Author Topic: Pre-Challenger flight opportunities per astronaut  (Read 10643 times)

Offline researcher

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I read in an article, that if the Challenger disaster did not happen in '86, many shuttle astronauts had the opportunity to fly cca. 7, 8, 9 or 10 shuttle missions during their NASA career. What could have been with the number of flight assignments per one astronaut if Challenger did not happen?

Offline fdasun

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Re: Pre-Challenger flight opportunities per astronaut
« Reply #1 on: 02/18/2009 05:42 pm »
I doubt, because I don't think shuttle(s) can fly 15+ flights per year -- let alone the growing size of astronaut corp and the facts that many decided to quit after 2~3 flights to pursue personal interests

Offline edkyle99

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Re: Pre-Challenger flight opportunities per astronaut
« Reply #2 on: 02/18/2009 07:03 pm »
I doubt, because I don't think shuttle(s) can fly 15+ flights per year -- let alone the growing size of astronaut corp and the facts that many decided to quit after 2~3 flights to pursue personal interests

If Challenger or something like it hadn't happened when it did, I believe that Shuttle would have flown more than a dozen missions per year and probably more than 15 in some years.  Planning at the time projected up to 24 per year.  Remember that Shuttle would have been flying from three pads (one at Vandenberg AFB), and that Delta and Atlas Centaur were both being phased out.  Challenger was the 11th Shuttle flight in one year and four days - and that was a period that saw one or two missions rolled out to the pad before being cancelled.   

 - Ed Kyle
« Last Edit: 02/18/2009 09:04 pm by edkyle99 »

Offline Blackstar

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Re: Pre-Challenger flight opportunities per astronaut
« Reply #3 on: 02/19/2009 01:30 am »
If Challenger or something like it hadn't happened when it did, I believe that Shuttle would have flown more than a dozen missions per year and probably more than 15 in some years.  Planning at the time projected up to 24 per year.  Remember that Shuttle would have been flying from three pads (one at Vandenberg AFB), and that Delta and Atlas Centaur were both being phased out.  Challenger was the 11th Shuttle flight in one year and four days - and that was a period that saw one or two missions rolled out to the pad before being cancelled.   

Doubtful.  I believe that I heard (i.e. I don't have a source) that they were killing themselves when they achieved the maximum rate of 9 launches in a 12-month period and that they would have maxed out at about 10 in a year--and this was not a sustainable rate.  The only way to get a higher rate would have been to build a fifth orbiter and to increase staff and facilities.  That might have been contained in NASA documents ca 1985--i.e. did anybody study what it would take to get the launch rate above 8 per year?

Vandenberg's SLC-6 was going to be shut down no matter what.  USAF wanted off of shuttle by 1985 and Challenger gave them the excuse.  That decision would have been delayed by a couple of years, but not much more than that.

Nobody has really researched this aspect, but it would be worthwhile for someone to file some FOIA requests to USAF for documents related to shuttle for the 1985-86 period, including discussions of SLC-6.  A lot of that stuff is going to be impossible to get because NRO was the primary driver and they refuse to acknowledge any shuttle involvement (that may change under Obama).  However, there were plenty of white/unclassified shuttle payloads, so there was obviously discussion of shuttle schedules discussed in the USAF.

Offline Jim

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Re: Pre-Challenger flight opportunities per astronaut
« Reply #4 on: 02/19/2009 03:15 am »

Vandenberg's SLC-6 was going to be shut down no matter what.  USAF wanted off of shuttle by 1985 and Challenger gave them the excuse.  That decision would have been delayed by a couple of years, but not much more than that.


It wasn't a given.  Yes, they wanted to get off but they didn't have the budget for it.  All the spacecraft were designed for the shuttle, except DMSP (the only white/unclassified west coast payload) .  Also this was the time of AF Space Command's emergence, when it came for budget priorities for the CELV, AF Spacecom had the CELV lower than base improvements.   AF Spacecom wanted to play in the shuttle world with its CSOC and SOPC.

Offline edkyle99

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Re: Pre-Challenger flight opportunities per astronaut
« Reply #5 on: 02/19/2009 04:11 am »
If Challenger or something like it hadn't happened when it did, I believe that Shuttle would have flown more than a dozen missions per year and probably more than 15 in some years.  Planning at the time projected up to 24 per year.  Remember that Shuttle would have been flying from three pads (one at Vandenberg AFB), and that Delta and Atlas Centaur were both being phased out.  Challenger was the 11th Shuttle flight in one year and four days - and that was a period that saw one or two missions rolled out to the pad before being cancelled.   

Doubtful.  I believe that I heard (i.e. I don't have a source) that they were killing themselves when they achieved the maximum rate of 9 launches in a 12-month period and that they would have maxed out at about 10 in a year--and this was not a sustainable rate.  The only way to get a higher rate would have been to build a fifth orbiter and to increase staff and facilities.  That might have been contained in NASA documents ca 1985--i.e. did anybody study what it would take to get the launch rate above 8 per year?

Vandenberg's SLC-6 was going to be shut down no matter what.  USAF wanted off of shuttle by 1985 and Challenger gave them the excuse.  That decision would have been delayed by a couple of years, but not much more than that.

Nobody has really researched this aspect, but it would be worthwhile for someone to file some FOIA requests to USAF for documents related to shuttle for the 1985-86 period, including discussions of SLC-6.  A lot of that stuff is going to be impossible to get because NRO was the primary driver and they refuse to acknowledge any shuttle involvement (that may change under Obama).  However, there were plenty of white/unclassified shuttle payloads, so there was obviously discussion of shuttle schedules discussed in the USAF.

I worked shuttle payload processing 1984-86.  The flight rate ramp up was a challenge, made more difficult by start-up type issues.  There were problems with IUS/TDRS, for example, that delayed those launches for many months during the 1985 time frame, causing at least one roll-back/de-mate.  There were many concerns about Shuttle Centaur and the planned mid 1986 parallel-pad processing of Galileo and Ulysses, and lots of scrambling to test the facility mods for those efforts.   

But 12 launches per year would have been very much do-able, IMO, and 15 would have been within the realm of possibility.  As I said, STS-51L came within four days of being the 11th flight in a year, and that was with only one active launch pad (for all but the last launch).  Shuttle would had to have flown many times per year, just to get the GPS constellation up (yes, Shuttle was going to haul all of those GPS satellites that eventually flew, post-51L, on Delta II). 

SLC 6 would have been used, no doubt about it, had 51L not happened.  Yes, the Air Force was keeping heavy-lift Titan alive, but many DoD payloads would still have flown on Shuttle from both coasts.  And NASA payloads.  And commercial communication satellites from KSC - very many of those. 

 - Ed Kyle
« Last Edit: 02/19/2009 04:12 am by edkyle99 »

Offline Blackstar

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Re: Pre-Challenger flight opportunities per astronaut
« Reply #6 on: 02/19/2009 04:11 am »
Secretary of the Air Force Pete Aldridge wanted off of the shuttle.  I think the speed in which they shut down SLC-6--after its problems had been solved--is testament to how badly he wanted out of that.  Maybe it merely gave him the ammunition he required.

That said, this whole issue is poorly documented.  Nobody has interviewed the principles or gone after the documents.  Nobody has even mapped out who was who and held what position.

Offline edkyle99

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Re: Pre-Challenger flight opportunities per astronaut
« Reply #7 on: 02/19/2009 04:27 am »
Secretary of the Air Force Pete Aldridge wanted off of the shuttle.  I think the speed in which they shut down SLC-6--after its problems had been solved--is testament to how badly he wanted out of that.  Maybe it merely gave him the ammunition he required.

That said, this whole issue is poorly documented.  Nobody has interviewed the principles or gone after the documents.  Nobody has even mapped out who was who and held what position.

Aldridge didn't become Secretary of the Air Force until April 1986 - after 51L.  He wasn't Secretary when the Complementary ELV (eventually Titan IV) decisions were made.  That would have been Verne Orr.

Heck, prior to 51L, Aldridge was training to be a payload specialist on the first Vandenberg Shuttle mission!

 - Ed Kyle
« Last Edit: 02/19/2009 04:34 am by edkyle99 »

Offline Jim

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Re: Pre-Challenger flight opportunities per astronaut
« Reply #8 on: 02/19/2009 11:57 am »
Secretary of the Air Force Pete Aldridge wanted off of the shuttle.  I think the speed in which they shut down SLC-6--after its problems had been solved--is testament to how badly he wanted out of that.  Maybe it merely gave him the ammunition he required.

That said, this whole issue is poorly documented.  Nobody has interviewed the principles or gone after the documents.  Nobody has even mapped out who was who and held what position.

Aldridge didn't become Secretary of the Air Force until April 1986 - after 51L.  He wasn't Secretary when the Complementary ELV (eventually Titan IV) decisions were made.  That would have been Verne Orr.

Heck, prior to 51L, Aldridge was training to be a payload specialist on the first Vandenberg Shuttle mission!


Before he was the Secretary of the Air Force, Aldridge had a job with more direct impact on military space programs when the Complementary ELV decisions were made and while training to be a payload specialist.  He was the Undersecretary of the Air Force, which was cover title for the Director of the NRO.

It was Aldridge that came up with and pushed for the Complementary ELV. 

Offline Jim

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Re: Pre-Challenger flight opportunities per astronaut
« Reply #9 on: 02/19/2009 12:06 pm »
Secretary of the Air Force Pete Aldridge wanted off of the shuttle.

So did Ralph Jacobson

Offline Michael Cassutt

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Re: Pre-Challenger flight opportunities per astronaut
« Reply #10 on: 02/19/2009 02:31 pm »
Secretary of the Air Force Pete Aldridge wanted off of the shuttle.

So did Ralph Jacobson

Oddly enough, I've been researching this very subject the past few weeks -- Jim's statement about Jacobson, who was director of the Secretary of the Air Force's Special Projects Office in Los Angeles from March 1983, is correct, though it might be fairer to say that he wanted a proven backup (the Titans) to the Shuttle.  Jacobson knew that by the time he took over SP, many NRO payloads had been "Shuttle-optimized" -- that is, designed only for Shuttle launch.

As Director NRO, Aldridge was also a proponent of having a mixed fleet -- was happy to use the Shuttle, but didn't like having all his eggs in that particular basket.

Michael Cassutt

Offline Jim

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Re: Pre-Challenger flight opportunities per astronaut
« Reply #11 on: 02/19/2009 02:42 pm »
I heard Jacobson lament about how many Titans he could buy using the money spent on SLC-6.


Offline Jim

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Re: Pre-Challenger flight opportunities per astronaut
« Reply #12 on: 02/19/2009 03:14 pm »
I was in the USAF "Shuttle" Program office at LAAFB from 1983-1988.  I was in the "Spaceflight Requirements Division" and we dealt with the NASA HQ and the FAWG for the Shuttle manifest and maintained the DOD mission model.  The program office was more of a front* for SAFSP and its dealings with NASA as the launch agent for the NRO.  The "white" USAF did have a few shuttle payloads, DSP, DSCS, GPS and Milstar, but one can find out how many of them flew on the shuttle.  I was there for the beginnings of the CELV program.

I was TDY to the Pentagon supporting a "DOD Space Shuttle User's Committee" meeting on Jan 28, 1986.  Needless to say, the agenda changed greatly.
During the few days after Challenger, many ideas were thrown around.  Things like launching GPS, two at a time on Titan 34D cores or one at time on Titan II's.  The CELV (Titan IV) increase in launches was a given and over the years it went from 10 to 23, to 50 and then settled at 41 launches. Our office generated many mission models over the next few years based on different lengths of standdowns.  3, 6, 9, 12, 18, 24, 30, 36 month etc.  And as the shorter one became OBE, more emphasis was put on the longer stand downs.  The move of GPS and DSCS off the shuttle were results of these studies, which lead to the MLV-1 and MLV-II procurements, which became Delta II and Atlas II 

* We actually were in a gray area, some in the office had access, others didn't have access but had some insight into that "world". 

« Last Edit: 02/19/2009 03:24 pm by Jim »

Offline Blackstar

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Re: Pre-Challenger flight opportunities per astronaut
« Reply #13 on: 02/19/2009 06:04 pm »
I've never seen any drawings of GPS in a shuttle bay.  I think they were planning for three per launch.  Is that correct?

Of course, the GPS schedule was also rather slippery.  I think that the launches kept getting put off, not always because of Challenger, but because USAF was squirrely about paying for the thing.  Remember that GPS was not declared fully operational until a few years _after_ the Persian Gulf War.  Had USAF fully funded it, GPS probably would have been operational in the 1980s.

Offline Blackstar

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Re: Pre-Challenger flight opportunities per astronaut
« Reply #14 on: 02/19/2009 06:09 pm »
One other note: a few years ago I was in Lompoc researching VAFB and SLC-6 (the VAFB historian is not a helpful person and therefore not worth talking to).  The Lompoc Record had pretty much nothing on SLC-6 leading up to the shutdown.  You'd think that nothing was wrong and then BAM, SLC-6 is mothballed.  Considering the effect that it had on the local economy, it's amazing that the local newspaper seemed to be pretty clueless about the whole thing.

My guess is that if documents exist, they are at the Pentagon level, and a lot of them would be classified due to the NRO connection.  It is NRO policy to refuse to comment at all on shuttle involvement, which is rather nutty considering that they have previously acknowledged involvement in the shuttle.

Offline Jim

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Re: Pre-Challenger flight opportunities per astronaut
« Reply #15 on: 02/19/2009 06:29 pm »
One other note: a few years ago I was in Lompoc researching VAFB and SLC-6 (the VAFB historian is not a helpful person and therefore not worth talking to).  The Lompoc Record had pretty much nothing on SLC-6 leading up to the shutdown.  You'd think that nothing was wrong and then BAM, SLC-6 is mothballed.  Considering the effect that it had on the local economy, it's amazing that the local newspaper seemed to be pretty clueless about the whole thing.

My guess is that if documents exist, they are at the Pentagon level, and a lot of them would be classified due to the NRO connection.  It is NRO policy to refuse to comment at all on shuttle involvement, which is rather nutty considering that they have previously acknowledged involvement in the shuttle.

There were many levels of activity planned for SLC-6 post 51-L.  I don't remember them all but:
Activation
Limited Activation
Caretaker (this was to allow reactivation)
Shut down and Mothball




Offline Jim

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Re: Pre-Challenger flight opportunities per astronaut
« Reply #16 on: 02/19/2009 06:32 pm »
I've never seen any drawings of GPS in a shuttle bay.  I think they were planning for three per launch.  Is that correct?

Of course, the GPS schedule was also rather slippery.  I think that the launches kept getting put off, not always because of Challenger, but because USAF was squirrely about paying for the thing.  Remember that GPS was not declared fully operational until a few years _after_ the Persian Gulf War.  Had USAF fully funded it, GPS probably would have been operational in the 1980s.

It was one or two per mission.  There was a capability for three but it would have limited the number of PAM DII on other missions.  There were 3 sets of PAM DII ASE and it was the limiting factor.  One was to be reserved for commercial spacecraft.

There are couple of post 51-L manifests on L2
« Last Edit: 02/19/2009 06:35 pm by Jim »

Offline aurora899

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Re: Pre-Challenger flight opportunities per astronaut
« Reply #17 on: 02/21/2009 09:16 am »
I read in an article, that if the Challenger disaster did not happen in '86, many shuttle astronauts had the opportunity to fly cca. 7, 8, 9 or 10 shuttle missions during their NASA career. What could have been with the number of flight assignments per one astronaut if Challenger did not happen?

To get back to the original question, it could quite easily have been 8, 9 or 10 – in theory. Remember Jerry Ross and Franklin Chang-Diaz both notched up 7 flights even with Challenger. Before the disaster, most astronauts were expecting to fly at least once a year and in some cases every six months. Whether they’d have wanted to (especially over the long term) is a moot point. John Fabian quit shortly after 51-G even though he’d already been assigned to a high-profile planetary deployment mission the following year. He said that he couldn’t face plunging straight back into an intensive training regime immediately after returning from a previous flight, and was particularly worried about the effect on his family life.

Offline K-P

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Re: Pre-Challenger flight opportunities per astronaut
« Reply #18 on: 02/22/2009 01:24 pm »
SLC 6 would have been used, no doubt about it, had 51L not happened.

Twice. The first AND the last time.
If I recall right it was so poorly constructed that it would have been torn to pieces by the first shuttle launch from there, most likely destroying the shuttle itself too.

Online Herb Schaltegger

Re: Pre-Challenger flight opportunities per astronaut
« Reply #19 on: 02/22/2009 02:54 pm »
SLC 6 would have been used, no doubt about it, had 51L not happened.

Twice. The first AND the last time.
If I recall right it was so poorly constructed that it would have been torn to pieces by the first shuttle launch from there, most likely destroying the shuttle itself too.

Oh, please.  Hyperbole like that is absurd.  ::)
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