Possibilities with the Space Shuttle?

The idea of the space shuttle/space plane was initially a very interesting prospect; a reusable and versatile LEO craft which could travel to and from space stations and from earth to orbit and back again easily. (With the original idea being this happening in conjunction with Apollo hardware). The realities of that were different, and the final design was based on political and business realities and interests. What resulted was a craft which had the tendency to blow up, which looked like a plane but flew like a brick, and which didn't have a space station to fly to for the vast majority of its life. And that was at the expense of the Apollo hardware, which was wastefully canceled without bringing anything over to the shuttle program. The shuttle isn't really popular with space enthusiasts for those reasons.

However, what are the possibilities with the space shuttle? What could be done in terms of alternate designs and possibilities with the program?

And admittedly, this is part of brainstorming for "Strange Days". I can't for the life of me decide on space program details. And it's been a long time since I started thinking of them.
Initially I was going to have it all based on Gemini -potentially at the expense of Apollo altogether-, but that doesn't seem realistic anymore. The most realistic alternative to the OTL seems to be the "Eyes Turned Skyward" scenario, but I won't ape that and it's been done so wonderfully by its writers.

The other reason for this thread is me listening to ELO's Out of the Blue the other night. (There's a space plane going into a space station on the cover)

I actually like the look of this version of the shuttle:
http://www.wired.com/2014/05/a-relocated-relocatable-main-engine-cluster-for-the-space-shuttle-1975/

I don't think any manned shuttle will be successful without a space station, launch Skylab B and OTL Shuttle will be a success.

Riain said:

I don't think any manned shuttle will be successful without a space station, launch Skylab B and OTL Shuttle will be a success.

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Agreed. Give the shuttle a tangible goal to work toward early on and the shuttle program may be looked on much differently.

Agreed also build it as an inline stack, that way the foam problem never occurs and also the engines/boosters are below the shuttle. That might have let challenger dump the stack and reach somekind of abort site. Also everybody on one deck with some form of escape capsule (like the b-58 or b-70) which would increase the chances of escaping at least a challenger incident.

An inline stack would also let you use the booster without the full shuttle allowing you to launch larger cargo than could fit in the cargo bay, giving america at least medium lift capabilitys back far earlier.

The biggest problem the Space Shuttle Program had, was fast cut down of NASA budget by Capitol Hill
This won't do for a "Saturn" Shuttle and in end we got that deadly contraption that killed more as dozen people.

Saturn Shuttle ?
It was alternative study using the Saturn V hardware for Space Shuttle
Especial the first stage get wings & jet engine and can be reused

had NASA got more money in 1970s the Space Shuttle could had look something like this
More on this design here

Riain said:

I don't think any manned shuttle will be successful without a space station, launch Skylab B and OTL Shuttle will be a success.

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Yes and definitively yes. And there's a pretty easy way of achieving that scenario.

OTL Skylab A lost a solar array and the other was stuck, meaning there was very little electrical power aboard Skylab A early on.

OTL Pete Conrad managed to unstuck the remaining solar array. It was a daring EVA.
Imagine he failed and Skylab A was lost definitively ?
In this scenario NASA would launch Skylab B, say, a year later. With the same issue as per OTL Skylab A, that is at the end of the space station useful life atmospheric reentry of the 80 000 kg spaceship couldn't be controlled.
OTL NASA discovered the issue in 1977-78. IOTL, they will face the issue much earlier (1975-76) when the derelicted Skylab A will reenter. if it is a fiasco as per OTL, in turn Congress will inevitably ask the question

"by the way, how do you intend to control Skylab B reentry at the end of the mission ?"

NASA will be rather pissed of by that question because it will force a proper disposal of Skylab B... or a robotic tug, or waiting for the shuttle, whatever. Together with that space station later launch date, it might last long enough that the space shuttle might rescue it in 1981.

Once the shuttle will rescue Skylab B (probably late 1981 with the STS-2 mission) everything will change.

A shuttle ferrying 4-man crews to Skylab B can butterfly STS-51L entirely. For example, only 4-men crew mean they can all seat on the upper deck and have ejection seats up to mach 3.

In a more subtle way, having the shuttle launching crews to a space station mean much less pressure on the satellite launch business, and that by itself can butterfly the Challenger disaster (no impossible launch window on January 28, 1986)

the bottom line: the shuttle would have been slightly more interesting and much less dangerous to fly had it flew to Skylab B early on...

With Skylab in orbit, space station Freedom case become even harder in Congress (I can see the Mondale, Proxmire and Bolland asking why does NASA wants a new space station when a Skylab is already in orbit....)

Without Freedom immense costs and delays to bother with, NASA can return to the Moon from 1989 via Bush 41 Space Exploration Initiative (Apollo 11 twentieth anniversary)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuttle-Derived_Launch_Vehicle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter_%28rocket_family%29
The Jupiter launch vehicles would be the least expensive among Shuttle derived, heavy lift rockets.

Doesn't the long term mission of the stations/labs shape what kind of support vehicles are needed? What is their purpose - and can you keep that purpose funded? The shuttle/or whatever design is secondary to that original purpose.

Wasn't one of the big problems with the shuttle that NASA kinda promised it could do too much. IIRC the thing had to be basically rebuilt after every flight which drove the cost up massively.

sharlin said:

Wasn't one of the big problems with the shuttle that NASA kinda promised it could do too much. IIRC the thing had to be basically rebuilt after every flight which drove the cost up massively.

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Yeah pretty much, the idea was you'd have this completely reusable plane that could be re-mated to a new stack and launched again in a few weeks. NASA sold the shuttle on being able to fly upwards of thirty missions a year (one every ten days!) in practice the most they ever managed was nine and that was right before Challenger.

The shuttle idea was ahead of its time, and really won't be realised until something like Skylon comes on stream and you can do SSTO. It would have been better for Nasa to go with a small shuttle like Dreamchaser or the ESA Hermes concept and use a Saturn spin-off for heavy launch. The biggest problem (other than being a lethal bucket of bolts) was that the Shuttle combined crew and cargo together, as such to get a lightweight cargo into orbit (seven human's) you had to launch this monster shuttle every-time, and for a long while space payloads were limited to what would fit in the cargo bay. As we're seeing with STS, Dragon, CST and the others keeping people and payload separate is always the best option. That way you don't have to launch a man rated (and more expensive) rocket just to get a couple of satellites into orbit, and the crew transport is small enough to use a launch escape rocket.

If Challenger had been smaller and sitting on top of a stack with a faring holding satellites underneath, there probably would have been time to go "OH SHIT, EJECT!" and get the shuttle clear before the stack detonated. Instead the tank blew up under the shuttle and ripped it apart, however to do this Nasa would have to accept a slightly lower level of re-usability with the launch engines joining the tank at the bottom of the sea each time. Having sold shuttle on being re-usable such a design would force Nasa to admit just how little of it actually was.

What you really need is a NASA much more focused on safety, make sure the people at the top remember Apollo's 1 and 13 and try to ensure that crew safety is top priority even if it means a slightly less capable system.

I know size has been mentioned but beyond that, from all the fancy pics I've seen of alternate designs for the shuttle craft itself, are there any real differences to be had from different designs, or is it all aesthetics?

Emperor Norton I said:

I know size has been mentioned but beyond that, from all the fancy pics I've seen of alternate designs for the shuttle craft itself, are there any real differences to be had from different designs, or is it all aesthetics?

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Inline (one stage above the other, with the shuttle at the very top) means no risk of insulation or ice falling from stags and hitting a side-mounted orbiter--that's safer. Limiting the crew and turning the entire crew cabin or a portion into a separable ejection capsule is much safer than the OTL design but means (probably) fewer crew and definitely a heavier vehicle for the same payload/endurance. If you have a reusable liquid first stage or boosters, you have potentially cheaper operations costs, but if you don't do your ops right, you'll end up not much cheaper than the OTL shuttle or an expendable vehicle. If it's not manned, it may be hard to do a land-landing booster in the era.

One factor that drove the Shuttles overall size was the need to be able to launch DOD and NRO sats. That meant the payload bay had to the sixe it was. IIRC what NASA originally wanted was something more along the lines of a taxi to LEO

All those sound like good ideas. I may need some help with a TL Idea I got not long ago, in which the US would possibly have a bigger space program...

Related but somewhat of an aside: would it have helped any if the Dyna-Soar had been operational prior to NASA pursuing the space shuttle?

Kevin Renner said:

One factor that drove the Shuttles overall size was the need to be able to launch DOD and NRO sats. That meant the payload bay had to the sixe it was. IIRC what NASA originally wanted was something more along the lines of a taxi to LEO

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Yes, the USAF wanted the Shuttle big enough to launch the big keyhole satellites, which dictated payload bay size and LEO capacity. The USAF also wanted to launch a satellite on a polar orbit and return to Vandenburg in a single orbit, which dictated cross-range performance and thus wing size and wing size pushed up weight which meant more power. The USAF drove the Shuttle design but didn't use it or pay for it.

e of pi said:

Inline (one stage above the other, with the shuttle at the very top) means no risk of insulation or ice falling from stags and hitting a side-mounted orbiter--that's safer. Limiting the crew and turning the entire crew cabin or a portion into a separable ejection capsule is much safer than the OTL design but means (probably) fewer crew and definitely a heavier vehicle for the same payload/endurance. If you have a reusable liquid first stage or boosters, you have potentially cheaper operations costs, but if you don't do your ops right, you'll end up not much cheaper than the OTL shuttle or an expendable vehicle. If it's not manned, it may be hard to do a land-landing booster in the era.

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Would one positive about inline stacking be horizontal integration? Instead of having to use the VAB to stack the vehicles on the MLP and then use the crawler to move the vehicles to the launch pad. I would think a inline integration would allow the vehicles to be rolled out the pad separately. You then roll it over something like a recessed launch tower. I would imagine something like the SpaceX strong back, however with modifcations to allow a vehicle to roll over. You then have a process to attach the vehicles to the horizontal launch tower, to each each other and have the wheels retrac. Have everything done horizontally in a hanger near the launch pad. When you are ready for launch the horizonal tower rolls the last distance to the launch pad and is swung vertical along with the vehicle and fuel is loaded. You have a vertical tower at the launch site that would allow a crew to load while the vehicle is vertical. I would think horizontal integration allows the launch vehicle's to be treated more like a aircraft instead of involving massive crawlers and lifting operations with cranes to swing verticaly.

Or am I missing something?

Emperor Norton I said:

I know size has been mentioned but beyond that, from all the fancy pics I've seen of alternate designs for the shuttle craft itself, are there any real differences to be had from different designs, or is it all aesthetics?

Click to expand...

Some of the early studies were quite ambitious, like Lockheed's Starclipper. While officially they planned to use the Saturn V's Rocketdyne F-1's, they were using the project as a means to procure funding linear aerospike engines that they hoped to incorporate into the final design.

The earlier schematic posted by Michael Van, the Saturn Shuttle, would be fully reusable. After stage separation, the booster would be able to flyback and land for recovery. Probably a bit ambitious for 1970s technology, but the Soviets were able to fly the Buran shuttle on full automation in the late 80s.

Ok, reading off-site, and some of this has been said:

The Shuttle did not have a defined goal or a timetable for long term goals, unlike Apollo. This was partially the result of shaky reasoning by NASA administrators for starting on the Shuttle; the cold hard truth likely being no one was sure, if we were ending Apollo, if there should even be a manned space program or at least if the will was there to have one. But NASA was image conscious and no one wanted to give the high ground to the Soviets who would continue their manned program. It's also partially because the program was divided between too many interests (business and otherwise) that had nothing to do with making a good design.

The Shuttle was really wanting for a space station which it never had, or at least not for years. Reagan approved a station in the mid-80s, the design of which we didn't have till the early 90s, and that ended up becoming the International Space Station years later. All the while, because the Shuttle was the only thing that made the ISS possible, we were stuck using that hunk-of-junk design longer than we should have. So the paradox is that the Shuttle had no reason for being until a space station was there, but that space station wasn't there for decades of its existence, and when it was, we were reliant on the Shuttle to build it so we had to keep using a bad design.

And the Shuttle cost far more to service than it may have otherwise because the Shuttle design they went with was the most ambitious and complex one they had. NASA should have gone with a less complex Shuttle design, and evolve the design generationally. That in turn lead to the Shuttle not being cheaper to launch than the previous space programs, and NASA having to sink money and focus into it rather than focusing elsewhere. Had it been a basic design which was upgraded and improved over time, it could have delivered what it was promised.

As it was, the Shuttle was a mistake. Ideally, we'd have fallen into an "Eyes Turned Skyward" scenario of "darn, we're stuck with Apollo for LEO" turning out to be far more versatile, successful and economically sound than the Shuttle. But even the Shuttle itself could have been better.

brovane said:

I would think horizontal integration allows the launch vehicle's to be treated more like a aircraft instead of involving massive crawlers and lifting operations with cranes to swing verticaly.

Or am I missing something?

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Yeah. The large crawler to hold the two mated vehicles together during rollout the distance to the pad--which has to be a safe distance from the integration cell, particularly if you want to have two vehicles in integration in parallel (that is, be preparing vehicle number 2 while number one is in the final weeks of launch preparation and then launching), then the massive lifting operation to move the stages vertical as a single fixed unit at the pad. Horizontal integration has advantages, but with KSC already built, there's a benefit to using the existing structures and crawlers.