What to do with space shuttles

A

A. BETTIK

1,000+ Posts
Put them up on eBay? Put them in a museum?

Nah! Near space tourism! I don't think they have ever filled one up and set at the end of a runway and let it take off like a regular jet.

How far could a shuttle go on internal fuel alone? Miami to Houston? Newy York to Seattle?
 
The "Space Shuttle" refers to the entire assembly with external tanks and rockets, what most people refer to as "the shuttle" is actually called the Orbiter, or the Orbiter Vehicle (OV). I don't believe that the orbiter itself is capable of taking off from a runway, and it was certainly never designed to do so. It is basically a glider with a big *** storage compartment on the back. You carry it up, and then it falls back to the earth. Its forward momentum is provided mostly by descent.

Which is to say, if you want to see it fly, then you are going to have to pay for the rather costly and demonstrably dangerous rocket configuration. These vessels are museum pieces now.
 
Sell them as used vehicles to private companies who want to privatize space travel. Put the money back into NASA.
 
I didn't realize that, BETTIK, cool.

OldHippie, the side mounted launch vehicle is far more dangerous than a nose mounted launch vehicle. Probably the Challenger crew and definitely the Columbia crew would have survived had they been in nose mounted vehicles.

The shuttle system is needlessly dangerous and expensive, but if a civilian company wants to roll the dice on three 30 year old vehicles using 40 year old technology... I say sell the ******** for best price.
 
MaduroUTMB, correct me if I'm wrong, but there is a greater issue at play which deals DIRECTLY with the consequences the engineering of a side mounted orbiter.

First off, is the issue of launch abort. With a cone mounted vehicle, in the event that something goes wrong during the launch itself after ignition, there is the option to separate the vehicle from the main rocket using auxiliary rockets. This was used for the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo configurations. With a side mounted vehicle there really is a point of no return during the launch cycle where ejecting the crew is no longer an option. It is unclear what this would have meant for Challenger, but the ability to clear the launching vehicle is simply not an option with the STS.

Second off, is the issue we saw specifically with Columbia. Side mounting the orbiter means the crew vehicle is exposed to falling debris from the fuel tanks and rockets. At the speeds the STS was traveling when the ice impacted the orbiter's wing it had the force of a cannon ball. What happened to Columbia simply could not have happened to Mercury, Gemini or Apollo because the crew compartment was the furthest forward section of the launch vehicle.

I'm not suggesting that the shuttle was not safe, was designed capriciously or was poor in conception, but side mounting the orbiter does create an element of additional danger that the cone mounted vehicles never had. There was a reason that the shuttle replacement plans went back cone mounted designs, both for cost and safety.
 
I would still like to see how far we could get with a maglev launch system replacing the first stage.

On the other hand another of Laithwaite's inventions may be even more promising. He reported demonstrated a prototype system that used flywheels to reduce the weight from 20 pounds to 15, and later patented an invention that he thought would fly.

He unfortunately died while working on the NASA maglev project and so didn't see either one completed. I would like to play around with some flywheels to try to reproduce his results.

A shuttle type form factor factor would be more practical if you took out the explosive first stage. Either of those things might do the trick.
 
They do, but they transport it on top of the 747, considering the placement of the tail of the 747, that seems like a risky disengagement to do mid air.
 
Space Shuttle still has a very very good launch record considering the two fatal events were the direct result of human error and avoidable.

40 year old technology? Doubtful, they have these things called upgrades. I'm pretty sure they are able to fit computers that aren't the size of rooms into the shuttle. The B-52 is even older than the space shuttle, but it still flies just fine.

Scraping the entire fleet is incredibly stupid. These things can still be used to fix, launch, and capture satellites (nose cone designs can't), and we can always rent these things out to other countries who wish to have things placed into orbit or removed from orbit but don't want to start a space program.

The shuttle (with some modifications) can be released midflight from atop a 747, as the following picture will show.

20081008092028!OV-101_first_flight.jpg
 
The loss of the Columbia orbiter was not avoidable, the loss of its crew may possibly have been.

That said, the picture is great, and once again I stand corrected.

Single mission cone mounted satellite recovery is not an option, but a combination light and heavy lifter launch (as was proposed with the Constellation program) absolutely could.
 
Would have been perfect if AstroWorld was still alive, and they could build a roller coaster that goes in and out of the cargo area of a shuttle.
 
that picture that longhorny posted is just a test shuttle created to test aerodynamics. it doesn't have an engine and was never going to go into space. I don't think a real shuttle could separate from the 747 like that
 
Wow....I'm old....I remember when the thing first flew off the back of a 747. I also remember when the 747 with the shuttle on its back stopped over at Bergstrom back in 1979 or 80.
 
Paint "ACME ROCKET CO." on the side, and contact Mr. Wile E. Coyote.
 
You cant retrofit a 1975 Buick and make a 2010 BMW out of it.

Archaic concept. Time for something better and I think we will find it.

Plasma? MagLev, who knows?

Still dont get the Cheney ego connection.
 
Laithwaite's gyroscope patent can be found here
The Link
I honestly have not reviewed it yet.

A very nice proof of principle demonstration can be found 2:15 into the eighth video here.
The Link
That is about the simplest way to demonstrate it with the simplest form of balance. The force opposed to gravity also increases with the precession velocity or more properly acceleration since it is going in a circle.

OK, I reviewed the patent some over the weekend. He doesn't know what he is doing with respect to gyroscopes. His system may slightly lose weight temporarily but will never achieve flight.
 
I don't think anyone here proposed to launch the shuttle into space by seperating off of a 747. I think instead the idea was to take the shuttle up on the 747, release it, and let it glide back to Earth with paying customers onboard. And actually, I think it would be more than possible to take a modified shuttle up on a 747 and be able to launch it into a sub-orbital height since that's exactly what Spaceship 1 does. The shuttle does have engines, and if you fill the entire cargo hold with additional fuel you could probably get pretty high up.


I'm still going to disagree with the idea that the loss of Columbia was absolutely unavoidable. NASA choose to turn a blind eye to recorded footage that engineers had said were a cause for concern. NASA had known that foam could be a problem and decided to just ignore it. They've altered the fuel tanks to some degree post-Columbia to limit foam strikes, so it obvious that the risk Columbia took could have been minimized, and there was still the small chance that some sort of fix could have been implemented by either the crew of Columbia or a rescue launch, had NASA taken a look at the wing with an emergency EVA before re-entry.
 
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