Was the Space Shuttle Doomed From the Beginning ?
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- Опубліковано 31 лип 2016
- When the space shuttle was announced in 1972 it was seen as the space vehicle to make low earth orbit space travel and living in space an everyday reality.
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But in hindsight many now believe that it was a failed project that was hamstrung by lack of funding and interest by government and sky high expectations from NASA that led them to sideline safety to ensure scheduled launches continued on time in order to secure future funding.
Instead of expanding man’s horizons, it in fact limited them and stopped the development more effective, safer forms of both manned and unmanned space transport. It ultimately become the deadliest space vehicle in history and more expensive than the expendable rocket systems it was meant to replace.
But wasn’t meant to be like this, NASA had originally proposed the Space Transport System or STS as it was known, which was a system of reusable manned space vehicles in 1969 as the successor to the Apollo program. The STS was going to consist of a permanent space station in low earth orbit, a small cheap space shuttle to transport astronauts to and from the earth and the space station, a space tug to move men and equipment to different earth orbits but could also double up as a lunar lander and a nuclear powered space craft to go between the low earth orbit and the moon or to other planets in the solar system.
The two main goals of the STS were to reduce the cost of spaceflights by replacing the then current rockets like the Saturn 5 that took men to the moon and that could only be used once, with reusable spacecraft. The second was for it to act as support for NASA’s more ambitious goals of permanent manned space stations around the earth and the moon and then manned missions to Mars.
Werner Von Brown, architect of the moon missions, wanted NASA to follow up Apollo and go to Mars and the military liked the idea of the of a reusable shuttle to deliver its satellites and do other things, However, after the success of the Apollo missions and the race to put a man on the moon was over, public and political interest in further manned missions waned and congress became unwilling to maintain the huge funding which had peaked at 4.5% of the Federal budget in the late 60’s, so it was cut to a fraction of that in the early 70’s...........
Video credits to NASA for footage of the shuttle via creative commons.
Space Night Drumming by Frank Dorittke is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution licence (creativecommons.org/licenses/b...)
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The space shuttle sure looked badass, like something straight out of science fiction. But it was just so heavily flawed. Your heart wants to love it while your mind is saying no way.
I still kinda love it. I know it's a sentimental thing, but the fact that we had a real "space ship" and walked away from it seems wrong. Even though I fully understand it, the technology just weren't there yet when the shuttle was designed.
Starship really feels like the future, it is (hopefully) going to be what the Shuttle (and the original STS program at large) promised nearly 50 years ago.
Heavily brain washed no evidence of design problems found except in press run by LM & Boink. The official cause by the society of engineers, was determined to be the attitudes of ignorance at LM & Boink. They have been forced out of existence for a well oiled propaganda machine.
@viper : Cheese, you spread propaganda like crazy, but one day you should actually read the report issued by the accident board. Not LM & Boinks propaganda factory.
That's how I feel too.
kinda wish the Buran and Energia had a chance to show what it could have been
It's unreal that they actually designed it with stick on tiles.
Like a fucking stained glass window, and then expected it to survive reentry or be inexpensive to repair
What’s even worse is that pretty much all previous heat shields were made from a more impact resistant and well secured resin composite.
On Apollo 13, one of the factors in keeping the SM attached until just before reentry rather than jettisoning it (which would have made control and course corrections much easier) was because of the protection it afforded the heat shield.
But yeah.. let’s make a fragile flying brickyard with all kinds of things to impact it.
So actually it is a miracle a Columbia kind disaster did not happen earlier or even more often.... Pure luck
I guess they expected the refurb to be cheap as gluing a new tile on the damaged one but hindsight was a stupid idea.
X-37B is designed by same people back then and over time the adhesive tiles have improved the tiles were designed by LM. They actually did a good job, it was new technology. X-37B was known as the mini shuttle and has the newest version of the adhesive tiles. Now that it's a Boink, why all the positive press for the same old style design. Politics?
Designed in the 60's - built in the 70's - by the time it finally starting flying in the 80's - it was already obsolete technology. An extremely complex machine with so many critical systems and parts - and so much potential for disaster - especially with all the political pressure and terrible top management decisions - it's just amazing they only lost two vehicles.
It's a real testament to all of the dedicated engineers - support crews - technicians etc.. that they had so many successful flights.
Now that is a comment
Yeah, and they had to salvage the old engines, boosters, and other designs for SLS(space launch system).
None of that would have been an issue if the design was actually good. Just look at the B-52 or the Soyuz.
Tbh that does tend to happen with a lot of Aerospace technology. The Pratt and Whitney Geared Turbofan (GTF) first flew in 2008, but only saw commercial service by the late 2010s and early 2020s
"Accident" is the wrong word when the failure incident probability is well known and the vehicle used regardless.
"Murder" is the word you're looking for.
@@ayushsharma8804 - I'm currently dealing with a piece of machinery that has a terrible design and many components are designed to fail except their expected lifespan isn't published by the manufacturer.
Trial and error and learning the hard way has been needlessly expensive and stressful.
In the shuttle incident the "expense" was human lives and moral among everyone involved in the project. I went to school with kids of the astronauts.
What the designers THOUGHT the probability of a failure was is irrelevant. They knew that the component would fail and didn't give that information to the people using the item.
It failed. The astronauts and their families learned the hard way. It was negligent homicide on the part of the designers.
Negligence is the word I think they're looking for. Perhaps even criminal negligence. I hate to say that, I love the Program, but after digging deep into Challenger and Columbia, I can't turn a blind eye. They KNEW and they did nothing. They knew.
The word 'accident" describes an unforeseen set of circumstances which can lead to disaster. What happened to the two, NASA Space Shuttles, both Challenger in 1986 and Colombia in 2003 were no accidents, in the case of Challenger, NASA had been repeatedly warned by engineers from Morton Thiokol, in Utah the company which manufactured the solid rocket boosters that they could not recommend the launch of the Shuttle as the temperature on the launch pad on the morning of the launch was minus 10, and Thiokol had told NASA that they had No idea how the rubber O- rings in the joints of the SRBs would cope with such low temperatures, as they had no experience whatsoever on the operational parameters of the rubber O rings at extremely low temperatures, but senior management at NASA dismissed their concerns and pushed ahead with the launch anyway, with tragic consequences
In the case of Colombia in 2003, NASA, who themselves film the launch of every mission with high definition cameras and later review the footage, had seen a large chunk of foam and ice from the external fuel tank, (approximately 2 kilogram's in weight) break off the external tank, as the Shuttle soared through the upper atmosphere, and hit the leading edge of the Shuttles left wing punching a massive hole in the reinforced Carbon carbon panel, so they knew there was a major problem, they were also well aware of foam strikes on Shuttle's from previous Shuttle launches, and they just basically kept their fingers crossed, held their breath for the duration of the mission and hoped for the best, and unfortunately, yet again it was all to end in tragedy, a total of fourteen lives, needlessly lost, to NASA's total disregard for the safety of it's Shuttle Crew's, NASA had begun to treat the Shuttle like it was an airliner, and it never was, both disasters were completely avoidable. NASA was completely Negligent in both cases.
I vividly recall reading a workplace poster years ago that sticks to my memory to this day. "Accidents don't happen. They are caused."
The main design flaw on the Shuttle, was the external tank coating. Watching the investigation, they knew then that the foam was indeed hitting the shuttles every time it launched. You were spot on about that.
Wow, I knew the shuttle never performed the way it was supposed to but I didn't know it was that bad.
It was cool, but it was expensive and dangerous. If you just watched, it was cool.
I think that the Space Shuttle would have been much more efficient and cheaper if NASA choosed to build one of proposed versions of Shuttle C. That is big unmanned booster with cargo container in place of the Shuttle orbiter. This would have been replacement for the Saturn 5, and the current NASA's big booster would no bi necessary. And as for the safety, I believe that Shuttle is equally safe/unsafe as Soyuz
6 Astronauts have died in 3 Soyuz spacecraft, including the only 3 astronauts to ever die in space. The Soyuz has been in service since the early sixties and is the only vehicle currently taking people to and from the ISS. 3 astronauts died in Apollo 1. 14 died in 2 Shuttle disasters. I think the Shuttle wins the 'Most deadly Spaceship" title. Soyuz hasn't had a deadly incident since 1971.
Marc, actually only 4 cosmonauts have died in 2 Soyuz flights: Vladimir Komarov on the first flight of Soyuz in 1967 when the parachute of the reentry capsule didn't opened. The launch of the Soyuz 1 which wasn't ready for flight at that time was hastened by the Soviet leaders, so this accident could have been avoided.
The fire on Apollo 1 that killed 3 astronauts has occurred during the rehearsal for launch.
3 cosmonaut on Soyuz died from decompression in space. That was design flaw of the Soyuz because its capsule didn't have enough space for 3 man crew with space suits, and Soyuz had flown with two member crew with space suits till, i think 1980.
I think You can agree that both Challenger and Columbia disasters could have been avoided if NASA applied safety regulations more rigorously. Nevertheless the whole design of Space Shuttle, specially solid rocket boosters is inherently more dangerous than that of the Soyuz.
And You are right that Space Shuttle is most deadly spaceship, but that is because of its capacity. Space Shuttle has 7 men crew, and Soyuz have 2 or 3 men crew depending of the version. I think that more people have flown in Space Shuttle from 1981 to 2011 than in Soyuz from 1967 till today.
They are pretty close. According to wikipedia, the russians launched 129 souyz rockets with about 3 people at a time. According to NASA, the space shuttle lifted about 350 people into space...
What wasn't mentioned... The original center fuel tank was painted white. After the first few flights they stopped doing that to save the weight of the paint, approx 600-800 Lbs depending who you ask. That latex paint was supposed to shield the tank from sunlight and some heating. It is now thought though that it also added a protective elastic layer that helped hold the foam in place. We very well may have lost Columbia to save a few hundred pounds.
It's highly unlikely that a coat of paint would have helped. The foam was subject not only to aerodynamic forces but also pressure from within as it heated up (particularly if there were any moisture in the foam)
@@davidlang4442 They should have trained Birds of Prey on sight at all times then.
The shuttle was designed to bring large elements back to Earth from Low Earth Orbit, especially for the Department of Defense. Launching, deploying and then periodically capturing and bringing those elements back to Earth for refurbishment and uprade, and then relaunch. However this capacity was very seldom used, except for the Spacelab flights (which contradicted the need for a Station) and a few other retrievals, the bring-back capacity was heavily underused. This capacity, however, meant that a very large, labour and maintenance intensive heatshield would be required. Most of the maintenance revolved around heatshield processing. A secondary problem was that maximum reusability did not necessarily mean maximum efficency: the reusability of the main engines. These had to be painstakingly inspected for any internal cracks after every flight. This also added to the cost. Last, one also has to consider the context. In 1990 the Cold War ended, and in 1993 Russia offered its services to the US. At that point the shuttle fleet could and should have been downsized, by mothballing the oldest of the craft, Columbia. In 1997 she almost had a fuel cell fire on orbit, in 1999 she nearly suffered a main engine nozzle rupture, upon maintenance overhaul in 2001 she had almost 3000 wiring issues. In the end, though one has to aknowledge how immensely spectacular and PR friendly the shuttles were. They reached an iconic status, a quarter of a century of effective flight, they survived 8 presidential administrations, and the fickle taxpaying public loved the danger. Perfect? No. Unforgettable? Definetly.
If I could recommend at least the first part of this comment more than once, I would. Understanding how the USAF's retrieval requirements, along with a misguided - if well-meaning - attempt to reduce costs and improve efficiency through standardisation, compromised the Shuttle system in terms of safety requires taking in and assessing a lot of disparate evidence.
Food for thought: Remember the first shuttle launches the external fuel tank was painted White. Then someone decided it would save 700 pounds in weight not to paint it. The paint was doing a job keeping moisture from penetrating into the foam insulation. Where it would freeze and separate the foam from the tank. Also it kept birds from burrowing into the foam making nests. Another job the paint acted like a skin and would have prevented the foam from ever falling off. Also painted surfaces tend to shed moisture instead of letting it collect to freeze it would run down the fuel tank and drip off. Just a personal observation. 8| Semper Fi
HFMmv
when they did away with freon,
they also switched the insulation ( for being Politically Correct, which destroyed the Challenger STS)
I agree. The original shuttle did indeed have a white painted main tank. I thought at the time it was because any large supersonic plane(think Concorde or XB-70) needed to be painted white to reduce heat generated during the highest speeds. Your point is excellent about the paint protecting the main tank- so to save weight they compromised safety.
Also it looks really ugly. The external tank looks like a rusty old farm silo. Looks are no way to judge a rocket of course, but I don’t care, because seeing both of the Falcon Heavy boosters land together was one of the most amazing things I have ever seen. I think that the fact that in 30 years they didn’t bother to change the color of the spray on insulation says a lot about the project...
For years I also wondered about the paint being a protective barrier that should have never been eliminated.
That's a very well thought out observation.
One thing not mentioned is that the shuttle did not have a escape system in the event of a launch failure. Every other manned rocket, American or otherwise possessed it. Anytime when people are strapped to tanks containing rocket fuel, there is the chance of a catastrophic failure. In 132 flights of Soyuz, in 1983 one rocket exploded on the pad. Yet the cosmonauts survived when the abort system activated Not to include a escape system is a dumb idea.
Dennis McIntyre It probably saved a lot of time and money. It is sad that NASA prioritized saving money and time over the lives of the cosmonauts. NASA didn't have a rescue plan in case the astronauts were stranded on the moon either.
Dennis McIntyre it did have a launch escape system while still on the pad but was not designed to save the crew from a fuel tank blowing up. The crew had to leave the orbiter and reach a cable systems the would get them in a bunker. There were mid flight plans for aborting but as far as I know only after the SRB was dropped.
Well said
Dennis the Shuttle did have an emergency evac system while on pad, but once she was air borne you were stuck. Do you even realize how fast you were going once you left the ground? It looks slow, but in reality she hit, before she went into orbit, 17,500 MPH. Now envision what would happen to a human body if it was going that fast and suddenly left the body it was traveling in. The Challenger crew hit the water doing about that.....there wasn't much left of them. Pieces. Seriously. Some were found here on the beach days later. The crew cabin had cracked open when it hit the water. A glove with a hand in it.....::shivering:: They didn't put that on the news at the time to respect the families of the astronauts. I live 16 miles from launch pad 39A.
Dennis McIntyre they did have a plan to RTLS Abort via ditching the boosters and using the ET and the main engines to fly back to the launch site
I grew up hearing about how the shuttle was a huge step forward from what we had been using, but it did always stick in the back of my mind that there was no launch escape system like mercury and apollo had.
The first flight of the shuttle had ejection seats for the two crewmen aboard. Those were removed later to increase payload capability on future flights. Goodbye escape abilities. ..Must have been on the minds of everyone strapped to their seats inside this flying coffin each time those two massive fire crackers strapped to your ship lit up...
I 100% agree with the NASA administrator quoted in this video: The Space Shuttle was a disastrous regression for NASA. If you added up all the costs of this program over the years, and imagined putting that funding into manned moon missions over the same amount of time, our Aerospace industry would have progressed in every way by a factor of 10 compared to what actually happened.
Who said that? He's my hero.
Well the problem is the shuttle wasn’t meant to be the flagship but rather the work horse of the fleet rather than doing everything it was meant to be a work bed for creating things like the iss. The shuttle should’ve been used to make things like a interplanetary travel system
Just think. Basically instead of ways of getting to Mars 30 years ago, our government gave us Vietnam, Desert Storm, the Iraq war and a bunch of Stealth aircraft that were rarely used yet cost their weight in solid gold.
Lets face it, if our government ran a McDonalds a Mcdouble would cost about $4,000.
No, if the US Govt (and military) ran McDonalds a Big Mac would cost about $40 million each due to the high research and development costs of the WTB ( Weaponise The Burger) Programme
;)
That's quite pessimistic look. Surely there is plenty of good things.
Not to argue, because I also feel that it's a waste of brain power, but look at what these wars do for economy. More jobs, more money for research, more global influence..... Now look at what mars would give us? Bragging rights? Everyone knows the race to the moon was to prove that America or Russia could land a missile (in this case a rocket ship) anywhere in the world. There really is no reason to go to mars. We proved our point with the moon landings. I hate wars, but do you really think we were EVER in the middle east for any reason other than to protect OUR oil?? Come on. Americans want to abolish all government every time gas goes up ten cents a gallon!!
Where does America get the oil that fuels the 300 million people each day? It aint Texas!
+Suq Madiq If we in the US were smart, a mission to Mars would be an international effort. But China has yet to get a human to the Moon, let alone Mars. The rover they sent to the Moon failed fairly quickly. US probes to Mars lasted years beyond their expected lifetime.
We all have a lot of work to do before we're ready to send a manned mission to Mars. Even with all the exercises and counter-measures we have for astronauts spending long-duration flight aboard the ISS, astronauts have to be carried away on a stretcher when they return to Earth. It takes them awhile to regain the strength to support their own weight. Long term exposure to cosmic rays is another. Lunar missions lasted about two weeks at most. With Mars we are talking about months and years.
It was not a thermal tile that was damaged on Columbia, it was the leading edge of the wing, a carbon-carbon composite panel.
You are 100% correct. The. RCC (Reinforced carbon-carbon) LH Panel #13, was damaged by ice at launch. Ice blew a hole the size of a basketball, completely through the RCC Panel.
Th e damage allowed hot atmospheric gases to penetrate the heat shield (RCC #13) and destroyed the internal wing structure, which caused the spacecraft to become unstable and break apart. The extreme heat on the wing leading edge(s) i.e. "RCC" panels, reaches approximately 3000 degrees. The heat burned a hole through the forward bulkhead of the LH wing, causing the internal structure of the wing to buckle/collapse and eventually break loose from the Mid Body (Fuselage) and Aft Body.
The TPS black tiles and white blankets i.e. AFRSI (Advanced Flexible Reusable Surface Insulation), though slightly damaged morso on the Ohms Pods, mounted atop on the Aft Body, and lower wing surfaces; did not play any part in the destruction and / or the devastation of the fatal Columbia incident.
I spent 15 yrs on the STS Orbital Vehicle (OV) -102. I installed the RCC panels with a co-worker during the OV - 102 G4 modification. The RCC panels are extremely fragile, and cannot take impacts without fracturing or worse. The TPS black tiles or even more fragile as much so as an eggshell even more so. The white AFRSI blankets are very very durable.
The loss of the Crew aboard Columbia was a devastating loss to all personnel who worked on the Space Shuttle Program; as well as the people of the USA. however the pain and Agony of such a tremendous accident / incident was felt by all around the world. Godspeed Columbia STS-107 and your crew.
It was not ice that damaged the tile, it was actually the foam that protects the components from ice. Remember the experiments they did using the foam to recreate the damage.
It was also not the first time the leading edge had been damaged. A piece of foam broke a hole in the leading edge on a classified mission but luckily there was a piece of steel located in that location that kept it from burning through the wing. Unfortunately NASA did not learn from that incident. Both shuttle accidents were preventable, and the whole project was way overpriced.
@@pandamandimax In the experiment they shot a piece of foam at great speed at an aluminum wing section and it created a hole the size of a small suitcase.
Breaks my heart when I see those astronauts that died.
@Milt Farrow how so?
Milt Farrow They were killed in a test for Apollo 1, well before any space shuttle. All spacecraft up to that point had a pure oxygen atmosphere, it’s a miracle it didn’t go wrong before. What was your point again?
Milt Farrow so which cover story would that be, and what is your source for it? Also you CAPS LOCK is sticking.
Astro-nots but the cosmo-cans, they are all freemase-mans. 6of the 7 on challenger are still alive& 5 didn't even bother changing their names. Little lower case nasa is a satanic joke who's only purpose is to try and brainwash everyone into thinking there is no God or Heaven. They are hissing sssspa-sssse. Nimrod built the tower of Babel trying to escape from Gods wrath if he flooded the earth again due to the sin. The first south "pole" visit was named Nimrad expedition🤔 and nimrod spelt back wards is Dormin aka Darwin the same science being pushed to this day trying to discredit the Bible with there retarded big bang ballshit.
Brian GsUslrdsvor why wouldn’t they change their names?
As poor as the physical design of the shuttle was, the management decisions for the failed flights were far worse. So bad in fact that criminal charges should have been pursued.
yes, this. Instead of telling columbia that their heat shield was compromised and cobbling together an emergency rescue, they chose not to tell them so they wouldn't know when they died. Challenger was just caused by the idiocy of launching in sub zero weather rather than simply waiting.
To be fair on management, a vehicle that is never used is useless. Spaceflight is never going to be risk free. In hindsight it's easy to hate on them but if Challenger had been delayed for years the program could have been shut down.
Spaceflight may never be risk free, but that doesn't mean you take unnecessary risks in order to achieve your goals, you must always strive to mitigate against the risks you have as much as is humanly possible, by taking technology you already have in hand and applying it to the task at hand to reduce the risks.
The brave men and women who embark on such missions on NASA's and other space agencies behalf, deserve no less.
The shuttle was an engineering marvel and a design catastrophe
The big problem with the Space Shuttle is that it was a top down design, a bottom up design would have factored in all the associated risks involved in operating such a vehicle and designed a reusable Space Shuttle around it.
What sickness me, is those deaths could have been prevented.
@Paul Dawson not really a schedule issue, more a design necessity, the shuttle can only stay in orbit for so long and support life.
@Milt Farrow They could have done a space walk and assessed the damage. This didn't happen. Unfortunately those deaths were preventable. But government meddling and PR image propaganda killed those astronauts.
@@MrGeforcerFX I'm pretty sure NASA had a backup plan just in case a reentry was not possible. I mean they only had 23 years to make one.
That was the problem, they didn't have a plan. Only options they had was to let them orbit earth until they died, or let them try re-entry and hope for the slight possibility that they didn't burn up. The Space Shuttle is the only spacecraft ever made that didn't have some sort of escape option for the crew. I remember seeing both the Challenger and Columbia accidents. When both of them happened, NASA seemed shocked at what had happened. The fact is, they knew exactly what caused both accidents before it happened. Thiokol told them the day of the launch that the O-rings would fail, but they were told to shut up, because of what it would cost to delay another launch.
@@m16ty You are incorrect. Thiokol didnt tell NASA anything, Thiokol gave them the OK for launch. You are misremembering.
Politicians never learned that when you cut cost, you will pay double eventually. Well, same for businesses.
But its not their money
What? but they didnt cut cost with the Shuttle. The Shuttle was the most expensive system out there by far! Every other option was 1/10th to 1/50th the cost. The Shuttle is a testament that governments with no fiscal control will go on to build wacky, fantastical sci fi projects like the Shuttle rather than do what is right for the job.
It's like Robert Zubrin said: they built it upside-down! The expensive first stage is mostly expendable; the cheap final stage is the reusable one, and it's really heavy; the payload and passengers are at the bottom; it's absurd. Incredible technical achievement given the constraints the engineers were given, but still pretty silly in retrospect.
They are parallel staged and all stages are reusable. Only the tank is expendable and it’s by far the cheapest component.
@@calvinnickel9995 wait, the SRBs were reusable?
@@abeke5523
Technically, but how much money did it save? None! That's why they're throwing away the boosters on SLS. They're throwing away the SSME engines too.... The ones they bragged about being reusable all those years. Ridiculous.
@Alpha Centauri
Absolutely. Have you seen what Aerojet did recently? NASA is stuck using them, so they raised the price on the RS25 about 400%. So the outrageously expensive $40 million engines are now $146 million... Each. Ars has a good article about it.
@Alpha Centauri
You are so right. No one cares what it costs as long as those federal dollars get wasted in the right Congressional districts. It's shameful.
They designed , tested , built the most powerful space launch system , possibly the most powerful machine ever devised the Sat V , in record time , getting through all the most difficult engineering challenges ever contemplated , guidance , navigation , POGO oscillations in the F-1 motors , manufacturing processes never imagined but thought of and accomplished , ect ... They launched a handful of times with only 1 launch which wasn't flawless , but was still successful , they used it to land on the moon , then after all the success with this new powerful rocket they just stopped building it. Great job government.
It was very capable and reliable, then they thought they could save money.
By "the one launch that wasn't flawless but was still successful" are you referring to the one where the entire crew burned alive?
@@cm01 no. That wasn't a launch.
@@cm01 that happened in the first version of the command module. And it wasn't mounted on the top of a saturn v rocket. I'm not sure if that first version was ever mounted to a Saturn v. I can't imagine what that must've been like. And to be an engineer on that must've been life changing. the strength to move on and build another cm after that I don't know if I could do it.
@@cm01 the flaw , with out looking out up, I think was a fuel pressure problem, the computer shut down one engine during the flight but there was no real prob . A pipe contracted in the cold of space which the computer detected and correctly shut down the engine except it was the wrong engine. A technician crossed a wire between two engines. So really the test flight was a success because the computer operated flawless
This is what you get when politicians try to be engineers.
Nah, they never even tried. This is what happens when politicians treat engineers like idiots that have to be babysat and directed. And when they care more about their short-term careers rather than the long-term improvement of the country.
Or engineer try to play politic for more funding
Forest Ray Government fails us every single day
Some current technical companies have a management that threat their own engineers like easy-replaceable idiots, even if they are broadly educated and highly experienced. In 1980 most bigger technical companies had a management with partly people with some scientific background, in 2010 almost all were replaced by people who had a degree in economics and business. I think you need them both.
Forest Ray Politicians are controlled by the people trouble Liz people don’t pay attention to their vote and they don’t think your vote counts and that’s when shit like this happens
Hi, I found out about your channel a few weeks ago, when I was searching the Concorde, and I loved! You have really good vídeos!
Agree
Very well made interesting documentary,,,
I like your presentations very much also. Excellent research, high quality imagery and video editing, accessible to any and all yet definitely still interesting to the experts, I suppose, but my personal favorite: the superb accent of the narrator. Perfect pitch and rythm, light yet serious, this voice clearly enhances the whole experience and makes this series a joy to watch... and hear. I will be back often, thank you. Rose.
Simply the space shuttle was a product of the Cold War. If something commercial isn't profitable it hasn't any reason to exist. After the dissolution of USSR NASA started to use Russian engines with Atlas rockets. Also the first flights of american astronauts with Russian Soyuz rockets began. Even after the recent economic measures against Russia have taken place, NASA very recently bought 60 rocket Russian engines.
Space shuttle and Concorde aircraft was partly made to prove the superiority of western capitalistic countries. Afterwards they didn't bring money and their accidents was a cheap excuse to get rid of them.
Apparently Pres.Kennedy wanted the moon project to be an international collaboration so he gave ORDERS to his military chiefs (or NASA) to absolutely contact the Russians to offer them a seat but unfortunately the message was 'lost along the way', and the president died not long after, along with a whole generation's dreams of world peace. If this plan would have worked, our bases wouldn't be in Iraq, they would be on the moon! Cheers.
The Shuttle cargo bay with the CanadArm was a very flexible tool for doing heavy work in space, and allowed the ISS to be constructed LEGO-style into what it became. It allowed the Hubble to be repaired twice. It was useful in its own unique way. It was managerial hubris by non-engineers that was behind both disasters. The safety culture established by Apollo program heroes Frank Borman and Gene Kranz was gradually subordinated to schedule and cost priorities.
(1) Talk about bad choices, getting derailed, wasting tons of money, and above all, losing irreplaceable lives unnecessarily... (2) Talk about politicians, both outside and inside NASA... (3) BOTH accidents were FULLY preventable. (4) Great video, sad lessons.
Never should have stopped flying Saturn fives
Mark Pesce That's congress for you
They never existed... it was all a hoax XD
While it was great that the Saturn five didn't kill people, the only thing with a higher cost per pound than the Saturn five was the Shuttle, they needed a new lower cost option. As a matter of fact they still do, the SLS is too expensive. Seems they got behind on heavy lift development for 30 years.
Sunny Jim wtf
Bullshit. Depending on what figures you use a Saturn V cost 5000-7000 USD/kg to orbit. That is even competitive by today's standards. Before SpaceX very competitive, smack dab in the lower middle of launch costs. Fun fact, you know the entire moon thing, lunar module etc... cost a shit ton. Building a Saturn V launch vehicle only cost twice as much as a Falcon 9 in today's money (110ish million today). Saturn V was beyond fantastic. It has a payload mass fraction of 4.33%. To put that into perspective, the single stage to orbit, Skylon which does not need to carry it's heavy oxidizer besides a tiny amount get the same figures. SLS is somewhere around 2.5%. Which is actually significantly worse than the Space Shuttle if you count the Orbiter mass as well. Then it gets 6.5% payload mass fraction. It barely gets twice the Shuttle figures just counting useful payload. People think it was a great rocket for the time. They have no clue it was among the best machines ever built by man. And we only ever flew 12. Imagine what could have been done if we had kept refining the design over the decades like Atlas and Delta. I'm confident we'd be 40 years ahead in space exploration.
This is such a sad video. Poor space shuttle :(
Virgin admin 41 more like poor dead scientists
@The Void that speaks Retiring shuttle didn't save the taxpayers a dime.
hoghogwild in reality all it did was stop where we are going. Read my comment if you wanna see my opinion.
They were retired because they’ve reached the end of their lifespan. You can only reused a shuttle for so many years before the material deteriorates. And even by then they were not economical compared to rocket launched space capsules. Also, the shuttle was designed to construction the International Space Station. Once the construction completed, there is no longer a real purpose for the shuttle. Sending people and cargos to the ISS can be done at a much lower cost by using rockets (and safer too).
@Haloking 4558 we have the same profile picture Lol
"*huge* funding of 4.5%"
no wonder we aren't getting off this rock.
We aren't getting off this rock because there's no where we can go that's worth going to.
I bet nobody thought Canada was a particularly hospitable patch of land 300 year ago. Why bother? But now it's a great country.
@@user-lv7ph7hs7l
But it still isn't a particularly hospitable patch of land now is it?
@@lordgarion514 Nah without technology such as fire and houses and clothes Canada might as well be Mars.
I find space travel fascinating, but you have to ask yourself it is worth the cost. Low earth orbit has some benefits to us here on earth, but I can't think of a thing we gained from going to the moon, except bragging rights. Mars isn't going to be any better. What can we expect to gain from going to Mars?
Sounds like a standard government program to me.
Anyone who wants the government to run healthcare should work with the morons at Social Security for a year.
@Crom the Wise
Exactly right. I work with SSA, which is why I have the same opinion.
Yep
is really sad to think instead bases on the moon and mars we have facebook
Haha so true
We should have both ;-)
Nah, we just have more worthless wars and unprecedented welfare programs. Total budget killers with no return on investment.
It is interesting that the US Air Force is now using the X37B. This is to followed by the X37C which can haul humans. This design is much like the original concept of placing a reusable cargo hauler on top.
An engineer with the project said the shuttle was an exotic highly sophisticated craft that was treated like a peter built
Peterbilt I have a 1979 Pete good truck.
The US had the Saturn V, a launch vehicle that could escape Earth's gravity, but instead of developing that concept NASA decided to go with a "reuseable" low orbit truck.
I can say a lot more, but I think that's enough...
That "reusable" aspect, came from the US Air Force. THEY were the ones who
wanted it to be 'reusable'. NOT NASA. But anyway, much to many lives have been
lost. And that, is SO unbelievable SAD.
The original concept of the STS program was a good idea, NASA should have kept the Saturn V around though for a little while.
@@cancelanime1507 The Saturn V is obsolete
Excellent video! Lot of well known stuff well put together, but I was quite intrigued by Griffin's report and conjectures. The Shuttle design was strongly driven by the military, not just for payload mass and size. The winged design, as opposed to a lifting body, was required so that the Shuttle could return cross-range to where it took off after one Earth orbit, especially circumpolar. The Soviet military demanded the same winged design for Buran, even though apparently they did not know the reason! The Shuttle was an amazing technological achievement, but failing to provide a means of crew escape during launch was inexcusable. Only one or two Soviet flights (the Voskhods) had a brief period of no escape capability during launch; two Soyuz flights were aborted during launch, the crews surviving even if a bit the worse for wear. There were two Soyuz re-entry accidents, with four fatalities, but given the extreme nature of pioneering spaceflight and comparing with aviation in general, that was a remarkably good record. The ultimate irony is that the profoundly cruel Soviet state built a safe spaceflight system, whereas the free American system built an unsafe system which took fourteen astronaut lives, making Griffin's conjecture all the more poignant.
Your post is correct except for your misplaced patriotism. Neither the SU or the US was/is free. We now have the highest (maybe DPRK has us beat) incarceration rate in the world. Ture, we have a free press (if you ignore the oligarchy controlled big media), but as a practical matter, if actual freedom is the measure, we're like Stalin's SU.
However, there still is the irony you mentioned. I suspect there is more to it than the underlying political system. Russians have a different mentality to design than Americans. There is a difference in the cultures. You can look at modern fighter planes for an indication. Durability is emphasized with the Russians. High tech is the American forte.
It's a pity the cold war was so dangerous. If it were not for that, I'd be for another.
you know we just look like we are free. it's not a free system. you vote in politicians. they tell you what you want to hear to get your votes. once in office they do not represent you. they represent the lobbyists. 5-6 lobbyists per member of congress. enough said.
Nice of you to mention the "forgotten" Buran !! I got a very detailed book about it called "Energiya - Buran". The story begins with the lost moon race :
Valentin Glushko blamed Vasily Mishin (successor of Korolev) for the lost moon-race. The designbureau Koeznetsov of which the engines (NK-33) where to blame would not take any part in further Russian efforts to space because of Valentin's power.
After the Space Shuttle's first flights Valentin still wanted to even the moon-race with a moon landing, but the Russian's became worried that the Space Shuttle was perhaps not designed for friendly purposes. (why would it else need to carry big payloads ?). The Russian's concluded they had no other choice as to design their own space shuttle ... but not just a replica, a very-much improved version !
Design cultures differ very much between these 2 nations. Russian designers are for instance not in favour of "manned test/space flights", so the Buran was fitted with an auto-pilot system. Russians had no experience (and confidence) in large solid rocket motors, so liquid boosters became the matter of choice. Energiya was actually an expendable rocket on its own ! Buran was just a payload that could be tested in the atmosphere with the addition of jet-engines.
While the Americans replaced their entire (manned) rocket fleet with the Space Shuttle, the Sovjets didn't abandoned their expendable launch systems. The Energiya-Buran was to be used only for heavy (military) payloads.
With the collapse of the Sovjet Union, their was no money left for the Buran project .. so they dismissed it sadly.
Ironically the program delivered them the world greatest kerolox engine-designs : the RD-170/171 (4 chambers) became the basic design for the RD-180/181 (2 chambers) and RD-190/191 (1 chamber) engines.
To put in into Steve Blake's words (about the RD-180) ... article on wired:
"The Russians don't worry about cosmetics or workmanship,""They build the thing and test the shit out of it. This engine cost $10 million and produces almost 1 million pounds of thrust. You can't do that with an American-made engine.
"While the US finessed its rockets into orbit using lightweight materials with minuscule tolerances, the Russians went for brute force, drawing on every ounce of propulsion they could muster to lift their much heavier craft into space.
Yeah, I
Nehmo Sergheyev: Your statements are dangerously misleading. There is a vast literature on what happened in the Soviet era, especially under Stalin, but since we are talking about space, you just need to read about Sergei Korolev and what he went through in the worst of the Gulags (right across from Alaska). There's a poignant interview with Alexei Leonov here on UA-cam, recounting what Korolev told Leonov and Gagarin shortly before his death about those experiences. Comparing the US to the Stalinist system is an insult to the millions murdered by Stalin. Furthermore, the "oligarchic controlled big media" are far more reliable than the uncontrolled zoo on the Internet, which is dominated by trolls and bots, especially those operated by Putin.
awuma I once read in a science magazine from the 80's, "What we wanted was a Cadillac, but what we got was a Chevy."
Great video. My biggest takeaway was learning that the original shuttle was only intended for personnel, not payload. Helps explain why the eventual shuttle became such a huge beast.
In retrospect, the Saturn V was the very best move. Every time I think about this, I cringe at the human loss. And all this treasure wasted.
Saturn V was MEANT for it’s job clearly. Meant to send brave men to a new world.
I remember the first time I saw a picture of what the new space shuttle would look like. I immediately thought of the saying ‘A camel is a horse designed by a committee”. The shuttle is a prime example of how big-money projects acquire their own momentum and become ‘too big to shut down’.
The Saturn series should have been further developed and relied upon.
What Saturn series? It was all a prank, bro! Just like when I came in my girlfirend, and she got pregnant, I claimed it wasn't my kid because I FAKED that orgasm. So, see, I told you so.
Sunny Jim idiot
Oh definitely, when you realise that's all that NASA are designing right now with the SLS! It's just a 21st century Saturn. From the late 70s through til now the Saturn could have just been improved and something better than the SLS would probably already exist. Four or five development generations of Saturn later we would already have a rocket capable of a Mars mission.
I saw somewhere Saturn V rockets could have lifted the ISS modules into space in like 6 trips.. vs the dozens and dozens it took with the space shuttle. The work could have been completed in just one year.
@@Bankable2790 The Shuttle could only put 16 tonnes into low earth orbit at the ISS's inclination. Saturn V put 77 tonnes into a near identical orbit for Skylab in 1973, with weight to spare. 100 tonnes was well within Saturn V's capability. That means the 500 tonne mass of the ISS could theoretically be lifted into place with five launches, call it six to supply the station with lobster and quinoa
Hindsight: The video.
lol
soviets didn't have hingsight either. they did it right though.
Ehm Soviet had their shuttle as well, it was called Buran. It was a bit better designed but still they made only one unmanned flight and dumpt the whole project, because how stupid the whole concept was. They did it only because USA had one. Few Buran shuttles are now rotting somewhere in Siberia.
Did what right? They killed 4 cosmonauts on two flights and with a far smaller and theoretically simpler vehicle.
It isn't just hindsight that show the flaws in the Shuttle program: NASA knew it couldn't deliver the savings they were saying it would before they ever started building it.
My friend, your videos are simply fantastic. Your voice and inflection are perfect for these stories and the amount of information is spectacular. Please keep it up.
Your videos are impeccably researched, written and narrated. Outstandingly entertaining and informative. Kudos to you!
It's a real shame how much NASA has fallen from glory.
Well NASA can now focus on science and leave cheaper launch systems to the private guys.
NASA will be able to do so mush more when the get out of the rocket building business
Too true.
John Smith NASA was created to do space exploration though.
Trump redirected from foolish "Muslim outreach". Now that was REAL science, right Barry?
How the idea of hoisting up a 78 ton orbiter for every up to 27 ton payload(usually much less) didn't trigger insanity alarms to begin with, I will never understand.
Great video dude, very well put.
Loved the way your ending put things into perspective👌
Joke was on them. The Saturn V was more cost effective.
Well, if the gov doesn't want something, it ain't gonna happen 🤷♂️
Also the military desperately needed the space shuttle and offered to pay for it.
@@07Flash11MRC - The military regretted that after Challenger. That was when it was realized that they needed to revert to conventional rockets due to the shuttles' unreliability.
Jokes on you The average cost to launch a space shuttle as of 2011 was $450.000.000 The average cost of launching a Saturn V was around $1.100.000.000 when adjusted for infilation
@@daniels7907 The shuttle was by no means "unreliable" it has a flight failure rate of 1.4% that is the same as the Soyuz-FG and even better then Soyuz-U's 2.7% Not to mention that Challenger disaster wasnt even caused by a design error the O-rings performed superbly *WHEN IN THEIR INTENDED OPERATING CONDITIONS* it was simply a bad call by the management to launch
While Columbia could be blamed more on the design of the shuttle itself it also has to do with the foam formula changing to a more enviroment friendly one which was prone to popping off there is also the fact that this particular ET had been in storage for quite sometime
@@aviationlover3613 - Joke is actually on *you.* You got suckered by the line that NASA used for decades - specifically that the $450M was only the cost to *launch* the shuttle! Once you factored in ground costs and maintenance, the *real* cost of a shuttle *mission* was between $1.1T - $1.5 throughout the run of the shuttle program! And, unlike the Saturn V, the shuttles could not deliver crew or payload to the Moon or beyond without filling most of the cargo bay with a fuel-filled booster.
Because in KSP you don't ever repeat the same spaceship after you've done the contract
Some spacecraft designs for things such as Kerbin-based satellites or tourist spacecraft beg to differ.
shalol ye
Yeah you do.... you just wait for a similar contract to be requested again. Man, you must suck at KSP career mode. Personally, I put funding at 200% (saves on unnecessary grinding) but Science at 30% (much more challenging).
I use different carrier rockets for different tonnage, then I just design payload for mission and merge it with carrier rocket!
I just strap Jebedaiah to the outside of a half assed rocket with a big engine to test his heat tolerance.
The best thing about the space shuttle was the James Bond movie Moonraker.
Neil Vance The most ridiculous 007 movie ever.
Amen - Roger Moore was the only Bond. James Bond.
Moonraker was my favourite James Bond movie. Also Buck Rogers of the 25th Century used the Space Shuttle “Ranger 3.”
It was really expensive, and really dangerous, but boy it was an amazing achievement. I was a systems engineer for the UARS satellite, launched by the STS in 1991. I seem to recall that due to the Challenger accident, a workaround was being explored to launch it by missile, and then we got the green light. In retrospect, the utter stupidity of accepting increased and unquantified risk of unanticipated foam loss and damage from impact to the tiles is totally unforgivable. In addition to the terrible decision making process that led to the first disaster. But it was a sight to behold. RIP to those lost across the entire space program - true pioneers.
My pet theory is that NASA suffered a massive loss of competent management after Apollo, and that loss crept into the shuttle program in myriad ways.
This is a very informative channel. I don't know where you get the info from, but well done.
Great video. Shuttle was never safe. Never even looked safe with those uncontrolled rockets.
The sad thing is, despite the Challenger Commission decrying the use of solid rocket boosters on a human spaceflight mission, NASA proposes to send Orion to the Moon on a rocket using...drum roll, please...SOLID ROCKET BOOSTERS. You know what they say about those who do not learn from history.
+JBM425 actually the commission said it shouldn't use solids on a craft without escape capabilities. Orion has the lunch abort system, like the soyuz apollo and Mercury programs.
WRONG! Per passenger mile the space shuttle is actually the safest moving transportation vehicle ever built.
+penguin44ca launch
Uncontrolled rockets? So the SSMEs and SRBS didn't have any gimbal capability at all? ;D
From what I understand it was the demands made by the Air Force to carry their huge spy craft was a major factor in how the the shuttle design came to be. I agree 100% with your data and conclusions.
The design is restricted by the dimensions of RR tracks and tunnels.
David.....the shuttle was designed to carry payloads into space in an effort to make the shuttle program pay for itself. That's why they ended it finally. The shuttles were getting old, it was costing more to refit and repair them than they were making with science experiments and payloads. Even repairs of captured satellites weren't paying the bills. So.....it was time to retire a fleet that had performed magnificently, but which were, after 30 years or so, obsolete.
Linda Taylor magnificent? Two failures out of 130 flights. Even unmanned rockets are better off in terms of safety and efficiency. Whatever you're smoking I want some.
Ale...unmanned wouldn't have worked. The shuttle was partly there to study the effects of space on human kind. To solve the problem of space sickness, muscle and bone atrophy in flight, and a potential vision problem. It was also there to do experiments and to see if certain medicines and certain crystals could be better synthesized in space outside of Earth's gravity. And besides unmanned wouldn't have been able to capture, repair, and relaunch the satellites and the telescope. And yes. The shuttle did a magnificent job. Are you aware of how sophisticated the shuttles were? Every single successful launch was a triumph.
By the way, Ale....just because you don't agree with my information doesn't mean I'm smoking anything. It does, however, mean you are just like all the other Nasa Nayers who are ignorant.
It was not possible to test flight the shuttle the way most aircraft are tested. That and pressure to stay on schedule and "Pay for itself" was the cause of problems, sadly. It did do wonderful things that could not be done in any other way. Hail to the shuttle astronauts.
I find your clear down to earth explanations most interesting.
Very nice video, full of information. All should watch.
"Spice Shuttle?" It was a terrific left turn in our progress.
When I was going to college back in the 80's, One of My Engineering Instructor's
Mr. Luke Lee ---- Jr. Cant Remember Last Name, We Referred to Him as L3 Jr. He Worked for NACA, Predecessor to NASA. We Were in Class When The Challenger blew Up, He Stated "I / We" Knew that Was Going to Happen, I'm just Surprised It Took So Long. @ 8:00 minute Mark the Rocket on the Left, Was The Design They had Developed For Space Travel. It Was Called the
" Dyna-Soar " and He Even pulled out some of His original Work on it...
One of the Main Differences Besides the Crew Compartment on Top, To give the Crew Some chance of Surviving a Failure of the Booster Rocket, Was One Piece Sold Rocket Booster, L3 Said They Could NOT Find a Sealing "Ring" that Was Reliable, and Would Not Burn Through... The Problem Was Political, Not Engineering. There Was ONLY One Solid Rocket Manufacturer that could get them to the Cape. They Were On the Mississippi River, and They Could Float them On Barges Down the Mississippi To the Gulf Then to the Cape Canaveral for Launch.
"" BUT """ The Senator in Charge Wanted them Built in His State, And the Only Way to get them to Cape Canaveral Was By Rail. The Rocket As Designed Was To Long For Rail, or Road,,, So a Ticking Time Bomb was Created. And an Engineer That Wasn't Surprised !!!! After the Challenger Explosion, and the Subsequent Investigation of Previous Missions Found that Something like >48% of the Launches Had Burn Through of the Sealing Rings,,,, Just That the Previous One's Were Facing Away from the Liquid Fuel Tank... It Was Only a Matter of Time, Before Failure...
Bud
And He Was a First Generation Chinese AMERICAN !!!!!
Ronald Master Bud what
The solid rocket boosters on the Space Shuttle were built by a company called Morton Thiokol in Utah, which is over 2,300 miles from Florida, which meant that the Boosters had to be made in sections as when fully assembled each Booster was just shy of 150 feet long. Transporting large items like this, long distances meant that they had to be made in sections, 7 in total, which meant joints which required seals or o rings, and every joint is a potential weakness. These were then transported to the Cape for assembly prior to a mission. If NASA had managed to get the solid rocket boosters made closer to Florida it would have meant at the very least fewer joints or possibly one piece boosters altogether with no joints, as in the case of the Challenger disaster it was a failed rubber o ring on a joint of a solid rocket boosters due to a cold weather launch which let to the loss of the Shuttle and her crew. Not to mention the fact that NASA were made aware of serious issues in relation to potential failures with the o rings and joints on the solid rocket boosters as far back as 1977, a full 8 years before the Challenger disaster and yet chose to do nothing about it.
man this is some very high quality video! Thanks for all this info
very informative. thank you for making these videos.
Thanks for this extremely interesting video.
It's a shame, the orbiter worked perfectly, it was the tank and the boosters that caused all of the problems. NASA should have developed the flyback first stage that was originally proposed back in the late 1960's/early 1970's. Then the whole vehicle would have been reusable and the boosters and tank that caused the accidents would have been eliminated. If the winged first stage could get the orbiter high enough then it could get into orbit with a much smaller drop tank.
The orbiter DID NOT work perfectly.
It could not carry a payload and fuel into orbit.
It needed vulnerable tiles to survive reentry.
It had to be a winged vehicle that would rip itself to pieces if misaligned with the local airflow (which is why the Challenger astronauts died... not the spectacular but relatively weak conflagration of the fuel tank exploding).
It was specifically designed as part of a system. A system with great risks and no fail safes.
@@Bartonovich52 Funny you mentioned fail-safes: When the shuttle was first flown, it had ejector seats with parachutes for the pilot and co-pilot. These were only removed once they started flying it with crews of more than 2. Having said that, with the first shuttle loss incident, only the fuel tank and aft section of the shuttle were immediately destroyed: The crew compartment was intact (and the crew probably still alive inside it) until it crashed into the ground. So if the crew of that mission had been equipped with parachutes, they could have blown the hatch, bailed out and most likely survived.
Another way would have been to use SRBs without segmented tubes. The only reason why these were built in segments was because they were built and filled with propellant in a different state, and had to be shipped to Florida in pieces because they were so large. And the only reason they were built elsewhere was to spread the construction contracts around, to give as many states as possible a bit of government pork from the shuttle project. Had the SRBs been built next to the launch site, they could have been made from a single piece of tube with no O-ring joints, eliminating the point of failure, and that incident would not have happened. So those astronauts were killed by pork-barrel politics!
With the second incident, this could have been avoided in one absurdly simple way: When you look at early shuttle launches, the big external tank was white, not orange. This was because it had a painted plastic outer coating to reflect sunlight and improve the insulation efficiency, which had the secondary effect of stopping pieces of insulating foam falling off. So if they had continued doing that (which was stopped as a ludicrously short-sighted cost-cutting measure), the damage from falling foam would not have happened.
Another way they could have saved the crew from that incident would have been to leave them in orbit, send another shuttle up, transfer the crew and bring them down on the second shuttle, then try to bring the first one down by remote computer control, all of which was possible. They actually had another shuttle almost ready to launch at the time (it only needed fuelling), and there was no reason why one shuttle couldn't dock with another. This was actually considered at the time, the only reason it wasn't done is whichever idiot decided that the wing could not possibly have been damaged. Ok, so foam is soft, but ice can be quite hard!
@Lloyd Evans
Such a breath of fresh air you are, someone who has actually done some research instead of spouting hear-say.
@@lloydevans2900 The plastic cover was probably also eliminated from the External Fuel Tank because it increased the Shuttle's payload capacity, probably by a few tons. I'm sure that pleased the military so they could launch heavier satellites.
re: Challenger
It's a shame that NASA got far too overconfident with the STS program. Their initial reliability estimate wasn't founded in reality and they should have designed a crew escape capsule with parachute arrested descent. (though the military would moan about decreased payload) Also, you'd expect contractors to be the yes-men, but engineers at Morton Thiokol told NASA not to launch Challenger. NASA refused to take No-go for an answer and Thiokol got bullied into reconsidering and took the blame. Sadly Roger Boisjoly only got the defect in the SRBs fixed, but his whistle-blowing did nothing to fix NASA's management enough to protect Columbia.
@@JaredJanhsen Well yes, eliminating the plastic cover from the fuel tank must have saved some weight - but a few tons? That seems like an over-estimate if you ask me. A few hundred kilograms would be more believable, possibly up to a single ton, depending on how thick the plastic was. Remember that it only had to be thick enough to hold its shape, take a layer of white paint, and contain the foam underneath. Neither the foam or the plastic cover were structural, so it didn't need to be particularly strong.
Another factor was aerodynamic efficiency (aka streamlining): I would wager that the tank with a smooth plastic cover presented less drag than the rougher foam surface, and that effect would have offset the extra weight to some extent. The roughness of the tank surface was worsened when the local woodpecker population started to mistake it for a big tree, and pecked big holes into it. Yes, this was a real problem, which was eventually dealt with by installing some air-horns and fake plastic owls on the launch tower to scare the birds away.
If they had really wanted to shave some weight off, a better solution would have been to ditch the steel casings used for the SRBs and use lighter weight alloys or even composite materials instead. This was possible even back in the 1980s - some of the military submarine-launched missiles used solid rockets with composite casings.
I just found this channel! So much videos to go through now hehe
Nice work sir.
I would ride the shuttle knowing I had a 1 in 68 chance of dying. Hell even would climb in with a 1 in 25 shot! I'm almost 70 so......
I would, too, and I'm in my 20s 🤷♂️
I don't think they meant the 1 in 68 failure rate was necessarily a catastrophic failure.
@@vikramgupta2326 There were 135 shuttle missions. Two of them exploded and killed everyone on board. 2/135 = 1/67.5, which rounds up to 1/68. So yeah, you have a 1/68 chance of catastrophic failure, to put it mildly
@@SuperNovaJinckUFO Well, I can't argue with the math as far as what the video meant. It's been a few weeks since I watched this but something led me to believe he was including near misses in the numerator. I was mistaken. Now that being said, two subtleties of actual probability in this case that make the ratio misleading (1) 1/68 is a posthumous look; actual calculated probability of a big failure for the STS on a given launch day would be much lower based on system design and redundancies.(2) The actual track record of the STS - and here's the clincher - would have been zero losses, and maybe still flying if NASA had simply not let their original standards decline and followed their original procedures. It wasn't as badly a designed system fundamentally as the 1/68 ratio suggests.
Ah, the John Glenn approach. "At this point, I hope I DO burn up!"
A government program that doesn't accomplish any of it's primary goals - who would have thought.
Proman Sounds like the Indian government to me, xD
Basically any government ever.
i think weeall could have done better?...
Apollo achieved its goals. The problem with the shuttle was that it got mixed up with military applications and ended up with conflicting requirements. So you can blame the military as much as the government.
Idiots with bad judgement, same as most government.
As usual, concise and awesome docco. Thanks! !
Very good presentation, as always.
Daniel Jackson: "We have... shuttles"
Bra'tac: "these shuttles, are formidable craft?"
Jack O'Neill: "Oh yeah... Bad day"
7:41 weird how every Coke can in this shot has the label perfectly angled to the camera
Great video, the narration of your vicoes is well written.
Very well done video.
Just remember fellas, our congress is.... Us. Every member is a representative of some contingent of our country. It's easy to blame congress for disfunction, but that group of people is only a mirror for the disfunction within ourselves.
No, right now congress is its donors. There are congressmen, like Moscow Mitch which have become millionaires just by helding congressional seats while their states are some of the poorest and least developed in the nation.
If you want a congress that is "us" then you need to vote, become politically active and help elect people that are against private money in politics.
@@johnny_eth that’s odd you throw shade at McConnell and fail to mention Nancy and her $24,000 refrigerator that holds her $14 a pint chocolate ice cream.
The shuttle was such an exiting project. I still remember the first flights. But wow this vid really burst the bubble. Thx 😃
Any Curious Droid vídeo is assured to be outstanding. 👏👏👏
This is the video and information I've been looking for 👍🤸 .
Interestingly, the safety issues with the Shuttle discussed in the video were known of before even the first Shuttle flight. It was already known that the thermal protection system tiles were extremely fragile, and that the sidemount configuration of the orbiter (which was of course necessary to recover and reuse the main engines) left the TPS vulnerable to damage. Before the Shuttle, no crewed launch vehicle had ever used large solid rocket motors. While they eventually were made to be very safe after the Challenger disaster, the deterioration of the boosters' o-rings was well known and nothing was done about it. Almost every Shuttle flight before STS-51-L showed evidence of severe damage to the o-rings, and several had entirely burned through. Many missions before the Columbia disaster also suffered TPS damage, including one that nearly resulted in a full loss of the vehicle. Again, nothing was done about it, though in this case nothing really could be done due to the design being inherently unsafe.
The Space Shuttle is one of the most beautiful vehicles ever designed, in my opinion, but it was a terrible and costly mistake in both money and lives, and one that could have been avoided.
You say that the SRB's eventually were made to be very safe, that they could not be shut down was very unsafe, there was no abort mode. And that the sidemount configuration of the orbiter was necessary to recover and reuse the main engines, the main engines did not have to be attached to the Shuttle eg:Buran
Well said.
It might have been expensive and all but, man... it's supercool and made us dream like nothing else
Loads of people call the shuttle ugly, but I just love how unique it looked. It's so fun to look at, a fucking airliner sized aircraft strapped to the side of a giant fuel tank and two SRBs. Utterly insane but cool looking in my opinion
pointless irony it’s definitely an iconic design
The Design was iconic but it has hold us back in LEO when er could be in Mars.
I loved the Space Shuttle as a kid but now I think ugly. It really wasn't necessary to make a Space vehicle in the shape of a plane and now I love the concept for SpaceX Starship
The only thing that has been to space is your imagination
Thank u for giving us technical knowledge
I really love your channel, thank you so much
i think the should have made 2 types of shuttles : a shuttle that could transport astronauts in space, and a cargo version, then they could transport astronauts in space much more often, since it would be much smaller.
That was the initial idea, actually. Demands of the various backers and a desire to not duplicate efforts with two vehicles factored in heavily. Before CAD in the early 1990s a design's blueprints would be literally hundreds of pounds of documents and miles of line drawings - doubling up and prototyping rally would affect the space and manpower requirements of the design team.
Actually the space shuttle was almost entirely designed on CAD, as nasa and it's contractors had started doing around 1970 or so when CANDICE came out, like today, a lot of drafters and engineers did and still do make hand drawings because it is sometimes faster to do it by hand than with a computer. Also they didn't have to have miles and miles of line drawings, while they did have a lot of drafts of engineering drawings to do load calculations and the like on they were input into computer before they actually built the thing. Now before the shuttle they did do a lot of things only on paper, but you didn't have to lug around 10 truckloads of drawings. As soon as drafts were finalized and set to be built such as the huge amount of blueprints needed for the saturn 5 rockets they put them on something called microfiche. It's a reduction film format that lets you put 100+ pages of full sized draft images onto a piece of film the size of a 35mm slide projector slide, in fact it was just as easy to view those blueprints as looking in an index of the drawing you wanted and scrolling to it on the microfiche viewer which is more or less the same way they do things today with an index and PDF files except somewhat paradoxially it was much faster to load a microfiche document and scroll around it than say using adobe reader on a modern computer today. Some engineering firms actually still do projects this way because it is faster and you don't just spontaniously lose 10,000 man hours of work because of a hacker or some employee wanted to delete the last 5 years work of the company because they got pissed. If you wanted a duplicate of those 100 pages you had a machine that would duplicate those microfiche archives faster than you can load the equivalent onto a usb thumbdrive today. Who woulda thunk that the more advanced technology is slower, but that's the way it is.
Wow, I thought CAD was a bit later than the 70's. Mostly I recall the story of Israel borrowing the designs of Mirage V, which involved a huge amount of physical documents.
Incidentally - I'm just old enough (born in the early 80's) to remember physical card catalogs and a librarian explaining the difference between microfilm and microfiche. Never really used them though.
Chainsaw Aardvark General motors actually started working on a CAD program in 1959 finishing it and releasing it as a finished application in 1964 and calling it "DAC-1" which was used by Lockheed and Bell laboratories. These early cad programs were running on hardware which were essentially transistorized (and thus much smaller) copies of earlier vaccum tube computers. They were pretty simple by todays standards and at best you had a really crappy display and you had to "draw" your design as a cloud of points that designated line segments but the thing was they could take these clouds of points and do interesting things with the data like aerodynamic calculations and the like although it took forever and you were probably going to get your results on a readout that was a giant control console covered in blinking lights lol...
One place that microfilm and microfiche is still used today is in long term records such as home title companies. If you buy a home and a title company records your warranty deed, while it will be scanned electronically nowadays it will also be recorded onto microfilm and stored in a fireproof safe or vault. I was also born in the early 80's and I remember that newspapers would submit archives of their papers to the library and they would keep the rolls of microfilm in big huge rows of these big gunmetal grey cabnets and you could look at any day of any newspaper from like the 1890's to the last year.
Later on when I became a locksmith in the early 2000's we still had these things called "code books" which told us locksmiths what the factory stamped numbers on all kinds of locks meant, usually it was how the key was supposed to be cut and you could order either many many volumes of big heavy books, perhaps one encyclopedia volume sized book for one particular type of locks, say general motors 1929-1994 locks, or master combination padlock serial number to combination chart, or say nissan key codes (stamped onto the door lock) that let you make a key without disassembling a lock. Well these code books were like I said basicly giant encyclopedia volumes filled cover to cover with basicly number to number conversion tables. Well into the 2000's and as late as 2010 I am aware of you could buy these code books in the form of microfiche pages so you didn't have to have a book shelf filled with 30-40 books in your work van. Laptops kind of changed that though because now we have code software and instead of using a huge number of books that cost a few thousand dollars today I pay a subscription and have the same thing for 25$ per month and is MUCH faster to use, ie if someone brings me a lock with CH-751 stamped on it all I have to do is type that in and hit enter, I get a listing of all locks that use that "code" and their manufacturers so I can decide which key it likely is...
It used to be like looking something up in the encyclopedia. first you would get the volume index and then you would look for the series of numbers it was in which could be several, perhaps CH-751 might be under the series C-1 through C-800, but it also might be under CH-450 through CH-800, or it might be numberical only, perhaps the series 1-1000
this could lead you to thumb through 3-5 books each with around 1000 pages or so...
Chainsaw Aardvark
You might find this interesting:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DAC-1
This is a really interesting perspective, and it's slightly sad to consider we may have squandered our efforts somewhat with the shuttle programme. Nonetheless, the experience and expertise gained through the programme will be of great value in future manned space flights. It's also interesting to think how quiet the US government are about the fact that Russia is now essentially the biggest name in manned space travel 🤔
Great program as always.
Hello Curious Driod, it's about time you updated this video with the recent success of SpaceX demo 2 crew dragon.
I thoroughly enjoyed this video...
It was not the tiles that were damaged with Columbia but the leading edge of the left wing, made from a carbon fiber composite.
as well as with 2nd shuttle fail, when nasa decided to launch when it was below freezing and just the silly o rings had froze and when they got hot during the launch, they cracked and allowed the remaining fuel to ignite before it was time, it was a silly dumb mistake that could be been avoided. it was a fail, but not a rocket or computer failure just rubber o rings cracked. nasa had to have perfect skys , sunny days to do it...the russians can do it at night in damn fog..just look at the nuclear subs during the cold war!! look at those documentary's. yeah we did the moon, but the russians , in reality are way better than us at space travel..we think the good ol usa is num 1 in everything . but the reality is we are so far behind in so many technical things..who makes our smart phones? great computers? yeah we may design them..but not the great technology....we peaked out it ww2 ...time to get back on track....its on its way, my generation x know this...when we take over there will be so many old crap thrown to the side. we will get us back on track...we are in out mid 30;s now, just wait till we get our turn to make this country great again.
More specifically: carbon-fiber reinforced carbon, AKA "carbon-carbon".
The Space Shuttle didn't use any ablative materials in its heat shield.
Challenger was the first shuttle failure and Columbia was the second. Columbia was not launched below freezing or outside of normal launch parameters. NASA didn't need sunny days as you claim, to launch the Space Shuttle. There were many night launches including the the first Hubble servicing mission. Judging by your inability to capitalise the start of a sentence it's no wonder your country can no longer claim technical superiority. If you want to start making your country great maybe you should look into funding quality education like Russia, China, and all of Europe.
Ben Robertson I wish my country would put more funding into education and science and technology like other countries do. Too many stupid people here voting for more stupid politicians.
Great videos and information, perfect
Excellent point on observations. Early on in Space development their were 2 converging systems pushing towards orbit. The Aircraft based systems as in the Chuck Yeager X-1 through the X-15 which actually did enter space but did not reach orbit altitude, (supposedly), and the rocket based systems of the emerging NASA and the first satellites. The first astronauts rode those rockets, but the Military favored the "airplane with wings" idea. It was pushed through and all the reasons cited in this video prevailed to prove the concept was flawed.
It is not a space plane that is the problem ... it is a putting a space plane welded onto an ocean freight tanker... the space shuttle is huge compared with simple crew only versions. We often don’t notice the massive scale difference because the small one magnified to fit a tv screen or news page looks somewhat like the huge shuttle. The technical problems multiply million fold when you go grandiose. Cargos should go up separate from humans. Pretty sure that was obvious and known and said by engineers but got ignored amid fantasy and politics and gung ho attitude perhaps due to moon success thinking USA cannot fail. Very few scientists talked about the obvious crew+cargo flaw back in early days.. I feel personally slightly ashamed I didn’t notice this obvious with hindsight flaw. In uní we got requests for low g experiment ideas to put onto shuttles but None of us ever considered the daftness of shuttle itself and we thought we knew everything. The responsible engineers needed to shout more I guess. So many years wasted instead of space uniting humankind. Oh well I guess we have millions of years to get our act together.
10:04 No. The Soyuz has had a total of 4 fatalities and almost 5. Soyuz 1 where Vladimir Komarov was killed due to the parachute failing to open. Almost Soyuz 5 because the service pack failed to detach and the craft went through the re-entry forwards causing Boris Volynov's teeth to break. And also Soyuz 11 where Georgy Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov, and Viktor Patsayev died because of a sudden decompression in the capsule shortly before re-entry.
He's talking about launch vehicles - a more accurate correction would have been several failures, no fatalities for the launcher. And it's worth noting that the Soyuz capsule's safety record is still the best of any long term manned spacecraft (excluding systems that only flew a few times, like Apollo), even with those early fatalities.
@@okami-22 +1 👍👍👍
6:04 Ironic statistic, since shuttle launches also cost 1500 times what NASA said they would.
Very much enjoyed this!!
Thank you for this very interesting video.
And remember that for every Challenger and Columbia, there were about 6 super-close calls which didn't end in disaster by sheer luck, Apollo 13 style, except almost nobody knows about them because they weren't dramatic.
Great, intelligent video. What a wasted few decades. So good to Space X and the like pushing the envelope again.
Launch in 25 hours, btw.
+johnny llooddte I just sreensaved that, in case you delete it when SpaceX lands a fully reusable spacecraft ON MARS. I'll come back to you in a few years...
If you call the Hubble telescope a waste. It wouldn't exist without the shuttle.
+iamchillydogg Are you saying we couldn't have built a rocket that could put Hubble up? For a start, look up Sea Dragon on wikipedia (1962 design by Bob Truax),
+SpyOne
ambitious. powerful. huge.
and, it uses an aircraft carrier to act as power for attaining the oxygen and hydrogen.
this would have a display of power the whole world would have envied.
the USA would have been in the position of capable to launch manned rockets of saturn5 size and range with days notice.
air craft to any part of the world in 48hours ships from one ocean to another and boots on the ground anywhere on earth.
they chose to leave out the rockets and do the rest.... fuck.
Very thought provoking and eye opening. Thank you
Thanks for all the awesome historic information 👌
I can still remember from my days at the university (studying aerospace engineering) a lecture on project management where the STS program was described as a succession of terrible decisions. From the SRBs being manufacture by Thiokol mostly because a politician needed the mormont votes to putting Christa McAuliffe aboard the Challenger, most of the choices made were the wrong ones.
I suppose one good thing that has come of the development of the Shuttle is the new material for the heat shield, something completely different. How it was applied may have been flawed, but the material itself was a revolution of its time, and still serves a real purpose in other engineering applications. Unfortunately, with many events in history like this, hindsight is always better than what happened at the time. We all have better ideas in hindsight.
Great video!
Wow! Your voice was different then! :) I guess it's because of a different microphone and stile of narration... But the content was just as brilliant! Thank you!
It is wrong to say the the Soyuz has a 100% success rate. The very first manned Soyuz mission crashed during reentry killing the crew of 1. Later there was a mission where the capsule depressurized during reentry killing a crew of 3. More recently, the rocket failed to stage properly. The mission failed but the abort system saved the crew of 3.
Why do we need a space shuttle?
To take stuff to the space station.
But why do we need a space station?
So that the shuttle has somewhere to go.
But why do we need the shuttle?
To take stuff to the space station.......
Looking back from 2021, your comment about 'if private companies don't get there first' is amazingly prescient.
god I used to love watching shuttle launches on tv but now I realize how bad the shuttle was