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Scott D. Hansen
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WOOSH NAR Section #558

Better late than never. I wish he spoke up sooner.

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The question is, can the aging Shuttle continue flying safely ("safe" being a relative term, of course) until Falcon 9/Dragon (or a man-rated Atlas V/Dragon and/or Delta IV/Dragon) are ready to take over manned flights?

I don't share Senator Glenn's leeriness about commercialization, as space travel should have been developed this way from the beginning, like aviation was (the government [NACA/NASA] does the high-risk, expensive research and commercial firms use the technologies developed from the research to produce profitable vehicles).

Also, since the Shuttle hardware costs ~$1 billion a shot to launch and all of the tooling and infrastructure is already paid for, why not create an in-line configuration heavy-lift booster using the Solid Rocket Boosters and the 26' diameter External Tank tooling for the LOX/LH2-powered core stages? It would be like a very enlarged Ariane V launch vehicle.

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NAR #54895 SR

Why hasn't the Enterprise Shuttle been utilized?
I know it was not meant to go into space, but what and how much would it take to make it space worthy?
I imagine it would be cheaper than building one from scratch?
It only has a few hours on it and very low mileage!
It's been in a hanger ever since 1980-ish.
They have refurbished entire battleships, why not the Enterprise?

IIRC, during construction of Columbia, they made extensive changes in the wings and fuselage, making them have to completely disassemble and return to the subcontractors to modify. They decided it would be cheaper to build a new shuttle (Challenger) instead. Today, they probably don't have the infrastructure to refit even if they wanted to.

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I love sanding.

How many less flights and hours does Endeavor have than the other Discovery and Atlantis? Why not relegate one of the older 2 shuttles to rescue mission status and and keep us flying with the one shuttle that has the least numbers of hours and missions on it?

__________________
"AND I hope they are from the planet of the "Chunk spunky Mary-Lou Retton clones". - Ironnerd

"Those who trade liberty for security have neither" - Benjamin Franklin

"Semroc is almost always the answer" - Stefanj

www.paulsavia.com

www.soundclick.com/paulsavia

Challenger blew up in Jan. 1986, so it has the least flights and hours of the fleet. Of the remaining, Endeavor, Atlantis, and Discovery, I couldn't tell you off the top of my head.

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I love sanding.

I just looked it up.

Endeavour - 24 missions - 280 days in space

Discovery - 38 missions - 352 days in space

Atlantis - 32 missions - 293 days in space


As a reference point:

Columbia - 28 missions 300 days in space when she failed on re-entry


Seems like Endeavour could keep flying for a while. Retire Discovery and keep Atlantis around as a rescue craft.

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"AND I hope they are from the planet of the "Chunk spunky Mary-Lou Retton clones". - Ironnerd

"Those who trade liberty for security have neither" - Benjamin Franklin

"Semroc is almost always the answer" - Stefanj

www.paulsavia.com

www.soundclick.com/paulsavia

As I understand it, these vehicles aren't really all that reusable. And that's why they're retiring them. They go thru significant overhaul each after each flight. So, given that, my take is that it's not how many missions are on them, it's how much money is spent refurbing them after each flight. If you have enough money, you can fly them forever

Seriously, we've been flying copies of the first protoype for 30 years. What really needed to be done, to develop a reusable spacecraft whose reusability provided a genuine cost savings, was to start over after Enterprise and build another prototype incorporating what had been learned from Enterprise.

After a few rounds of this build-fly-redesign cycle, we would have a truly low-cost, reusable vehicle. Instead, we ended up with a shuttle which cost as much to operate as single-use rockets. Hardly a savings.

I think it's way kewl every time I see it fly, but I know that it's not really a good design in terms of relibility and cost.

The problem is the nature of government - the taxpayers demand that we get it right the firs time. So whatever came out first was deemed perfect...whether it was or not.

Anyway, my take is that Endevour, despite being a bit younger, is no bargain. And I doubt whatever reusable spacecraft comes in the next cycle will be perfect either. It will take several iterations to get there. Which means we'll have a pefect shuttle some time around 2130

Doug

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I have an acquaintance who works at NASA-JSC. While we were at a wedding reception, I asked about the possible extension of the service life of the shuttle. He said, "That ship has sailed".

Greg