Re-use of the space shuttles

[ivanotter]

All, Maybe this is not the best forum. Please tel me then.

If we should get into real space travel, i believe that a low-orbit space station, like the ISS, is a great idea.

Now to get anywhere else, some sort of space vehicle is required.

It should be able to carry significant cargo, etc.

Can the space shutles not be re-used for that, as a ferry to another space station, say, around Mars?

I am not good at this part, so please help me out.

I am under the impression that the space shutttle are canned as too old for getting into space and especially re-entry. well, we could keep them in space instead.

Am I off on a tangent here?

Ivan

 

[Corbell Mark IV]

No.

THe shuttles are not designed for anything like that.

And the shuttles weren't that old.

THe newer ones had plenty of life in them.

 

[dgharis]

No.

THe shuttles are not designed for anything like that.

And the shuttles weren't that old.

THe newer ones had plenty of life in them.

The space shuttles were like the first automobiles; pioneering efforts, but not suitable for mass production. They were never designed for anything beyond LEO; for anything else you need an entirely new vehicle.

A permanent space station would be essential if human space travel is to become a reality; it's a halfway point between Earth's surface and other planets. It doesn't have to be in LEO; anywhere in the Earth-Moon system will do. (L4 or L5 are probably the best long-term candidates.)

Once you have that you can ship your interplanetary ship up bit by bit, assemble it in orbit, ship up the crew, supplies, and fuel, and off you go. When it returns you can service it, rotate the crew, refuel and resupply it, and off you go again. A few trips with it and you have your outpost/colony on Mars or wherever.

None of this is cheap or easy, of course; if it were it would already be done. But it's within our grasp if we are willing to devote the time, effort, and money to it.

 

[ivanotter]

Could be right. the cost saving of re-using the space shuttle, upgrading them for inter-planetary journeys may not be viable. Maybe better just to build something up there.

It just looks like a waste to hurl the shuttles in the bin.

 

[Archibald]

To be honest: NASA made two studies of a "lunar space shuttle", the first in 1971, the second in 1991.
The results were not exactly encouraging !

http://www.google.fr/search?hl=fr&s...osb&fp=bacbd362074b2c90&biw=1024&bih=575&bs=1

 

[Uli_Stoiber]

@Archibald

I'm not sure if I understood the NASA study, but in my understanding they thought about getting a shuttle into orbit, refuel it at a space station, shoot the whole Shuttle to lunar orbit, release cargo, decelerate and land with the shuttle??? wtf ???

Why should anybody want to put a whole Shuttle stack into lunar orbit?
This is, with the mass of the shuttle in mind, simply nonsense.

In my opinion, it would be possible, to put an 40-60 tons EDS into orbit with Shuttle C, ferry the astronauts to the lunar stack with another shuttle and maybe use this shuttle again for re transport. (Although the lander with crew compartiment would also have to deceraerate very much to make rendevouz with their taxi-shuttle, but better than a 100 ton shuttle orbiter).

 

[Polish Eagle]

Could be right. the cost saving of re-using the space shuttle, upgrading them for inter-planetary journeys may not be viable. Maybe better just to build something up there.

It just looks like a waste to hurl the shuttles in the bin.

It was a waste to build the Shuttles in the first place, or at least to make them the primary means of building and servicing a Space Station. Honestly, there's nothing they could do that smaller capsules or lifting bodies couldn't do better. Unless the Shuttle development process could be altered in the 1970s for full reusability (instead of this half-assed expensive 'partial reusability' they had IOTL), they were really an immense drain.

Let's look at the facts: Both the US and USSR built and, in the latter case, maintained space station programs using only disposable boosters and capsules. Those capsules had really meager cargo capabilities, but a whole bunch of them were cheaper than a Shuttle. That's why Soyuz and Progress kept flying while Buran (the Soviet Shuttle) was cancelled.

The Shuttle is pretty useless as anything other than a vehicle for maintenance of important satellites (recon sats, Hubble, etc). Using them as ferries for space stations would be, as I said, too expensive.

They only have electricity for 14 days (due to the limitations of fuel cell technology) and are heavy as hell, to boot. Empty of payload, the last Shuttle, Endeavour, the lightest of them, weighed a full 80 metric tons. To send an empty Shuttle to Mars orbit, therefore, you'd need at least 300 tonnes (read: 15 Shuttle flights, 3 Saturn V or Energia flights, or 4 Shuttle-C flights) of fuel in LEO to start with. And then you wouldn't be able to recover it from Mars without at least another 200 tonnes of propellant carried around. Better to just build one-off Mars systems. Ditto for lunar flights.

And keeping them in space, well, what's the point? You'd have to modify them extensively (rip the heat shields off, and wings, and add solar panels, and other changes) to get something that performs as well as old Skylab. Better to build a new space station module from scratch and launch it on a Shuttle-C. (There were plans to convert Columbia into a Space Station module back in the early 1980s, but, as I said, she was to be modified extensively, wings and landing gear and heat shield pulled off)

 

[e of pi]

All, Maybe this is not the best forum. Please tel me then.

Nope, you've got the right forum for these questions. Unfortunately, that's about the best news I have for you.

If we should get into real space travel, i believe that a low-orbit space station, like the ISS, is a great idea.

Now to get anywhere else, some sort of space vehicle is required.

It should be able to carry significant cargo, etc.

Can the space shutles not be re-used for that, as a ferry to another space station, say, around Mars?

Not really, no. The Shuttle doesn't actually carry all that much fuel and it carries a lot of weight for entry that isn't anything but dead weight during any other mission. Most of the fuel used to perform the 11 km/s orbital ascent is in the SRBs and the External Tank. The Shuttle itself only has enough fuel for its orbital maneuvering system to perform about 1 km/s. For comparison, a departure burn to Mars or the Moon is roughly 4 km/s or so. Thus, for any real use as an orbit-to-orbit transfer spacecraft, the Shuttle doesn't have nearly enough propellants. You'd need to add an external tank, but even then the Shuttle's 55 ton dead weight (wings are heavy!) come back to bite you. It'd make a lot more sense to just attach a crew module like Orion to a propulsion stage and use that for almost any mission you'd be considering.

I am not good at this part, so please help me out.

I am under the impression that the space shutttle are canned as too old for getting into space and especially re-entry. well, we could keep them in space instead.

Am I off on a tangent here?

Ivan

Yes, yes you are. The Shuttle's aren't too old to fly, in fact the main issue with them is that the whole design basically requires a complete refit between missions anyway. The bigger issue is their safety hazards like the side-mounted Shuttle next to the foam-shedding tank and the lack of crew escape system.

 

[Brasidas]

All, Maybe this is not the best forum. Please tel me then.

If we should get into real space travel, i believe that a low-orbit space station, like the ISS, is a great idea.

Now to get anywhere else, some sort of space vehicle is required.

It should be able to carry significant cargo, etc.

Can the space shutles not be re-used for that, as a ferry to another space station, say, around Mars?

I am not good at this part, so please help me out.

I am under the impression that the space shutttle are canned as too old for getting into space and especially re-entry. well, we could keep them in space instead.

Am I off on a tangent here?

Ivan

The shuttle is designed as a ferry between the earth's surface and LEO, and spends mass on being able to glide in an atmosphere and shield against re-entry.

That mass is wasted in interplanetary flight.

And the level of refit required to make it into an interplanetary vehicle would need resources better spent fielding a new design from scratch.