> <i>The space station sparked a lot of interest, but it too was overwhelmingly expensive. Its components would be so heavy, NASA's entire budget would be required to pay for the launch rockets--to say nothing, as space proponents are wont to do, of building or servicing it.</i><p>Which is is fact pretty much exactly what happened with NASA and the ISS.<p>> <i>There is something noteworthy a rocket can do that the shuttle cannot. A rocket can be permitted to fail. What if a billion dollar spaceship wipes out on a "routine" mission "commuting" to space with some puny little satellite? Cooper fears it might drive a stake through the heart of the manned space program.</i><p>Nailed this one too.<p>> <i>But to require six shuttle launches a year, there would have to be 18 satellites. "Barring some extraordinary breakthrough in technology," says an informed communications industry source, "that's inconceivable."</i><p>This prediction, though, didn't work out so well. (SpaceX alone has more than 5,500 satellites, and is launching thousands yearly.)
How incredible it seems today that this story could ever have been written by a mainstream reporter. It tells the story of a technology without any attempt at "human color" or "character portraits" to "interest the public". It is written for an adult readership that seems scarcely conceivable today. A lost artifact of lost social technology that could never be reproduced within the modern West.
> <i>When Columbia's tiles started popping off in a stiff breeze, it occurred to engineers that ice chunks from the tank would crash into the tiles during the sonic chaos of launch: Goodbye, Columbia. So insulation was added to the tank.</i><p>I didn't realize this was the reason for the thermal insulation. It's ironic how in the end the insulation popped off and crashed into the tiles during launch, causing the very disaster it was intended to prevent.
From the article:<p>> <i>”You've probably heard, for instance, that the space shuttle will retrieve damaged satellites and return them to earth for repair. Not so. It can't. Simply and flatly, can't.”</i><p>Interesting article, but the <i>Washington Monthly</i>’s sources were wrong here. The space shuttles could, and did, retrieve satellites from orbit and return them to earth several times during their operating life:<p>STS-41-C (launch) / STS-32R (retrieve): LDEF<p>STS-41-B (launch) / STS-51-A (retrieve): Palapa B-2 and Westar 6<p>STS-46 (launch) / STS-57 (retrieve): EURECA<p>STS-72 (retrieve): Space Flyer Unit (SFU)
Really remarkable to see the failure modes that caused both the Challenger and Columbia disasters enumerated here, respectively six and twenty-three years ahead of time.
I worry that the business case for StarShip is similarly optimistic.<p>Launching once per week, a single StarShip will carry 10,000 tons to orbit. Fully 50% of all mass launched to orbit since Sputnik 1. Given the hopes for even more frequent launches with a fleet of StarShips makes me wonder who is going to pay for it all and why?<p>I do understand it's supposed to be much cheaper. But someone still has to pay. And that person still has to be sure that SpaceX - as a single, critical, supplier - won't eat their business model any time SpaceX chooses.<p>So I do hope there's a secret cunning plan I'm not aware of.
"Would the public stand to lose a quarter of the fleet in a single day? Would it fork over another billion dollars to build a replacement? Would it stand for spending millions to train astronauts to be truck drivers, only to lose truck and drivers both?"<p>Amazingly prescient article, but I don't think the author expected the answers to these heartbreaking questions to be "yes."<p>Twelve-year-old me stayed up all night to watch Columbia launch in '81, and I watched the last flight of Atlantis in 2011; I still can't watch the Challenger footage to this day.
Highly recommend this irreverent podcast by 2 engineers and former NASA contractors. They get out above their skies on some topics but the shuttle content is fun.<p>Episode 1: Why do Blake and Craig think the Space Shuttle was stupid?
<a href="https://youtu.be/KRlD8SdFmaE" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://youtu.be/KRlD8SdFmaE</a><p>Episode 18: Challenger
<a href="https://youtu.be/H98IGl7pSfQ" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://youtu.be/H98IGl7pSfQ</a>
The only thing more ridiculous than another manned visit to the moon is the colonization of mars (especially one intended to "save" humanity). Yet both are being planned. Idiots are just too horny for human space exploration after decades of Star Trek/War consumption.
I think of NASA vs SpaceX as the equivalent of East vs West Germany: a clear demonstration that private companies work better than state bureaucracies.