Vehicle: The Space Shuttle

[Cranius]

Due for re-entry.

[sparky]

Crap!

I'm with Rutan.

The space shuttle is a white elephant, picked by Nixon because it was the option that bought the most aerospace industry votes through supplying jobs. They should've gone with the more elegant, efficient and generally cooler X-programme.

[Rimbaud III]

I'm amazed that this space shittle is as old as it is!
It's as old as this Pontiac Fiero:



And it's the same age as what this guy spent much of the Eighties riding round in:



Could be NOT CRAP because it's a rare display of recycling, or CRAP because this recycling might be compromising the safety of its human payload...

[PEPPER!]

hey they have an interesting job next week, which is to fix the Hubble space telescope. good luck astronaut dudes.

[fishingrhod]

shittle.

[John C5]

One of my team-mates who is also a rocket enthusiast who builds rockets (he has an explosives licence) recently blatantly threw a game in a match in order to go home and watch the lead-up to the space shuttle launch. We lost the match. The launch was postponed.

Crap!

[PEPPER!]

shittle.

well yeah it's a wasteful design. even reusing the frame of the main craft, they burn up more fuel and resources with the shuttles than the rockets did, and it's 1970s technology. as I heard it they were afraid the Russians were making a space plane so they said 'dang we gotta have us a space plane too.' so it boils down to comparing dicks really.

anyway I'm happy they are getting a few more years out of Hubble. that telescope is one of the few things NASA has done right in the last 30 years. I'm also happy they have plans to replace it. when Bush was king they said they weren't going to do it. perhaps I should have made a new thread about the telescope.

[FuzzBob]

That thing was a ghettotech death trap 25 years ago. Ask Christa McAuliffe.

When every recent mission has to include a spacewalk to repair the heat-refractory tiles, I'd say it's long past decommissioning time.

Plus it looks like it was designed by Step 2. Spacecraft were much more elegant in the '60s.

CRAP.

[Colonel Panic]

I'll give it a NOT CRAP for allowing astronauts the opportunity to spend lots of time moving around and functioning in space without being confined inside a cramped capsule. This has led to a lot of valuable biological information about the possibilities of life in space. Prior to the ISS, the SS served as the main platform for lots of other space-based research, as well as deployment and repair of artificial satellites which could not have been done otherwise.

If you look at the failure/death rate associated with the Shuttle in terms of the number of successful missions it has carried out, it's still miles ahead of any other space travel system in history.

Not to mention that reusable spacecraft are a necessary step in the future development of space travel.

NOT CRAP

[eliya]

You get to fly in space, across the earth, see the world from the fucking outside! So you die when you enter the atmosphere, big fucking deal.
That's probably the awesomest way to die, what's better? cancer? car wreck? If I could choose, I'd definitely choose a space travel and then quick death by burning.


How many space shuttles crashed/burned upon entrance to the atmosphere anyhow? I know about Columbia, and The Challenger disintegrated while taking off. That was crap, they didn't even get to be in Space!

Not Crap.

[Chromodynamic]

...If you look at the failure/death rate associated with the Shuttle in terms of the number of successful missions it has carried out, it's still miles ahead of any other space travel system in history...

The failure/death rate is not nearly as good as it is supposed to be. It's in serious need of a redesign, good job for all the work it's done, certainly, but the shuttle has always been a very precarious ENDEAVOR (hah!).

[big_dave]

Crap.

Killed the space programme, didn't look cool enough to inspire enough kids to be astronauts.

[SecondEdition]

ghettotech death trap

Would totally see this band, in fact considering starting this band.

[PEPPER!]

hey here's the skinny on the Buran spacecraft aka the Russian shuttle. damned if it doesn't look exactly like the American one.

[Josef K]

The space shuttle was a quantum leap from the traditional rocket. C'mon you can drive that fucker!
It could lose a few pounds in the midriff and be made from something more sexy and finished in chrome or something, but still.

Not crap.

[tommydski]

Man, tough fucking crowd in here.

I mean really.

[2207]

hey here's the skinny on the Buran spacecraft aka the Russian shuttle. damned if it doesn't look exactly like the American one.

But the Russian one runs on tractor diesel.

First, you're talking Russian, drinking vodka and eating pickles and now you're posting secret Russian launches??

Whose side you on comrade PEPPER!?

[PEPPER!]

I just want to know where are moose and squirrel

[2207]

I just want to know where are moose and squirrel

Shish Kebab, you are one of them!

[John Houlihan]

Crap.

Killed the space programme, didn't look cool enough to inspire enough kids to be astronauts.

Maybe if you dialed back your nay-saying tongue-cluckery and wig-powdering foofery, you Brits would own the moon - like we do!

USA! USA!

MPPWN3D!