It's a pity that there will be no STS v2. I would have loved to see that. The wings would probably be much smaller (see CRV) and it would have no rudder.
It is very far from the X vehicle philosophy.
It's an interesting "what if" to consider how the program might have been different if the Shuttle II replacement system had been given the green light.
You could almost say the the Shuttles reusability proves out the need, at least in the near term, for almost all space vehicles to be expendable, or at least designed with the assumption it will only be reused a few times.
If the Shuttle had been smaller and designed to be replaced every 4-5 launches (insert non replaceable main engines), it would have been upgraded over the years like the Soyuz and EELV fleets. Also if each vehicle had a fixed life cycle, it would have allowed the external tanks to and solid rocket booster designs to be drastically altered as a new family of "Shuttles" came into use.
When the world goes back to the RLV, eventually, I hope we learn the lessons of the shuttle, and not lock ourselves in that generation of technology, and incorporate a more modular, expandable, and expendable approach. Saturn rockets where bullets with no name, the Shuttle where Battleships with names to be remembered by history. Shuttle proved that we need our space vehicles to be fighter aircraft, designed to be worn out and parked in a desert.
Quote from: lorahpj on 07/04/2009 08:18 pmIt's an interesting "what if" to consider how the program might have been different if the Shuttle II replacement system had been given the green light. Perhaps it was given the green light...http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_generic.jsp?channel=awst&id=news/030606p1.xmlI'm not convinced, but still can't help but wonder!
Briefly what is the technical issue making it so heard to keep all the foam in place?
Quote from: NUAETIUS on 07/04/2009 09:54 pmYou could almost say the the Shuttles reusability proves out the need, at least in the near term, for almost all space vehicles to be expendable, or at least designed with the assumption it will only be reused a few times.The economics of the Shuttle were known from the beginning. For some reason, they were expecting that the launch rate could be brought up to 40 or so launches a year and that there would be enough business to support that launch rate. Without that high launch rate, the overhead of a mostly reusable vehicle wasn't justified, just as we found out.
IIRC, the geometry of the ET isn't smooth or regular around the forward orbiter attachment point, so air bubbles form underneath the foam when it is sprayed onto the tank.
Can't help thinking the three made a full, incremental test program. 1/4 subscale shuttle > Enterprise ALT > full-size hypersonic flights > STS-1
Quote from: Archibald on 07/06/2009 05:45 pmCan't help thinking the three made a full, incremental test program. 1/4 subscale shuttle > Enterprise ALT > full-size hypersonic flights > STS-1 How much would this have helped, though? It would have allowed the Shuttle's hypersonic aerodynamics to be pinned down accurately (Is it true that, because of mis-estimation of the center of pressure about a ton of dead weight had to be added to move the center of mass to compensate?). But otherwise, it seems as though the Shuttle's principal problems are operational, and I wonder whether this hypothetical test series would have been able to highlight those problems.
Quote from: khallow on 07/05/2009 01:19 pmQuote from: NUAETIUS on 07/04/2009 09:54 pmYou could almost say the the Shuttles reusability proves out the need, at least in the near term, for almost all space vehicles to be expendable, or at least designed with the assumption it will only be reused a few times.The economics of the Shuttle were known from the beginning. For some reason, they were expecting that the launch rate could be brought up to 40 or so launches a year and that there would be enough business to support that launch rate. Without that high launch rate, the overhead of a mostly reusable vehicle wasn't justified, just as we found out.Shuttle couldn't launch every week anyway.The lesson is NOT that reusables are bad. It's that STS doesn't work as an operational system.Don't generalize too much.