The Space Shuttle: A $200 Billion Lesson in Risk Management
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- Опубліковано 19 чер 2024
- Over its lifetime the shuttle carried out a more diverse range of missions than any other launch system in existence. It also resulted in the most studied disaster in history.
With the rise of private spaceflight, it has become 'fashionable' to look back on the Shuttle only for its shortcomings. It is too easy to forget how far ahead of its time the Shuttle was when it first launched, and what it gave back to us. Unfortunately, this risky technology also got ahead of NASA's ability to properly manage it.
/ alexandertheok
3D Modelling by Artem Tatarchenko:
/ artem.iskustvo
/ @artem.kak.art.
Sources:
www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/4yrgqa...
Unless specified onscreen, all footage is sourced from NASA.
Playlist of some source videos here:
• shuttle-sources
Special mention to this collection of engineer-commentated engineering footage (largely filmed on 16 and 35mm film):
• "Best of the Best" Pro...
00:00 Intro
03:45 Orbiter Requirements
09:55 RS-25. Beauty in Complexity
18:28 Solid Rocket Boosters...a suspiciously long chapter
45:41 Avionics. Innovation with well managed risk
51:54 Thermal Protection System. Innovation with poorly managed risk
01:05:38 Legacy
Absolutely fantastic video! I'm happy you brought up my thoughts on LAS as my opinion has changed in recent years to be more closely aligned with your conclusion. And I'm happy to have learned a few things in this video as well. Keep up the great work!
Thanks very much! I suspected that’d be the case - I change my opinions on these kind of things all the time….I forgot to say that in the video.
That is also what I have been comming around too especially for the first missions with less people.
Making an escape/return system for 100 people may not be feasible but making one for 15 when you have 200 tons to work with? Yeah perhaps that is possible.
Not easy, but possible
@@mobiuscoreindustriesall three of you are cringe and are currently experiencing the apogee of cope.
like you have a video titled "Oceangate Titan: analysis of an insultingly predictable failure" but for this shuttle vid every insult is turned into a triumph. why?
@@patrickderp1044 mainly because of the overt development and benefits harvested from the shuttle capabilities, just like most space systems.
Capability pusher systems like Apollo, STS, Falcon 9, and soon starship, have not only resulted in huge leaps in capabilities in of themselves, but as near direct enablers for many key defining products and technologies with unmatched transformative capabilities. And it was done so with a respect to due process and most importantly the quantification of risk involved and to lower it as much as is logical to still fit with mission imperatives. What we saw with oceangate was a needlessly risky design with known fundamental flaws where the safety mitigation strategy was directly incompatible with the risk to be mitigated, and the key indicators of performance were entirely decorelated to actual system performance.
"The alternate option was to throw them away after each launch... and that's a crazy thought, isn't it?" with SLS in the background made me laugh. Great video as always, I'm studying to become a mechanical engineer and these do a great job of feeding my curiosity.
At least they're moving to cheaper build engines on a regular assembly line. Otherwise you need to put a huge heat shield on the aft engine section.
@@okankyoto What do you mean by that? I'm not trying to be rude, just curious
@@snakevenom4954Aerojet Rocketdyne has been building and test firing an expendable version of the RS-25 called the RS-25E which uses 3D printing among other techniques to build RS-25s at a cheaper and faster cadence.
considering the core stage stops firing barely shy of orbital velocity booster landing reuse like SpaceX is prohibitively expensive and not worth it, if it’s even possible in the first place lol.
they could, however, potentially do ULA’s SMART reuse system to recover just the engines and the mount they are attached to with an inflatable heat-shield in order to survive the orbital speed reentry; but I imagine there’s a good reason that they’re going the cheaper RS-25 route instead of the SMART route, at least for now.
@snakevenom4954 Presumably pointing out that the lack of reusability on SLS will be offset by increased production. Youd otherwise have to engineer a way to make that massive fuel tank reusable in a way not even Starship has done successfully yet having been engineered to do so from the start.
Theres a channel that covers SLS that points out reusability doesnt *always* mean cheaper, and this was the case with SLS. Hell it wasn't even really cheaper with the Shuttle and it was more dangerous to boot.
SLS is meant to be a super heavy lift launch vehicle, putting over 100 tons to LEO, something the Shuttle couldnt do, and that makes sense given they were designed for completely different tasks. If its cheaper to just build a new and safer rocket why engineer and recover an old rocket?
I'd be lying if I said SLS doesn't make me a bit nervous. NASA has vowed three times after three separate fatal incidents to improve their processes and stop being lax. The first two times didn't stick.
"I think we tend to forget what an impressive feat this was for the early 1980s."
Very minor quibble, but I'd say it's more impressive that they're really a 1970s design that just first happened to fly first in the early 1980s.
Good point. This channel does have a bit of an unwritten rule which is ‘it doesn’t exist until it’s operational’.
Either way, most of the individual elements were tested and qualified by the end of the 1970s
That's pretty much a rule of thumb with aerospace engineering, the science and tech behind a project usually comes from the immediately prior decade.
Like, the 1990s F-22 is built with 1980s electronics.
@@Alexander-the-okthen your Buran video will be zero seconds long 🤣
@@Alexander-the-ok to be fair, most spacecraft that fly today should NEVER be operational
@DouglasLippi haha. That video is going to come with a list of disclaimers that is longer than the Columbia disaster report.
The craziest thing with Challenger launch was that way of "give us prove it that it's unsafe" instead of "give us proof that it's safe"
NASA was the adversarial party. The contractors said it was unsafe. It was nasa duty to be adverse to that opinion
Both Space Shuttle disasters were totally preventable as parts of NASA Management and Contractor Management knew of the field joint of the SRB's were not designed well. A 1977 memo (in the Rogers Commission report) stated that the joint sealing design did NOT "act" properly. NASA could have had the joints redesigned in 1977 but did not do so due to pressure from Congress to NOT escalate the minimal budget they gave the Shuttle program and to launch as soon and as frequently as impossible. The same goes for the Columbia. It was well known that ET insulation was causing damage to the TPS (Thermal Protection System; tiles and RCC panels on the wings and nose). Especially hand applied foam in multiple layers like the two PAL (Protuberance Air Load) ramps running along side of the 17 inch LOX feed line on the ET and the ET forward bipod struts where the bipod was bolted to the ET. There were numerous instances of foam breaking free from the strut more often with Columbia than the other orbiters. Two flights before STS-107 foam from the same area of the port forward bipod strut insulation broke free during Atlantis' flight and created a gouge in the port SRB rear attach ring. After reading a book about the history of the Apollo program it was written that the one of two oxygen tanks in the service module of Apollo 13, after being filled with LOX, when drained would not expel the LOX as normally it should have. So engineers used a built in heater to "boil off" the LOX that did not drain. They did this multiple times and because it was very difficult and time consuming and swapping it out for a "new" one would delay the launch of Apollo 13, it was decided NOT to change that second tank out!! My God, you are sending three humans to the Moon and they wouldn't make sure everything was perfect! Also, the Apollo 1 fire could have been avoided too. It was well known that an environment in the Apollo Command Module consisting of pure oxygen would allow the tiniest of a spark to ignite many materials that would not normally burn in a Nitrogen/Oxygen environment. But the contractor, North American Aviation, did a poor job of wiring inside the capsule and did not remove as much flammable material in it as NASA requested. And NASA approved a design with the one hatch to open inward instead of outward plus again rushing to keep on budget and schedule led to a totally preventable Apollo 1 fire and by pure luck and engineer's ingenuity in Mission Control barley saved Apollo 13 and its three astronauts from death. The main problem in our government's space programs are that they are underfunded and pressured to keep on a tight schedule by Federal politicians who know nothing about what is takes in money and time to run a competent space program. Perhaps the private sector will do a better job because they will not be "hounded" by our inept politicians.
That is how all Management looks at Workplace Safety, Profit before Worker Safety. Get the Work Done, and even if someone is Killed, we won't look at the Issue
Everybody's an armchair NASA Administrator and an Elon Musk. Armed with SpaceX's booster reliability y'all look back on the Shuttle as a failure, not factoring in how much science and technology have advanced in the 4+ decades since. "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach. Those who can't teach become historical revisionists in UA-cam comments."
@@The-KP If it wasn't for taxpayer research and development which enabled the trips to the moon and the shuttle, which BOTH accidents were totally preventable as NASA and Contractor management knew for many years about the two problems that caused the disasters but did nothing to fix them until the accidents, SpaceX and its Falcon rockets would not exist. It is always the government tax payer dollars spent on R&D that then the private sector benefits from it. The reduction and improvements in electronics and IC chip design and manufacture were all funded by us taxpayers. The Internet and its protocols and structure were paid for taxpayer dollars via DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency). Without government investments and R&D none of these private sector entrepreneurs and corporations would have taken a huge financial risk to develop things that no one knew what would become of it. Look at Sputnik and all the satellites now in use. Back when the USSR launched Sputnik no one knew or could have perceived what the satellite industry could provide; weather forecasts, spying, learning about the Earth, its atmosphere and environment. No private company would have developed any of these huge advancements and there would be no Amazon, UA-cam, Facebook, SpaceX, Tesla, etc., etc., etc. The shuttle performed manny things that no other spacecraft even today can perform or given us the human capabilities to perform construction or repair of orbital equipment plus launched more people in to space than all space programs combined. The main reason most government sponsored science, medical and space projects did not live up to their promise is due to underfunding the programs by our inept politicians. But again, without NASA and the DOD, SpaceX, Tesla, Blue Origin, etc., would not EXIST today without all the knowledge obtained by tax payer government funded research and development. And since SpaceX is a private company and not on the Stock Market no one other than SpaceX management actually knows what a SpaceX project and rocket manufacturing really costs. Question: even though Falcon 9 first stage boosters have been re-used many times, do all the original rocket engines remain with that booster or some engines replaced? After reading an in depth book about the Apollo program, like the two Shuttle accidents, both the Apollo One fire and Apollo 13's exploding oxygen tank were TOTALLY preventable. Not so for the two Falcon 9 accidents because unlike NASA's accidents which managers and engineers had many years of warnings staring them in the face and could have prevented all those NASA accidents, SpaceX had NO forewarnings of what caused the two Falcon 9 rocket explosions.
As an aerospace engineer i took part in a scenario where we essentially walked through the srb analysis pre flight. The way the data was presented was a major part of the failure to see the full risk. Avoiding hindsight and having to justify my decision I came to the same incorrect decision. Once the data was shown in a different way like temp x axis and blowby on the y it is scarily obvious how far outside their data set they were trying to project. To this day I keep that in my head working on aircraft systems. Currently I'm in a situation where im having to make a stand. Luckily aerospace has been woken up again to safety vs compliance.
You've probably already seen it but if not you should check out the talk that SmarterEveryday gave at an aerospace conference a few months ago. Very similar type of thing.
The thing is, it really shouldn't have gotten to that point. The o-rings were not supposed to erode or allow any blow by. That would indicate a flaw in the design. After finding o-ring erosion, NASA decided that it was fine actually. Well, you could argue that there was a second o-ring as back up. And then when NASA found erosion in the second o-ring, they decided that was also fine actually.
hi, fellow AE here. Is there a resource where i can experience what you are referring to?
@@Tensho_Ci would like this as well. just commenting so i remember
@@SnakebitSTI it's the issue with having rules and regulations. They are there to be the bare minimum but as you get more confident with the design or just a general record of safety the minimum becomes the maximum you do. Compliance with regulations and rules doesn't equate safety. Unfortunately we learn it every two'ish decades in a brutal way.
45:11 no teachers to space... "fine I'll do it your away" LOL. Almost malicious compliance levels 😂
Yeah, incredible power move. She wanted it, and got it
45:11 *
@@iitzfizzthx
I call that selfish. Lots of time and money was spent on her training. She flies once and quits. I demand a refund...
@@DouglasLippiA lot of astronauts only made one trip.
Training costs are factored as a per-mission cost. She completed the mission she was trained for, so the money got what it was spent to achieve.
The bravery of the test flight crew is beyond comprehension. A totally untested in flight rocket with a endless number of failure points. Honestly I'm surprised only 2 shuttles were lost in flight. Such an awesome piece of engineering that was way ahead of its time in relation to reusable launch abilities
I couldn’t agree more. I can’t believe there was never an individual booster test flight or something like that before the first full stackup flight!
My father flew twice on Shuttle Endeavour, and was stranded aboard the fledgling ISS when the fleet was grounded after the destruction of Columbia in 2003. He still has fond memories of the shuttle program, but is glad the commercial sector entered the scene with new innovations in both safety and efficiency.
That’s awesome
@@Trashcansam123 🚀
I bet career days was awesome for you!
This video is a Tour de Force. It is basically a PhD presentation and deserves similar recognition. You are an excellent presenter and deserve to flourish. Well done!
Thanks, that means so much to me. The irony is I chose not to do a PhD because i decided there was no way I could stay interested in a single project for so long.
@@Alexander-the-ok Yeah, this video is brilliant and incredibly well researched
I was a child when we lost Challenger. My mother worked on the salvage operation with Deep Drone. The Challenger is my foundational memory from childhood. Even though I'm now an old man, I can't watch a shuttle launch and not cry.
You did good. Thank you
The salvage operation was complex and absolutely pivotal to reconstructing what happened. Your mother played a vital role to eventually keeping people like me safe in our workplaces.
@@Alexander-the-ok I wouldn't say 'vital'. She was an illustrator. She did the layout for the presentations and briefs that went out. So I read everything I could. It was awful.
Deep Drone is a thing you might want to look into. I wouldn't say it's underrated, but I would say it's underrepresented
@@dannyberneWell, somebody has to properly present the work, even at a supposedly superficial level.
@@Dong_Harvey It's her work, and the drawings and photos she worked from, that made me want to get into engineering. I appreciate the video. You are a great science communicator, and I really appreciate you not making this a sixth grade level presentation. You are right up there with Scott Manley, maybe higher because you can say "purple burglar alarm on the mirror" and I wouldn't piss myself
That failure audio was included as part of the sample sounds when you bought some versions of the Creative Sound Blaster. Full audio, no removal of any silence, wity all that talk from Capcom, the response from the shuttle, and then the silence till the announcement the launch vehicle had exploded, and the RSO had issued an abort to the 2 SRB units.
I liked the way you could add laser noises over the top using the number keys
That’s such a strange clip to choose as a sample. Yet, the Challenger audio is absolutely burned into the memory of many of those who were alive at the time.
getting space shuttle pilled, I'm such a space explorationcel.
starshipmaxxing
@@ruskiwaffle1991get spacemogged
Spacepilled explorationmaxxing
RS-25: literally ISPmaxxing
@@Alexander-the-ok RL-10: Hello there
God, I didn't know Barbara Morgan actually became an astronaut after Challenger. That's just... that's just amazing. I actually cried at learning that.
Talk about playing the long game. Total boss move on her part.
ikr, what a total badass masive respect
Same, it's a really touching story.
@@rowanjones3476 Kinda petty, saw the person selected instead of her blow up and went "serves her right i shoulda been the one on space" and immediately asked for a go at it (i know thats not her motivation but thats the kinda person i am)
There's a good documentary, called "A rush to launch", which covers the backgrounds of the Challenger accident in very high detail. I can recommend it to everyone.
I've watched it many times
Is it this one?
ua-cam.com/video/2FehGJQlOf0/v-deo.htmlsi=40nXqzqA_ZWWfdWd
The netflix documentary on Challenger „the final flight“ was also good.
Does the documentary follow the common narrative, or the one explained here?
It's in depth .no punches pulled. There's an even better one..longer on here "Challenger, a Major Malfunction.". Check em out and draw your own conclusions.
44:55 that side story had me break into tears. You showed them girl!
This video was surprisingly emotional for this channel. That part in particular….yeah…..
"Playing the long game". What an amazing story.
Me too!
Solid and thorough work. This is what the early internet promised, and I'm glad it's manifesting here and there.
Thanks very much. I'm old enough to remember when much of the internet was huge in depth forum posts and articles by people intensely interested in their subject. I suppose that's what I'm going for here.
One other option on Columbia, though for the reasons you stated there was no way this could have been considered: if the foam strike was somehow deemed likely to be catastrophic as soon as it was captured on the tracking cameras, they could have done a TAL or the dreaded RTLS. Obviously, even if the foam strike could have been assessed in the window necessary for those decisions, those abort modes both carried significant risk in themselves.
I spent 4 weeks racking my brains for ‘wild and wacky’ options and I never thought of this.
Of course Nasa would need the contingency in place and would need improved real time tracking. But that is an amazing ‘totally within the realms of feasibility’ scenario!
I suspect it's an option which never would have been taken prior to the Columbia disaster, because it would have required admission - even if just internally - of the full severity of the foam strikes and the risk they posed to the orbiter.
If they had built a shuttle-to-shuttle docking adapter ahead of time, and kept a second shuttle close to launch-ready -- a useful practice anyway -- the rescue could have been close to routine.
@@Alexander-the-ok Yeah, on second thought it really only works in the contrived scenario where NASA is somehow immediately omniscient with respect to the risk but has no contingency plans in place. If you know with certainty that the foam strike will doom the orbiter then it’s a no-brainer, since you get the crew back without needing to use the heat shield at all (or maybe a little bit since on a TAL I think you’re still going suborbital).
It’s telling that to my knowledge a launch abort was never considered as an option post-Columbia, only the ISS or another shuttle.
@@tcharpe
Yes, either TAA would be suborbital, and definitely safer than RTLSA. Per my understanding, it would ride out the boosters, and continue running the mains to adjust the course and get high enough for the glide. Still tricky as the tank would still have some fuel and would need to be dropped so it would impact the ocean.
But as you said, that choice would have had to have been made within minutes of recognizing the strike as a threat.
Conclusion of the possible rescue section?
Andy Weir needs to write a what if novel about it.
My mother’s math or science teacher, Peggy Lathlaen, was one of the final 10 teachers that went through the training process for a time before she was ultimately sent home. My mother vividly recalls watching the Challenger launch in her classroom; and more so, her teachers guttural reaction to watching someone she knew die instantly. It sticks with me to this day, I can only imagine her memory of it being still so fresh in her mind 40 years later.
That was the case for my 3rd grade teacher (also one of the finalist, but I don't remember out of how many) and growing up in central florida it was something that was a constant reminder.
Amazing video, many say the Shuttle ended up being so flawed because it had to be designed to do so much.
But it created a truly unmatched vehicle, could we make a better one from what we learned from it?Totally.
But the Shuttle broke the grounds of what spaceflight can be so long ago, flawed now but a true marvel of engineering back then and to this day.
It was a terrible design that was a huge step backwards in launch cost and safety. Even today we are stuck with those accursed RS-25s and SRBs on the horrible SLS because of politics. The shuttle set back space exploration by decades.
@RandyHill-bj9pc rs-25 are good engines, it's just that they are so god dam expensive.
@@fast-toast They are insanely expensive at $150M each, compared to $7M for BE-4s, or sub $1M for Merlin/Raptors. Their other problem is they are Hydrolox. H2 offers the highest ISP, but it’s terrible density adds so much dry mass in larger cryogenic tanks it’s pretty much a wash, and its constant leaks and handling complexities (such as metallic embrittlement) cause frequent delays and high costs.
People think the RS-25 is amazing because of its high ISP, but that’s mostly a product of the fuel. It’s nowhere near as advanced as a Raptor 2.
@@RandyHill-bj9pc Also RS-25 is now obsolete. It was designed before the modern era of additive manufacturing. It was complex in a way it just never needed to be, because they cared about the engineering more than the results. That's why they never flew weekly like they wanted. They wanted a perfectly engineered and brilliant system and it was beyond what could be maintained.
This is one of the best, most comprehensive videos on the shuttle's strengths and weaknesses I have ever seen. It made me emotional, hopeful, and angry in turns. Well done, I am glad I stuck around for your ending. I miss it, too.
A tremendous technical achievement, to be sure- but the program was "sold" on the promise of allowing more frequent launches while reducing the cost of putting things in orbit, and it did neither. To justify sunk costs, new missions had to be tailored to what the shuttle could do, so manned space in the generations following Apollo has never left low Earth orbit- and that is a shame. The Columbia disaster revealed a design flaw that could not be made "safe", so every launch had been, and would be, a roll of the dice. It has taken private industry working outside the NASA-contractor paradigm to define its own missions. work quickly, and make a profit.
I personally believe it was flawed from the beginning. It should not have been designed as the main source of thrust. It's off balance and it doesn't produce enough thrust alone so it needed the massive solid rocket motors which, like you said, was like rolling the dice every launch.
What it needed was a booster powerful enough to launch the Shuttle out of the atmosphere and fast enough to where 3 smaller, vacuum optimized engines could propel the ship to orbit.
Essentially the Energia but American is what it should've been.
Certainly not cheap. But then again, those RS-25 engines were, and still are, anything but cheap.
I agree with the costs part, but I also think it's good that we've stayed in LEO for a while. It's definitely good to learn about long duration spaceflight before we do anything crazy, although the crazy stuff should have happened ASAP after the shuttle was retired.
@@snakevenom4954 Did you watch the section that dealt with the design trade-offs? Because it doesn't sound like you did.
After Columbia, the shuttles just went to the ISS*. There it was inspected for any damage that could cause another Columbia, and if found the crew would just stay at the ISS until they could be brought home safely.
* There might have been one launch that was an exception.
@@MrVenona Hubble servicing mission in 2009. There was another vehicle that was nearly launch-ready
I'm seven minutes in and I'm already yelling "THIS" at my screen.
Any system that can save lives is not a waste of time or money. If people die in a rocket that didn't have an LES, and there's even a chance they could've been saved by an LES, then that's two failures, not one. Safety features will _never_ be a waste.
have you not wondered why air plains dont have escape systems
About the only thing we learned from the shuttle program is that engineers should run space programs, not politicians.
It's a very well-edited and well-thought-out video. You put it up with a significant load of detail. Great work!
I've always agreed with the point you made at the end of this video. As a "reusable spacecraft that could get easily maintained and get back up into space quickly!" it was an abject failure. But as a project that taught us a million different things about space flight and engineering and just all around being a good, solid, step up in human space flight capability it absolutely knocked it out of the park. The shuttle will be remembered and revered 1000 years from now.
Exactly. I need a calculator to add up my fingers but even I thought, this was our first ever attempt at a sci-fi like space ship. Of course it's not gonna be perfect and probably hella expensive! We're not still driving model Ts or flying Kitty Hawks. Just wish we funded space stuff more
What about Skylab...?
@@supersleepygrumpybearwhat about it?
Any manned space programme would have done the same. And many would have done more, or the same at lower cost. That doesn't count as 'knocking it out of the park'.
@@anticarrrot I'm with you. If the shuttle is remembered 1000 years from now, it won't be fondly.
That CES argument Everyday Astronaut made is the space equivalent of Stockton Rush's "Most sub-sea accidents are caused by operator error."
You’d think I’d have made that connection myself….but I never thought of that.
To be fair, I suspect he no longer holds this view - that video was made quite a few years ago. And also, you know, he’s apparently due to fly on the thing himself now.
@@Alexander-the-ok Would Crew escape system like the B-58's escape capsule work for Starship? I'd imagine that the crew would be encapsulated during critical phases of flight (Launch, Ascent, and Reentry) ready for ejection. The capsule would probably also have to be designed to survive reentry heating in-case of reentry breakup of the ship. Starship has copious amounts of spare payload capacity this should be not a problem mass wise.
Starship is currently a test article. I have no idea whether it will ever be crew certified. But if it is, it has every option under the sun potentially available for crew escape.
@@Alexander-the-ok Frankly it's so big that if the entire payload area gets used as cabin space and that's what has to be recovered on a launch abort (say, for their earth to earth proposal), I really don't think they have many if any practical options of abort other than staging Starship and trying to get it to propulsively land or soft splash down.
We are talking about successfully and reliably separating something the approximate size of the bow of a Los Angeles class submarine; a 747 from the back end of the hump forward; the entire (empty) LoX tank on the Shuttle External Tank, at a high enough acceleration to get away from an exploding rocket, then parachuting that back to Earth, possibly with a requirement to survive a moderate re-entry. It would have the TPS to try this, but I don't want to know what sort of havoc this would play with orientation control having just 2 flaps and likely splitting the reaction thruster system.
Parachuting this down is probably of similar difficulty to that of a Shuttle SRB, which was obviously done...
Except the SRBs hit the water at a speed faster than that of the landing of Starship SN10. Which, if you may remember, was a hard landing that exploded 8 minutes later.
With a Dear-Moon-type mission or the reduced capacity I think they'll eventually have to give Mars missions though, the escape pod system may be practical. And given I'm skeptical of E2E happening in any sort of large capacity it might actually make sense to do this.
Otherwise... don't think there's a practical glider approach to an abort system without major vehicle redesigns. Ejection seats would be near-useless outside of maybe for surviving an engine relight failure on landing.
Given the current risk of LoC odds on capsules I do fully believe it's possible to hit similar odds without an LES but would require 2,3,4 hundred launches (minimum) first before flying crew and assume a similar reliability curve to that of Falcon 9, which is not a guarantee.
Is it? Rush was dismissing the importance of base vehicle reliability, SpaceX is focusing on it (or so Elon says). I wouldn't say those are equivalent, at all.
The catch is being able to actually achieve the necessary reliability - IF they can do it, the logic is perfectly sound. But that's a BIG if.
Phenomenal coverage of the risk aspects of the programme. It complements the existing material from other channels beautifully. Your direct and articulate analysis gave some true 'mic drops moments, and I was quite moved.
Sincerely, thank you for the content.
Excellently done.
Adds to the discussion.
I watched it twice in full, then watched parts a third time.
I was 6 when the shuttle first flew. And my grade school was watching live when Challenger blew.
I was bad-mouthing the shuttle from the start: "The shuttle is the wrong answer to the wrong question." And no one i knew had the engineering chops to argue with me onnthe subject. So i assumed yhe whole project was pork barrol senatorial corruption.
But I was a snot-nosed kid. I didnt have the mental tools to question my sources or the engineering acumen to poke holes in those arguements until after i dropped out of my aerospace studies. And then, it took over a decade before i applied these tools to my opinion of the shutte.
The shuttle was an astonishing piece of engineering and I'm not sure i know of a better option from the time.
The more i learn, the more astonished i become.
Thank you for this video.
I like how you tie together work done by other UA-camrs and bring it up when relevant. I am pretty obsessed with all of y'all and it makes for great meta content while also helping me remember where and what I learned before which helps reinforce my understanding.
This was a phenomenal watch and you've clearly put a lot of effort into it. Looking forward to future uploads!
The space shuttle was a pathfinder vehicle. Such vehicles can be overlooked & scorned by people. But the shuttle laid the groundwork for what we have today. It was a remarkable spacecraft that taught us a lot. I was 10 when STS-1 launched and followed the program through to completion. I miss it.
Fantastic video! I thought you did a better-than-average job of analyzing STS-51L & STS-107.
I agree, if we consider the path it was finding to be "actually good safety culture and organizational structure" _but_ I'm not at all sure NASA (Congress?) has learned that lesson.
I live on the Big Island of Hawaii, where Ellison Onizuka is from. The astronomy center at Mauna Kea and the Kona International Airport are both named for Onizuka, a local boy from Kealakekua. Not a day goes by that I drive past those places and don't think about what their sacrifice meant for NASA as a whole.
I think the final part of the video, listing every advancement that exists because of the shuttle is supremely powerful. I was still a young boy when Atlantis landed for the final time, but even I recognized that we were losing something at the same time we were taking a large stride forward. The shuttle was a real watershed design in terms of a reuseable rocket, and I don't believe anything has ever come close since then.
See, when I think of Hawaii I think of shakedown artists preventing telescopes from being built, and of "beat haole day".
Last Star On, First Star Off
@@zimriel And you’re part of the problem. You can stay off the island, please and thanks
Your videos are phenomenal. This one must be my favorite though. The density of information, your way to convey it to us. Thank you so much for this!
I also miss the shuttle.
This is the first video I've seen of yours, and I'm very impressed. Great job!
Best video you've released thus far IMO. Tatarchenko's models also look great, especially the thumbnail.
The Proton has put ~8000 metric tons of cargo into space (mostly LEO) over its lifetime. This I believe is the largest such metric across all launch vehicles in history. I think it is worth doing a very deep dive into Proton one day.
I miss it too. I remember my dad turning on the tv in the middle of a birthday party, to show atlantis landing for the last time. I remember at the time not realizing the significance. I do now.
It is sad to see people think a spaceplane is "outdated". It feels like every new rocket idea is a space x clone, and doing everything to not make a spaceplane. but they aren't outdated. they still have a future. Im happy dreamchaser is still being developed, and I would love to see it fly.
great video btw. alsmost cried a few times. Can't wait for the buran video.
Your quality increases immensely with every video you make. Once again, an informative piece with remarkable writing and editing. Thank you!
Alot of heart & passion you put into this video. One of the best UA-cam videos I have watched. Love you work mate. Thank you & look forward to future videos from you...
In my view, the Shuttle was indeed impressive. But, it was _too_ ambitious for its time. Death and broken promises were the price paid for keeping the promise of human spaceflight alive.
This shuttle was incredible
That was a fantastic analysis and production, thank you.
I watched the first launch on TV in Australia when I was 12. I flew to America to watch STS-125 launch at 7am on my 40 birthday, May 11th 2009. The Shuttle has been at the forefront of my appreciation for human achievement throughout my life and it was incredibly sad to see the program come to an end.
Mission complete, touch down, wheel stop.
Great job! I really enjoyed the 3D animations and your practical demos, especially the visualization of O-ring erosion.
Let's not forget the influence of military applications on the genesis of the shuttle. I think it was basically unavoidable. @Hazegrayart has some great renders of what else was cooking in the minds of the era, truly bonkers.
I love Hazegrayart.
I’ll speak briefly about some of the intended and realised military applications of the shuttle in my next video.
@@Alexander-the-ok How about the Boeing (?) space plane? Looks like a mini shuttle?
@Alexander-the-ok I am looking forward to that video already!
38:42 If you haven't read it, Truth, Lies and O-Rings by Allan J. McDonald with James R. Hansen is *also* really good reading. I'll read the book you listed when I can, thanks for the recommendation!
Edit: Finished the video- I'd like to make a note. From the book I just mentioned, there is some information that I'm not sure is in the book you listed, but is worth mentioning.
McDonald, after the infamous phone call, and after he'd refused to sign off on the part of Thiokol, was talking to the NASA people, and paraphrasing what he said to them, there were actually 3 good reasons for postponing launch, not just one. They are:
1. Rubber O-Ring Seal Performance at the anticipated record low temperatures, as previously mentioned.
2A. The weather and sea state was forcing SRM recovery vessels out of the area, and they were likely to not be in the recovery area for launch. Waves of up to 30 feet, winds of 50 knots sustained and 70 knot gusts and vessels recording 30 Degree tilts, not to mention possible damage to recovery tooling/equipment. To avoid further damage, vessels were heading into the wind and making 3 knots *away* from the recovery area as of before the conference was held.
2B. This launch was to have a ton of 1st times for various elements on the shuttle, especially on the SRMs. 1st use of an electronic control system to separate the SRM nozzle extension at apogee, 1st time separating SRM parachutes at water impact, etc. The potential loss of SRMs due to vessels not being in the recovery area would be a problem, as far as evaluating how things went goes, due to high risk of loss of hardware.
3. Ice formation on the pad. As the sound suppression system utilized large quantities of water, there was going to be lots of ice on/around the pad. There were concerns about ice debris, or the ice altering the acoustics of things and changing how structures and electronics behaved.
Also, he made the above comments *after* saying to the NASA people in the room, quote:
"If anything happens to this launch, I wouldn't want to be the person that has to stand in front of a Board of Inquiry to explain why we launched this outside of the qualification of the solid rocket motor or any Shuttle system" (The shuttle as a whole was only rated down to 40 degrees F)
Truly MAGNIFICENT Alex! I cannot watch TV documentaries these days as they have too much 'mood music', lack of real science include too much hyperbole are slow paced. Your approach is so far from this it is a real joy to watch. From the amateur to the PhD scientist - all can access your work and gain greatly from it! Keep it up!
Dude your videos are Very well done and fast becoming my favourite on this tubes. Keep up the good work man 👍 Love your work
Overall an enjoyable video, but I'm confused why you didn't mention how the team assessing the foam impact on Columbia worked with Boeing to simulate the impact and show it presented a risk, nor mention how that same team started to work with the DoD to get imaging of the orbiter only for a manager to cancel the request and issue a decision that everything was fine before the team finished their report.
While your critique of the safety culture has many valid points, I really think it's a mistake to excuse the managers who built that safety culture.
Edit: wanted to clarify that I still think this is a solid 9.5/10 video and overall I enjoy your focus on risk assessment in your videos. An hour long analysis with original footage and 3D models and cute period-styled graphics is no small feat, and I appreciate getting to watch it for free.
Thanks.
Yeah I didnt really have time to get into the foam impact assessments. I just had to summarise that section as ‘look how dangerous this all looks. NASA didnt think so because of their flawed safety culture’.
Ok so it’s really important to distinguish I’m not excusing anyone for Challenger. My position is that is was not JUST the level 3 managers who are responsible (that is the common view). They, along with many others at NASA and their contractors all contributed to the flawed construction of risk. If anything, my position is even more damning on NASA than the popular view, as I do not excuse top level management, and I do not strip away all responsibility from lower level engineers either.
@@Alexander-the-ok I did another watch through after reading your reply and I see what you mean now.
My first interpretation was that you were saying that, because everyone followed the safety assessment system in place, nobody was at fault. I see now that you meant it in the opposite direction, that everyone who leaned on that system and kept quiet even if they saw an issue was part of the problem. 👍
@@ejomatic7480 Spot on. That is an excellent summary of my opinion.
18:07 I cannot tell you how hard I laughed at this bit
This video is really great. Thanks for creating it. The slow mo launch videos are beautiful!
Excellent video. And your comments on the start of the channel, and the effect and importance of the ethics in engineering book was moving.
3:30 That's not enterprise, though i wish she had been clad for orbit once in her lifetime.
The video was Excellent. I have as you had a varying opinion of the STS and it's derivatives. there are plenty of desicions I can see in hindsight as having a better option (LRB, Shuttle-C anything but SLS etc.) but the more you look into it you see the limits of the time and what they knew and didn't then, and the choices make much more sense. Same goes for the disasters, there wasn't any simple of obvious decision that could have saved 102 and 99. I appreciate this look into why that is since i leaned a bit towards the other side before this video.
Still wish we had a 6+ fleet flying now with a few shuttle-C as well instead of SLS though...
Good point! That is indeed not enterprise. I need to add a flag in the subtitles for that.
Sidenote: Boldly Going by E of Pi is a great Alt-hist on a semi-plausable alternative road for the shuttle. It freatures Enterprise being converted into a wet-workshop as a substitute to space station Freedom due to Reagan induced showmanship. Well worth a read for shuttle lovers
Two tongue Reagan: ' Government is too big and spends too much'. Then he spends a fortune on the military and NASA - all wasted.
Womp womp
Absolutely incredible video! Very high quality information, perspective, and production. Thank you for your unique and informed perspective. You sir, earned yourself a subscriber without a doubt!
I was watching a lot of space shuttle stuff recently. I thought about how great it would be if you made a video on the topic and here it is, amazing.
New video, i see - 2 minutes too late, i click and watch without pause
Shuttle is the single coolest piece of flight hardware ever flown. Nothing like it will ever exist again.
I happily watched all 70 minutes. This is the story of human progress. And human limitation. And overcoming limitation. The greatest story of my lifetime.
1 hour of facts i love and your voice is clear. yeah that's a sub no matter what good job!.
Pepcon that was a mess
Just like last time when you made the video about the tripropellant engine, I'll write up any mistakes that I find in this comment.
That said, I'm not a rocket engineer, so my expertise isn't as specific as it was last time around.
3:31 Are you sure this is the shuttle Enterprise? The tiling looks off for it.
5:25 I'm not sure if this counts as a mistake, but the new SpaceX starship also doesn't have a crew escape system. It wasn't flown with humans aboard yet, but the system was tested (ending in disaster every single time), so I think it needs to be included.
Awesome, thanks. This is a little less technical than that video (because I'm not a rocket engineer either), but there are a lot of points that are hugely subjective. If I accidentally present anything as fact that isn't, I'd like to know about it (apart from the fact the orbiter couldn't have a LES - I can back that one up!).
I think Alexander meant crewed system (it'd be a pretty silly sentence), and Starship isn't a crewed system yet. Though, yes, he didn't actually say crewed, which I think is an oversight
Also, I take umbridge with characterising the Starship test flights as "disasters". They're just not (aside from the first one sort of), because they're tests. Yes, if there was humans strapped to the front of Starship during the tests so far, they'd have died, but that's exactly why they haven't strapped humans to it.
@@JanSenCheng Starship didn't really achieve any goals they had set out for the tests. The first one blew up, with many of the rocket engines failing. With the most recent one, they failed to demonstrate the fuel transfer, and it also failed in the re-entry procedure, tumbling around in an uncontrolled manner. Honestly I don't think that starship will ever be human rated, at least not in the times planned for its role in the Artemis program.
Hey Alex - Another way to look at your point on effectiveness of the LES.
If we wanted to start calling the LES a safety function...
- It's been in use for pretty much the history of manned spaceflight.
- It has been previously demanded in ~1% of manned flights
- It has been 100% effective when demanded (Even on the Soyuz where ground control had to performed convoluted 2-confirm radio signal to manually activate it due to the energise-to-operate control system having already melted...).
So, we have a coarse dataset that says this system is standard industry practice, highly effective at saving lives, and has been demanded 1% of the time - which accounts for almost half of loss-of-vehicle incidents with people on-board.
I can't think of a regulator or assessor for a goal-based regime that wouldn't (rightfully) question me for selecting a concept that removed such a safeguard entirely, regardless of what inherent/passive safety you claim or DAL/SIL/PL you assign to another safeguard that should be demanded earlier - "final" protections will always be needed due to uncertainty and edge failure cases due to unforeseen system interactions... and we're talking about spaceflight here...
And that doesn't even go in to demand rate calculations (not reaching general industrial ~10^-4 when you've knowingly left a 9x10^-3 per flight hazard's 100% effective safeguard off the table...).
Also - this video was absolutely brilliant. Great job.
this was an excellent video. it was very well researched. the explanation of how the RS-25 worked in basic terms was brilliant, and demonstrated an incredible grasp of the technology and so much passion. could never have believed you could explain how the engine worked that easily.
Personally i believe it allowed use to create the greatest and most complex achievement of man kind, the international space station.
The only use for ISS was as a place the shuttle could get to. After the shuttle was canned, it lost that.
Babe wake up! New Alexander the ok video just dropped!
Are you the same guy who writes this comment on and on under every video of my favorite UA-camrs?
Unlike alexander's content, this meme is getting old.
@@nos9784 My favorite take on it is "Honey wake up....a new video by XXXX dropped. Except I'm single"
Heyyy, shout-out Plainly Difficult! Also an amazing channel.
As a person who is old enough to remember watching Challenger live, I can't tell you how much it means to me to watch this excellent video. This is the first time I've learned things about the management process that really help me understand why Challenger and Columbia happened.
I also spent my childhood adoring the Shuttle. I had an aluminum model Shuttle with bay doors that really opened. So I also still understand that shuttle was an amazing innovative system even though it was also deeply flawed.
So thank you for this.
Another high quality and very informative video about one of the coolest and most complex machines built.
Couldn't disagree more. The Delta/Atlas alternatives offered economic paths that would have satisfied LEO needs and allowed for technology evolution, unlikely given the shuttle's cost and complexity. The Loweth shuttle may have allowed both, but wasn't pursued.
The original idea for the shuttle (which you totally skipped over) was to be a small, light , CHEAP, and RAPIDLY REUSEABLE orbital transfer vehicle. It was to be just a part of NASA's planned continuation of efforts which included a space station in LEO (which is what the shuttle was designed for), a moon base, and eventually going onward to Mars. Well, Congress and the Nixon and Ford administrations killed nearly all those efforts meaning the space shuttle no longer had a purpose. WIth no more Saturn Five program and much reduced funding it was questionable if NASA would have any kind of manned space program at all or a vehicle with which to access the planned "Skylab". SO they went to the Congress and basically tried to take the airforces funding for their own space launch platforms - which they succeeded in doing. NASA promised to launch all of the Airforces spy satellites on the shuttle - which of course necessitated a massive redesign of said shuttle and made it much bigger, bulkier, and heavier. SO at this point you start your story without any of the background.
I also take contention with lots of your other points. Just about NONE of the 'design decisions' were made by strictly technical merits. Given enough funding, the Shuttle could have had a proper launch escape system. But Congress (Which ironically wanted to protect jobs and grift) would have never added the extra billion or so needed to the program. Of course due to this short -sightedness they ended up (A) losing two crew (B) shutting manned spaceflight down for multiple years twice to correct foreseeable problems and (C) having to put an entire new orbiter in service. I should also add (D) due to the shutdowns, the fact it took months to nearly a year between each shuttles reuse, the military ended up having to develop another rocket program for its spy satellites. The shuttle was supposed to fly at least once every week if not more, in fact the shuttle averaged 4 flights a year between ALL of the orbiters, maybe 5 if you take out the multiyear pauses after each of the two disasters. All together being both cheapskates and constantly changing the required mission to end up trying to make the shuttle a 'jack of all trades' spaceplane ended up costing the US taxpayers BILLIONS more dollars in cost overruns for the program, took out a big yearly chunk of NASA's budget, and because of the cost and complexity actually helped discredit the idea of reuseable spacecraft. I mean, if NASA and all it engineers couldn't do it (in fact this program was meddled to death by non engineers) then reuse must be impossible.
I'm sorry , but by its original criteria (cheap cost and fast turnaround to orbit) the shuttle was a horrible disaster, and that's even without considering the loss of two crew or the cost overruns, or how it ate large chunks of NASA's budget for 30 plus years...
Excellent information Alexander, very impressive analysis. And damm, I remember every other video you made as genuinely impressive. Why was I not yet subscribed? Fixed that now.
Well done. Covered many areas not covered by many. I recall seeing the first man on moon (Armstrong) and later heard the first Shuttle disaster while at TI where Rob Cooper had seen it posted on TNEWS (TI's MSG news page on the company's IBM 370). Heard the 2nd shuttle disaster and thought it was the neighbors bumping around against the house, but Ed Wallace of "Wheels" radio program (in Dallas) announced the Shuttle had blown up ... could see the streaks in the sky overhead. RIP to all crews.
prove to me definitively that hte thing you built is unsafe or else I am going to use it with lives on the line
accidentally or not that is not an arugmentative position anyone should ever take
Thanks to Piper Alpha, the industry I used to work for (UK Oil and Gas) took EXTENSIVE measures to make sure that never happened. The model of assuring risks remained visible was based heavily off learnings from Challenger.
Not to mention the whole "normalization of deviance" thing. The shuttle program made a habit of rationalizing away warning signs, interpreting successful flights as safe flights, and papering over lapses in safety margin by invoking the idea of high safety margins elsewhere.
@@SnakebitSTI its kindof the human tendency to intuitively misunderstand probabilities except backwards
like how we intuitively think less than 50% chance means impossible and greater than 50% chance means inevitable
and in reverse we think "hasn't happened" means "had a 0% chance" and "has happened" "had a 100% chance"
@@JulianDanzerHAL9001 It is a human tendency, and it is also the sort of error anyone in risk management has no excuse for making, especially in the context of a "successful" flight with out-of-spec damage to life critical systems, and there is absolutely no excuse for rewriting the specs to pass the damage on the grounds that _this_ one didn't blow up.
Dude, how come you never mentioned Mr. Alan McDonald? He refused to sign, so your "you would have too" assertion is obviously wrong. Check your facts. People like him deserve much more respect than what you are giving here.
Stellar! love the content, my man
Ohh wow, what a GREAT piece of content. I very enjoy the naunce and take you did. So very much interesting and complete. Can't wait for more! BURAN!!!
Thanks man your videos are amazing.
This one goes straight on my list of required watching for anyone working in engineering / an engineering organisation or takes an interest in safety culture. Excellent work - clearly you did your homework on this,
This video is amazing! I wish I could give it more than one thumbs up.
Very well researched and super entertaining.
Amazing video as always
I appreciate your vids in their entirety, but Artem's contributions are really selling it.
OK 1 hour and 10 minutes passed by like magic. Impressive work and content.
What a superb video! Thanks for making it.
Was already excited to watch an hour long video on the shuttle from this channel, I'm estatic that there's also gonna be a video on Buran.
You, Sir, have summed up my sentiments and feelings towar the STS programme. I'm glad there are people who think along similar lines. Thanks for the video.
The video of the escape module firing while the redstone just bounces up a couple of inches will never get old. The parachute for the capsule just popping out afterwards is just perfect. Tex Avery couldn't have done it better.
This is so informative! Great job, fantastic reporting!🌻🌼🐝 Keep it up 🙌
Love this and loving the content! Really appreciate that you gave more reverence to all those involved. Far too often the story of this is "Managers vs Engineers" or "PR Schedule vs Risk Assessment"... nothing is that clear cut.
The netflix documentary was pretty decent definitely well done for a wide audience and hit many of the key points but even there it felt a bit lopsided toward the managers and the pressures to go that day. The thing that really stood out to me was that so many of the main players and more importantly so many of the common 'antagonists' who were supposedly pushing blindly for staying to schedule. My first impression of that was telling and I still feel that way. Just participating and speaking toward the findings of the commission was really significant in that usually anyone who carries the guilt of negligence would pull the "declined to participate in this film" line.
Anyway, we love to find blame when confronted with tragedy or trauma. We think it will fill a hole made by emotionally extreme events. It was certainly the case here. Long story short thanks for giving it a balance and looking at these tragedies from a wholistic perspective. More often than not, no single person is the classic evil caricature in the movies bringing about catastrophe. The system and the swiss cheese analogy are far more appropriate in explaining these things that happen on the edges of knowledge and technology.
Thanks again and keep it up!
Thank you for another high-quality documentary. Just wanted to say, I love the way you present different perfectly valid interpretations for the same fact, I don't remember ever seeing anyone do this before. I wish more people would see the world this way.
Also, cudos for mentioning the other UA-camrs' documentaries on this topic. Seems we follow many of the same people (haha).
Thanks. Presenting different conclusions from the same data is surprisingly easy once you get used to doing it a few times.
This is an all around excellent video. I am really impressed. I have been considering something similar but now I dont need to! I will look forward to your work on Buran. Once again well done and thanks so much.
The last part about the innumerable knock-on benefits of the shuttle as a publicly funded program was beautifully put. I believe it is relevant to all publicly funded/open source research. I wish society could be better about thinking 20 years in advance to see the benefit of that research.
Splendid video as usual. Your work is the gold standard.
Thanks. Not as gold standard as the redundant design of the Shuttle avionics system though!
I should've listened to my youtube algorithm sooner, very very glad i decided to finally check out your stuff- ~20 minutes in and ya got yourself a new subscriber :>
Great video! Hope more people watch your videos!
12:32 that little nifty graphic alone deserves accolades. Appreciate that work!!!
Thank you. Really looking forward to your Buran Video!
For the Challenger disaster, the ambient air temperature may have warmed to 38F, but the temperature around the O-rings was not. The boosters were large thermal masses that would have lagged far behind changes in the ambient temperature due to their mass. Nor would all parts of the boosters react to changes in ambient temperature equally. Now take into account venting of the cryogenic gases to maintain tank temperature, and there could have been places on the boosters that started well below 30F at the time of launch.
Excellent point. It's not just the temperature at launch but (perhaps more importantly?) the temperature profile in the many hours leading up to launch. That must have been obvious to the engineers so I confess this adds some confusion to their risk assessment discussion. [Personally, if some expert says, "We're no go." I'm way more inclined to say -- "Okay, we're stopping now," than "Why? Why can't we go?" -- get answers later]
This was a major factor, and contributed to the confusion. The right booster had a measured recorded temperature as low as 8F (!!) the night before launch. This info was never passed onto the relevant team - all a part of the structural secrecy that had built up within Nasa over the prior decade or so.
Bravo! This is the definitive video on the shuttle program. There has been a lot of blame thrown around for both Challenger and Columbia but in truth the root cause of both failures was human nature. Complacency and as you say normalized deviance are problems we all encounter in our everyday lives. learning to recognize and counteract these conditions are important for the health safety and wellbeing of all people.
I myself have, after watching many videos on the subject, taken to the thought that the Shuttle was largely mismanaged and "got lucky". I now agree that while deeply flawed it was a crucial step on Humanity's spacefaring journey.
Man! I love how "video game'y" spaceflight is. The cost/benefit analysis of ISP, thrust, and dry/wet mass forces you to think creatively in a way that makes my brain tingle.
All of engineering is like this tbh. It's not quite as sexy in reality (think pages of calculations, justifications and audits), but every engineering achievement is a collection of various compromises and optimisations.
Very interesting video! I especially like the redundant computer discussion. The 5th computer with software developed by a different team was genius!