July 8, 2011 The space shuttle Atlantis made its last flight under the Space Shuttle program. The program was closed as it had exhausted its possibilities. What is meant by this - we will not be told 100%. Has NASA funding ceased, space shuttles are morally and physically obsolete, are launches too expensive? Maybe. But in order to at least partially answer these questions for myself, I propose to study this program in a little more detail:
Preparing for the third shuttle launch.
A total of five shuttles were built. The program for the creation of manned flights on them began back in 1972. with the signing of a contract for the development of the first shuttle. It was the Columbia apparatus. They began to build it in 1975, and in 1981. he made the first flight. And he flew until 2003. (before the accident), having made 28 flights into orbit. Before that, there was an accident with the Challenger shuttle in 1986. (the shuttle made 39 flights). The accidents are tragic, because there were 8 astronauts on board.
The shuttle Atlantis made 33 flights and the Endeavor 25 flights. In total: 135 launches.
These are not single flights, but, as you can see, they are quite reusable. But behind this reusability is work on an almost complete bulkhead of the shuttle engines after each flight. And all due to the fact that they were used both at the start and at the entrance (braking) into the atmosphere.
Promotional video:
Before launching the shuttles in conjunction with the launch vehicle, NASA tested the Enterprise, a spacecraft without rocket engines - a prototype shuttle. This is in 1977. In those days, fantastic! The prototype was named after the starship from the movie Star Trek. The device was launched together with a Boeing-747 (8 takeoffs to study aerodynamics) and five times the shuttle was detached from the aircraft for free planning and landing.
Discovery start.
The shuttle took off with two solid-propellant rockets (80% thrust). They worked for several minutes, unhooked and landed on parachutes in the Atlantic. They were picked up, checked, refueled and used again for another start. Also the principle of reusability. The central tank (in the center and without its own engine) with liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen was disposable in the rockets. The shuttle engines ran on this fuel.
The Space Shuttle has shown the possibility of the existence of the principle of spacecraft reusability. The idea and implementation, I think, are great. It's a pity our Buran was not lucky. The collapse of the USSR canceled all plans.
- High-quality facilitation of access to space. Instead of reducing the price per kilogram by two orders of magnitude, the Space Shuttle has become one of the most expensive means of delivering satellites into orbit.
- Fast shuttle preparation between flights. Instead of an expected two-week period between flights, the shuttles took months to prepare for launch. Before the Challenger crash, the record between flights was 54 days, after the Challenger - 88 days. For all the years of shuttle operation, they were launched on average 4.5 times a year instead of the minimum permissible according to calculations 28 times a year.
- Ease of maintenance. The selected technical solutions were very labor intensive to maintain. The main engines required dismantling and a lot of service time. The turbopump units of the first model engines required a complete bulkhead and repair after each flight. Thermal shielding tiles were unique - each nest had its own tile. There are 35,000 tiles in total, and they can be lost or damaged in flight.
- Replace all disposable media. The shuttles have never launched into polar orbits, which is mainly needed for reconnaissance satellites. Preparatory work was carried out, but they were stopped after the disaster of the Challenger.
- Reliable access to space. Four orbiters meant that the shuttle disaster meant the loss of a quarter of the fleet. After the disaster, flights stopped for years. Also, the shuttles were notorious for the constant transfer of launches.
- The carrying capacity of the shuttles was five tons lower than the required specifications (24.4 instead of 30)
- Large horizontal maneuvering capabilities have never been used in reality due to the fact that the shuttle did not fly into polar orbits.
- The return of satellites from orbit stopped in 1996. Only five satellites were returned from orbit.
- Repair of satellites was also in little demand. In total, five satellites were repaired (although the Hubble was serviced five times).
- The engineering decisions taken negatively affected the system reliability. During takeoff and landing, there were areas with no chance of rescuing the crew in an accident. Because of this, the Challenger died. The STS-9 mission almost ended in disaster due to a fire in the tail section, which already broke out on the runway. Had this fire happened a minute earlier, the shuttle would have crashed with no chance of saving the crew.
- The fact that the shuttle always flew manned put people at risk unnecessarily - automation was enough for the routine launch of satellites.
- Due to the low intensity of exploitation, the shuttles became obsolete morally earlier than physically. In 2011, the Space Shuttle was a very rare example of operating the 80386 processor. Disposable media could be upgraded gradually with new series.
- The closure of the Space Shuttle program was superimposed on the cancellation of the Constellation program, which led to the loss of independent access to space for many years, image losses and the need to buy seats on the spaceships of another country.
- New control systems and above-caliber fairings made it possible to launch large satellites on disposable rockets.
- The shuttle holds a sad anti-record among space systems for the number of people killed.
List of goals achieved and not achieved during the program. It is believed that the program, especially the military one (the tasks of the Pentagon), did not achieve its goals. And if the engineers would design shuttles for a payload of 4-5 tons, and not 24 (but wanted 30 tons), then the shuttles were much better with reliability, construction and operation costs.
The main criterion for closing the program is the cost of launches:
After reading this information about the Space Shuttle program, I still have questions. Most likely, the answers to them are common and not related to conspiracy theory, but I will ask them anyway. And the conclusions at the end of the article are not funny at all.
Why to launch shuttles for 30 years - funding was found. Instead of the lost one, a new one was even built, and by 2010. the cost of launches turned into space numbers literally? Does the US also have a corruption component in NASA? Or are they remnants of capitalism? Where at every stage of the production of something profit is pledged! Every company that has sucked into financing and participates in the project has a profit and this, like mold, leads to the non-viability of any project. Our Roscosmos has also come to this.
The US prints dollars. They feel sorry for billions to such an extent that after the termination of the program, they lost the ability to send their astronauts on their own vehicles? The Constellation program was also curtailed, burying billions. The United States has begun to acquire our RD series rocket engines. And where, one wonders, their Rocket System 25 (RS-25), which were installed on the shuttles?
They are very expensive to produce, what is cheaper to buy in Russia RD-180? With such a currency rate, it is most likely cheaper to buy ours. And until 2014. - was it also unprofitable? Strange, but the Space Shuttle program repeats the fate of the Saturn-5 rocket and the Apollo lunar program in general. What then, what now - the legacy in the developments, in the technologies does not remain. Does everything dissolve with the departure of small companies from NASA projects? I think yes. And no one admits this.
With the state monopoly in the space industry in Russia, manned space exploration is still at least somehow glimmering. But divide Roskosmos like Chubais into the country's unified energy system, and you can forget about space.
Now in the United States, some private companies are engaged in manned space exploration. In the United States, these private companies are involved in hardware and software development. Not without NASA support. Here are just some of them: Boeing, SpaceX, Sierra Nevada, X Prize, Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin.
All this resembles the meaning of the fable "Swan, Cancer and Pike". Each company drags on financing, there is no general vector in its work. The development of budgets and the complete absence of the principle of expediency and a single goal. Capitalist values have destroyed the US space direction, turning it into a "Model Designer" club for beginners. In a few years, Russia will also face this. You can forget about some revolutionary steps in the development of manned astronautics. For now, we will still fly on the old Unions. And then, when they also become expensive in production due to the fact that there will be an extra charge for each screw there - what will we do ?!
And then we will be shown more and more circus, fakes and performance instead of achievements. Against this background, conspiracy theorists will joke more and more that we are not flying into any space. Yes, in the conditions of rotten capitalism it is economically profitable to cut the budget and shoot a video with cinematic graphics. Perhaps this has been done in part for a long time …
Author: sibved
