other forms of transport during the past 40 years; we just let the program stagnate with this thing.

For the amount of money that has been thrown at NASA for development of the next generation of rockets, they should have been able to come up with something. (Though I do recognize that their budgets have been slashed, and that's not okay either.)

"Hey! Look at this new thing we just came up with!"
"That's no good! You started during the previous administration and he'll take credit for it! Cancel it!"
"What?! But we've already spent all this..."
"CANCEL IT."
"Sigh. Fine. what should we do?"
"Something NEW!"
"Look at NASA. All they do is waste money."

Now now, every few years they kill off some people as well

+1 for the copious use of the new BSG soundtrack.

/Caught some First Contact in there too...

erveek: dustlesswalnut: It was way past it's prime and needed to be retired. I respect and understand that it was an amazing vehicle, but it's time had come. We should have been developing other forms of transport during the past 40 years; we just let the program stagnate with this thing.

For the amount of money that has been thrown at NASA for development of the next generation of rockets, they should have been able to come up with something. (Though I do recognize that their budgets have been slashed, and that's not okay either.)

"Hey! Look at this new thing we just came up with!"
"That's no good! It's really stupid, wasteful, horribly under-budgeted and slow! Cancel it!"
"What?! But we've already spent all this..."
"CANCEL IT."
"Sigh. Fine. what should we do?"
"Something not retarded!"
"Whar has teh PORK gone? WHAR?!"

FTFY

a different time, you understand. NASSA (new window) is no exception.
/long, but well worth it
//skip to 3:56 if you really must

studebaker hoch: The shuttle was designed after Apollo, where a re-usable vehicle sounded like a good idea.

We didn't predict the siliicon revolution of the 1980's. Or that it would make satellites cheaper than the cost to fly a manned mission to go get them.

We also seem to have forgotten why Apollo was manned in the first place - it HAD to be, to beat the Russians to the Moon, so they couldn't legally claim it for themselves. Men in space were a source of nationalistic pride, but not needed for anything at all.

Once we won the Moon, we needed to keep going to Mars, not stick around in low Earth orbit wasting money and time on easy missions with over-engineered equipment.

Anyway, it's over. Now we can get back to proper space exploration, and send men to other worlds.

Actually, what the shuttle didn't count on was politics.
Some idiot tried to push a one size fits all mentality ( the kind that's crippled every program since ) because it fit the voodoo programmatics of the time.

A reusable space plane, a dc3 of low orbit, is the perfect thing for expanding that frontier. unfortunately it's not what got built. They made a 90 ton capsule in all the correct states but with none of the correct stats.
The final mistake was in never allowing it to evolve or be replaced.

studebaker hoch: The shuttle was designed after Apollo, where a re-usable vehicle sounded like a good idea...

We also seem to have forgotten why Apollo was manned in the first place - it HAD to be, to beat the Russians to the Moon...

Seems like a good time to post this short video most people have not seen:

The Russian Space Shuttle Launch

Hell, they even retrofitted it to take off without rockets and fly like a jet

At least some of the music in this video is from Star Trek: First Contact (listen around the Challenger breakup segment.)

Does it show the pile of money we were wasting with every shuttle flight?

way south: studebaker hoch: The shuttle was designed after Apollo, where a re-usable vehicle sounded like a good idea.

We didn't predict the siliicon revolution of the 1980's. Or that it would make satellites cheaper than the cost to fly a manned mission to go get them.

We also seem to have forgotten why Apollo was manned in the first place - it HAD to be, to beat the Russians to the Moon, so they couldn't legally claim it for themselves. Men in space were a source of nationalistic pride, but not needed for anything at all.

Once we won the Moon, we needed to keep going to Mars, not stick around in low Earth orbit wasting money and time on easy missions with over-engineered equipment.

Anyway, it's over. Now we can get back to proper space exploration, and send men to other worlds.

Actually, what the shuttle didn't count on was politics.
Some idiot tried to push a one size fits all mentality ( the kind that's crippled every program since ) because it fit the voodoo programmatics of the time.

A reusable space plane, a dc3 of low orbit, is the perfect thing for expanding that frontier. unfortunately it's not what got built. They made a 90 ton capsule in all the correct states but with none of the correct stats.
The final mistake was in never allowing it to evolve or be replaced.

Yep.

Making it the sole workhorse of the American space program nearly crippled our space access ability when the Challenger went up like a Roman candle. That was the only way to justify the program, though. Even that was based on crappy logic. We can only make 24 external tanks per year, and you are calling for an initial capability of 50 launches per year, and you intentionally took the Saturn-V based reusable booster off the table? WTF?

So we retired the money-sucking project which did nothing well, and did science particularly not well, and now we have more money for actual space science?

Well, bye.

Music included Blue Man Group and "Battle without Honor or Humanity" from "Kill Bill".

They really glossed over the history of the shuttle's development and all the trade-offs that were made in the design evolution. Some of which led to those fatal accidents. No one can say if the earlier, more modest Max Faget design would have been accident-free, but it was built of titanium and boron, not melty aluminum, it certainly didn't use tiles, a side-mounted external tank, or SRB's. Unfortunately, the DOD was NASA's silent partner on this design once Congress and the Presidents cut the funding. And DOD wanted a frigging space dreadnaught of a spacecraft. Which it then barely ever used.

Andromeda: DarthBrooks: Andromeda: sigh...

On the one hand I'm very sad that there is no longer a space shuttle, but I'm still more sad that I missed out on the Apollo program with every fiber of my being.

On the other I am still much more saddened that we don't have any way to go into space now period than anything else. It was time for the shuttle to go after 30 years, but it was a national embarrassment that there was no next generation rocket there to take its place when its time was up.

The Space Shuttle was a death trap from the get-go. It's good for it to be gone. The next generation of spacecraft will have an abort mode for *every* phase of flight, and won't expose their reentry surfaces to launch debris impacts.

SpaceX will launch Dragon at the end of the year, and it'll be manned by next year. The Orion spacecraft will be launched within the next 1000 days. It's a much shorter lapse than the 1975-81 era between Apollo and Shuttle.

/sorry you missed Apollo. It was magnificent.
/Saw Apollo X and Apollo XVII launch live, in-person. Won't see the likes of that again in my lifetime.

Yeah, two weeks ago I was lucky enough to meet Apollo 15 astronaut Al Worden who was in town for a book signing. He was an awesome guy, the sort who you'd hope all astronauts were, albeit not above telling me how he saw 10^6 stars while on the far side of the moon. I don't think I'd ever been as jealous of anyone I'd met as I was of him...

And then I realized that he was born in the 1930s as were all the other Apollo astronauts if not earlier, and we're not too far off from a world where no one knows what it's like to visit the moon. That is a thought to make me cry.

If there were more people like you, awestruck by explorers and scientists, the world would be a better place. Good on you. :)

tl;dw

jvl: So we retired the money-sucking project which did nothing well, and did science particularly not well, and now we have more money for actual space science?

Well, bye.

God I wish it was that simple.
...No, they put the money into another soul sucking project that probably wont fly. They took the Constellation plan and scaled back the payload capacity then removed its initial destinations while killing development of the exploration vehicles it was supposed to transport. They also kicked the deadlines back ten to fifteen years while cutting the NASA budget to be sure they never make it.
But its built in all the proper states, so there's no complaints.
Well, to be accurate, some parts will be built and some parts will be vultured from forty year old shuttles.

The only hope left for NASA is in CCDEV, which also isn't getting the needed funding.
Meanwhile, The James Webb telescope is eating the science budget (Because it was also short funded all these years).

In short, the program is a mess and Congress is taking the opportunity to milk it for cash.
Moving forward will probably mean outsourcing the exploration work to private companies through another means.

All you mourners of the Space Shuttle, please remember that the program assumed a huge number of launches per year to enable some sort of economic justification to Congress in the 1970's. That and USAF participation that was hardly ever comfortable to either NASA and the USAF, but drove requirements for the 65,000 lb payload requirement, made for a very unfortunate set of engineering choices. Next, the SSME's never were as robust as promised and had to be rebuilt after every launch. Throw in the thermal tiles that also could not meet all their engineering requirements and demanded frequent repair and replacement. Can we ever forget the solid rocket motors that failed? Then there's the crew training requirements and Texas politics that maintained the status quo for too long. We can't overlook the safety requirements placed upon every payload that increased launch costs just to be on the Shuttle. That gives the country a vehicle that cost at least $500M per launch, was of dubious reliability, and underperformed. The Shuttle program pointed out the enormous difficulty with (almost) fully reusable vehicles. Sure, the launches were spectacular and awe inspiring. Sure, it's fun to think of the Shuttle as the first step towards a Star Trek society, but that fantasy won't come true for a very long time if ever. Human space flight is enormously difficult because the crews must have a reasonable expectation of long term survival. That means radiation shielding, food and water, a breathable atmosphere, waste disposal, and a host of other things that make life possible in space. From what I've seen, there is scarcely any justification for human space travel. The science can be done at least as well robotically and for less money. Humans in low earth orbit can provide some observational capability, but so what. So can unmanned spacecraft. Then there's the political argument that can always ask of NASA, "what's the hurry?". Every aspect of space exploration is a political decision because someone has to pay for it. Let's get over all this "hand wringing" and name calling. The "glory days" are over for the U.S. for a while until some really good reason comes along for us to redouble our efforts at human space travel. PS, the recent SpaceEx approach for fully reusable stages may have merit and wonderful application for a set of Mars sample return missions.

studebaker hoch: For those of us that miss the badass "boldly go" days of the Apollo program, SpaceX will be headed to the ISS at the end of this month.

They have a ship on the drawing board that can make it to the moon in two launches. They want to go to Mars, and have said so from day one.

Knowing them, they'll do it.

I hate to tell you this but I do believe that the SpaceX Dragon launch has been delayed until possibly early next year but maybe in December.

rwfan: studebaker hoch: For those of us that miss the badass "boldly go" days of the Apollo program, SpaceX will be headed to the ISS at the end of this month.

They have a ship on the drawing board that can make it to the moon in two launches. They want to go to Mars, and have said so from day one.

Knowing them, they'll do it.

I hate to tell you this but I do believe that the SpaceX Dragon launch has been delayed until possibly early next year but maybe in December.

Meh, that's just normal schedule shuffling. It's not being delayed because of any problem on SpaceX's part.

rdu_voyager: rwfan: studebaker hoch: For those of us that miss the badass "boldly go" days of the Apollo program, SpaceX will be headed to the ISS at the end of this month.

They have a ship on the drawing board that can make it to the moon in two launches. They want to go to Mars, and have said so from day one.

Knowing them, they'll do it.

I hate to tell you this but I do believe that the SpaceX Dragon launch has been delayed until possibly early next year but maybe in December.

Meh, that's just normal schedule shuffling. It's not being delayed because of any problem on SpaceX's part.

Uh no, it's not a normal schedule shuffle but not SpaceX's fault either. It's right there in the headline of the first article I linked to:

Soyuz Failure Likely Delays SpaceX...

I get alternately angry and depressed that we've spent over 30 years voluntarily exiled to low-Earth orbit.
I suspect I post this in every thread about the space shuttle, but there it is.

rwfan

I hate to tell you this but I do believe that the SpaceX Dragon launch has been delayed until possibly early next year but maybe in December.

That link is from September.

Gee I wonder how hard the Russians are pressuring NASA to "delay SpaceX for safety reasons". hahahaha. Assholes.

NASA says fly anyway:

A NASA spokesman said there are ways to permit Dragon to launch without waiting for the second manned Soyuz.

"We have the capability to handle the rendezvous, grapple and berthing of SpaceX's Dragon whenever they are able to launch their vehicle to the space station," NASA spokesman Kelly Humphries said Sept. 15. "We have opportunities for training on the ground and in orbit for that activity."

The ISS has room for more than one ship at a time. No shuttle launches in the way either.

SpaceX of course is being the bigger man here and is just agreeing to whatever schedule NASA tells them to use.

I expected them to slip it a big, launches just do that. If it goes into the new year, so what. 2012 is less than two months away.

studebaker hoch: rwfan

I hate to tell you this but I do believe that the SpaceX Dragon launch has been delayed until possibly early next year but maybe in December.

That link is from September.

yes, yes it is. It's the most recent article I could find about the schedule. Did you find anything more recent? If so please post.

Gee I wonder how hard the Russians are pressuring NASA to "delay SpaceX for safety reasons". hahahaha. Assholes.

NASA says fly anyway:

A NASA spokesman said there are ways to permit Dragon to launch without waiting for the second manned Soyuz.

"We have the capability to handle the rendezvous, grapple and berthing of SpaceX's Dragon whenever they are able to launch their vehicle to the space station," NASA spokesman Kelly Humphries said Sept. 15. "We have opportunities for training on the ground and in orbit for that activity."

The ISS has room for more than one ship at a time. No shuttle launches in the way either.

SpaceX of course is being the bigger man here and is just agreeing to whatever schedule NASA tells them to use.

I expected them to slip it a big, launches just do that. If it goes into the new year, so what. 2012 is less than two months away.

I have no idea what the Russians are doing regarding the schedule. However, for SpaceX, the customer is NASA and I am sure that for them the customer is always right. My previous comments were in no way disparaging SpaceX (which seems to be the way they were taken). I was just pointing out that, for those of us looking forward to the launch, unfortunately we are going to have to wait a little longer.

The Russians wanted to delay SpaceX as much as possible to give them a lead with their own Soyuz replacement, but Roscosmos recently announced that program was going to be back-burnered for a while.

Meanwhile, Phobos-Grunt is stuck in Earth orbit due to some glitch. What IS it with the Russians and the Curse of Mars?