Vehicle: The Space Shuttle

[sparky]

I still can't believe PRF votes Space Shuttles are crap. Loud as fuck. Start looks like begining of the apocalypse. Flies in space. Whole thing looks like a transformer before the launch and like a meteor on the way back. Yet, it's voted crap. What the hell.

Chap, you’re completely crazy. The Saturn V made a much bigger bang, went further, looked cooler on launch, lifted more, and left some awesome monuments in the launch pads, construction areas and the like. Truly incredible, monolithic technology, a near-miraculous feat of engineering that took men to the moon. The shuttle was designed by committee and looks like a toy coach with a couple of dumpy wings glued on.

Plus, I take this 60's or 70's design over anything they will come up with nowdays without even thinking about it. This thing looks massive and cool, like a space craft should.
Now, this?

I don't care if it's more effective, but it has no business in space. It's good for overweight teenage girls, if it's good for anything.

The absence of any close-up shuttle photographs in your adolescent creaming is unconscious admission that the shuttle is ugly, a pudgy blob, an attempt to fold a sausage into a delta shape. The concept ship you posted above looks a better attempt at such a folding. Even better were the X-series of rocket planes, which briefly competed with the ballistic rockets for the US space programme until the need to beat the Soviets made NASA plump for ballistic rockets (the bulk of the shuttle comprises such rockets, and hence is dumped). Read The Right Stuff: better to be behind the joystick than spam in the can. (All phallic symbolism intended.)



Way cooler. And the pilots actually flew the thing for the whole ride.

Egomaniac that he (perhaps necessarily) is, Rutan's projects is the true heir to the X-series. I read that he's working on an orbital model, again launched from a plane rather than a booster rocket.

Edit: I don't think anyone has brought up Gil-Scott Heron's take yet,so for balance...

[Cranius]

[emmanuelle cunt]

I still can't believe PRF votes Space Shuttles are crap. Loud as fuck. Start looks like begining of the apocalypse. Flies in space. Whole thing looks like a transformer before the launch and like a meteor on the way back. Yet, it's voted crap. What the hell.

Chap, you’re completely crazy. The Saturn V made a much bigger bang, went further, looked cooler on launch, lifted more, and left some awesome monuments in the launch pads, construction areas and the like.

And I'm not going to argue with that*, but it still doesn't make space shuttles crap, .That's like finding flaws in Darwin's version of evolution theory and saying those flaws support Intelligent design.

*except looking cooler on launch. It looks pretty cool from rear perspective (like a lot of thing does) but the whole sctructure is not as impressive as the space shuttle surroindings. It may be more effective, but I couldn't care less about it.

Way cooler. And the pilots actually flew the thing for the whole ride.

It flies, it has a rocket engine so it is cool. Cooler than space shuttle? You must be joking.

And why on earth (ha!) are we keeping this discussion on two fronts (prf and text messages) at the same time?

[sparky]

It flies, it has a rocket engine so it is cool. Cooler than space shuttle? You must be joking.

And why on earth (ha!) are we keeping this discussion on two fronts (prf and text messages) at the same time?

Partly because I should not spend too much time on this site at work, but mainly to really, really wind you up.

Thje X-15 was an incredible, if somewhat deadly experimental craft. When I was researching this stuff years ago for a story, I found a site which sold fragments of the exploded Columbia and also of Maj Adams X-15 wreck if memory serves - a quick search fails to turn up this ghoulish site. However, I recall that the fragments were put behind glass frames. Tasteful.

X-series pilots, including Neil Armstrong and Chuck Yeager were the best, dealing with then-unknown hypersonic demons like inertia coupling. Not for wusses (like shuttle fans from Warsaw).

Edit: Third party message received. You crafty bastard. She doesn't even realise the Saturn V is American.

[emmanuelle cunt]

Ah crap, it ain't from Soviet Union? Put that one on me, then.



Anyway, you tell that X-15 was a better project all you want but in the bottom of your heart you know that's just wrong. Sr-71 is way cooler than X-15 and it still doesn't even touch a fucking space shuttle.

[rotating anal plug]

Can't wait for you explanation on how this is the most awesome thing ever, Mark.

[sparky]

Ah crap, it ain't from Soviet Union? Put that one on me, then.

Thank you for admitting that you don't know what you're talking about. That is very big of you. I am still puzzled as to how you can see the shuttle look like anything other than a Lego version of space travel.

[Chromodynamic]

I am amazed, the shuttle is considered not crap by some because.. what? It propels shit with massive amounts of fire and combustion? It's big and makes a lot of noise? It goes into Space? It's a space shuttle, of course it goes into space. The ardor over its superficial whizz-bang bullshit amazes me, you people may as well be voting not crap on a car because it looks cool - fuck the considerable flaws in its top-down design, and the loss of life associated with it; I will link that report in perpetuity, I am sorry, the space shuttle is crap.

[Cranius]

USA! USA!

We have pot plants in this country older than the United States of America.

[Colonel Panic]

...Even better were the X-series of rocket planes, which briefly competed with the ballistic rockets for the US space programme until the need to beat the Soviets made NASA plump for ballistic rockets (the bulk of the shuttle comprises such rockets, and hence is dumped). Read The Right Stuff: better to be behind the joystick than spam in the can. (All phallic symbolism intended.)



Way cooler. And the pilots actually flew the thing for the whole ride.

Why are you comparing the X Program to the Space Shuttle? It's apples and oranges. They're two completely different things, intended for entirely different purposes.

The Space Shuttle is a reusable spacecraft whereas the X-planes were experimental aircraft. Some of them had rocket motors, but they were still airplanes. X-planes were proof-of-concept planes designed to push the limits of powered flight. Each model was built to test specific theoretical aerodynamic principles that were later incorporated into various military and spy planes as well as the Space Shuttle. X-planes were neither intended nor built for everyday use.

An F-35 Joint Strike Fighter may look a lot sleeker and cooler than a C-17 Globemaster III, but iif you need to airdrop a lot of supplies and vehicles into a war zone, which one are you going to use?

[greg]

USA! USA!

We have pot plants in this country older than the United States of America.

So do we.

N.C.
I think that since the shuttle made it possible for space travel to be routine and mundane, we have become bored with it. As bad as the human cost is, one accident every 15 years is an impressive feat.

[sparky]

Why are you comparing the X Program to the Space Shuttle? It's apples and oranges. They're two completely different things, intended for entirely different purposes.

The Space Shuttle is a reusable spacecraft whereas the X-planes were experimental aircraft. Some of them had rocket motors, but they were still airplanes. X-planes were proof-of-concept planes designed to push the limits of powered flight. Each model was built to test specific theoretical aerodynamic principles that were later incorporated into various military and spy planes as well as the Space Shuttle. X-planes were neither intended nor built for everyday use.

As I indicated at the beginning of this thread, there was a period during the 1960's when the X-series was in competition with Von Braun's ballistics team to come up with a reliable form of space transport. Since ballistic rocket technology offered a quicker route to beat the Russians, the X-series was discontinued despite consistent progress towards piloted orbital flight. Whilst one should not weep over the defeat of one arm of the military industrial complex by another, the fact remains - as demonstrated by Rutan - that the X-plane concept can take people into space with much less of the monstrous waste of fuel and materials of the shuttle and other ground launched ballistic rocket designs. The considerable hurdle that the concept has yet to breach is orbital (rather than sub-orbital) flight, but again the investment was redirected (to what became the Apollo programme) before the X-series could take people that far. Rutan might be talking a big game by saying that he is working on a similar design to reach orbital flight, but given his track record, I reckon he'll do it, dodgy heart notwithstanding.

The reusable aspect of the shuttle is not that impressive and grossly exaggerated, again underlined by the fact that it is being discontinued without any similar replacement lined up. The shuttle design was flawed from the start, a dead end. Essentially, the shuttle is a traditional space capsule which can glide through the stratosphere rather than plain plummet; as the Orion programme shows, the fancy space-walk, cargo-carrying stuff does not need this.

So, with respect, the comparison is utterly apt.

[Colonel Panic]

I don't know where you got your information from, but it's wrong.

"X" is simply the designation given by the USAF and NASA to experimental aircraft. "X-planes" were not abandoned in favor of rockets or the Space Shuttle. There are still X-planes being built and test-flown to this day.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-plane

Although it's true that many of the innovations proven by the X-planes have been applied in the space program, none of the X-planes were spacecraft in the strict sense. They are experimental aircraft, developed (as I said before) specifically for the purpose of testing various cutting-edge designs. Before the evolution of modern supersonic jet engines, the early X-planes used rocket motors to break the sound barrier but none of them was capable of achieving escape velocity or operating outside the Earth's atmosphere. Certainly none of them could have ever launched or repaired a satellite or allowed teams of astronauts to perform research in outer space.

Comparing the X-planes to the Space Shuttle is like comparing these:







To this:



Even if the Shuttle is being phased out, that doesn't mean it's a failed program. It has enabled mankind to operate in outer space on a routine basis. It has operated for almost 30 years with an extremely high success rate. It has enabled specialized repairs and adjustments to orbiting assets which would have otherwise been abandoned. It has served as a platform for regular, ongoing space-based research of a scale which was not possible before. It has served a critical role in the deployment and construction of the ISS, which will carry forth that type of research into the future.

131 missions, with only 2 complete failures and 14 astronauts lost.

This gives a 2% death rate per astronaut-flight, and an average failure rate of nearly 1 in every 60 missions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_program

The Space Shuttle has the lowest rate of failure or death of any other space travel program.

NOT CRAP for being the only reusable manned orbital space travel system which has ever made multiple flights.

NOT CRAP for enabling a wealth of discovery and progress over the past 28 years.

NOT CRAP for being awesome and powerful.

[sparky]

I don't know where you got your information from,

A bunch of books I read as a youth, rereading The Right Stuff, a long piece on Rutan and a whole lot of that flimsy stuff we call internet research I did a few years ago on something I did.

"X" is simply the designation given by the USAF and NASA to experimental aircraft. "X-planes" were not abandoned in favor of rockets or the Space Shuttle. There are still X-planes being built and test-flown to this day.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-plane

Yes, I do know this. And - again - I am referring to a specific series of planes and innovations within this series, apparently culminating in the X-15. Again, I am referring the approach taken in this series to that finally taken in the choice of the space shuttle. I am not sure if I can explain this any better: there were more elegant, economic and ultimately safer (in terms of the launch vehicle being a smaller giant bomb) technologies that were being successfully investigated in the 1960's. Had the cash not been put into the quicker ballistic rocket technique, this methodology would have resulted in a better craft which still could have had the payload capability of the shuttle. Coulda, woulda, shoulda.

Even if the Shuttle is being phased out, that doesn't mean it's a failed program.

It is being replaced by a spit 'n' shine update of the technology that immediately preceded it. That's pretty damning of the design.

It has served as a platform for regular, ongoing space-based research of a scale which was not possible before. It has served a critical role in the deployment and construction of the ISS, which will carry forth that type of research into the future.

All of which could have been done with rockets used before the shuttle and at less cost, despite the trumpeted "reusable" aspect.

The Space Shuttle has the lowest rate of failure or death of any other space travel program.

Whilst I am happy that it has not killed more people than it has, you do expect death rates to drop considerably with such advances. That it has only suffered a couple of catastrophic failures in its lifetime merely means that it is not crap in comparison to the rush-built (and genuinely amazing for this) rockets that preceded it.

NOT CRAP for being the only reusable manned orbital space travel system which has ever made multiple flights.

The reusable aspect you're banging on about is a canard as already argued above. The bits that don't get dumped after every flight have to be practically rebuilt after each flight.

NOT CRAP for being awesome and powerful.

Ok, so it does finally come down to a penis thing. Well, you will be happy that the Orion programme offers an even bigger penis.

[lemur68]

X-series pilots, including Luke Skywalker and Wedge Antilles, were the best

[lemur68]

[emmanuelle cunt]

Why are you comparing the X Program to the Space Shuttle?

Cause this otherwise decent man turns into a braindead shuttlephobe whenever someone mentions travelling in space.

[sparky]

Why are you comparing the X Program to the Space Shuttle?

Cause this otherwise decent man turns into a braindead shuttlephobe whenever someone mentions travelling in space.

Mate, you're still wearing a cone-shaped hat in the corner of the room for thinking the USSR built the vehicle that took man to the moon.

[emmanuelle cunt]

Why are you comparing the X Program to the Space Shuttle?

Cause this otherwise decent man turns into a braindead shuttlephobe whenever someone mentions travelling in space.

Mate, you're still wearing a cone-shaped hat in the corner of the room for thinking the USSR built the vehicle that took man to the moon.

I may be unaware of some minor facts of marginal significance but I know a cool thing when I see one.

[sparky]

I may be unaware of some minor facts of marginal significance but I know a cool thing when I see one.

The first part of your sentence is excellent. The second is an argument that I can't refute, though I still say the thing's ugly.

I was thinking about this today - one has a lot of time to think when hovering over massive spreadsheets - I think that Concorde is NC, despite the fact that it was by most of the measures I use here a failure. It was: a.) commercially unsuccessful; b.) not deemed worthy of similar replacement; c.) absurdly expensive; d.) was used as a weird dick-waving nationalistic symbol; e.) was loud, wasteful, polluting and (by modern standards) not particularly safe; and f.) a political fudge.

However, it is still exceptionally beautiful. That's the thing that I think tips it over into NC. That, and the fact that I used to see it in the sky above Sutton when I was a kid. Had I seen the shuttle up close as a kid, I probably would think it NC. However, seeing what should have been, CRAP. Nixon and his administration fudged it.

[PEPPER!]

this is fucking badass. high fives all around and safe journey home, space guys.

also the ESA launched a couple of newer space telescopes this week that will sit in a higher orbit. what a lucky time to be alive.