My worst fear, as is probably the same for many folks, is an accident on the moon (crash landing, failed liftoff) and having bodies left on the moon. THAT would be a hard thing to deal with, and one would think we could not really do anything else until a mission(s) were mounted to retrieve what was left so that the entire world would not think of human remains left on the moon every time they see the moon in the sky.

Earl

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Earl L. Cagle, Jr.
NAR# 29523
TRA# 962
SAM# 73
Owner/Producer
Point 39 Productions

Rocket-Brained Since 1970

Exactly... at the most generous the shuttle could only be called a "successful failure" in that 40% of the fleet (2/5) ended up destroyed killing two crews, and it NEVER met the goals set for it, or ever could.

It was retired at least 20 years too late IMHO. Held back the entire space program for nearly 40 years...

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The X-87B Cruise Basselope-- THE Ultimate Weapon in the arsenal of Homeland Security and only $52 million per round!

Totally agree with Luke's above statement.
Set the space program BEHIND 40 years plus.

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When in doubt, WHACK the GAS and DITCH the brake !!!

Yes, there is such a thing as NORMAL, if you have to ask what is "NORMAL" , you probably aren't !
Failure may not be an OPTION, but it is ALWAYS a POSSIBILITY.
ALL systems are GO for MAYHEM, AGITATION, CHAOS, TURMOIL, FIASCOS, AGGRAVATION, INSTIGATION, NUISANCE-ACTION, and HAVOC !

Luke and Gh are spot on. The shuttle was an American white elephant that just bored holes in the sky when it wasn't killing crews.

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A person will seldom remember your exact words to him or her ,but they won't forget how you made them feel

The best use of the Shuttle was the Hubble telescope...Wow!

Other than that; a boondoggle-look up the maintenance man hours between flights.

Bob

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illegitimi non carborundum

NAR# 54643 L-1

SAM# 43

AMA# 157091

VRCS# 154

I hated the shuttle for years. When they started talking about retiring it, I became a bit melancholy.

Yes, it built a good portion of the ISS, but as we saw from the Russians, expendables could have done the same job. Yes, it returned a satellite or two, which was really cool and seemed like a potentially lucrative thing, but they never did it again. However, the potential to do amazing things with it was awesome. The ESA Spacelab had tons o potential. Load it up, fly it, return it for ground studies and reconfigure for next launch. However, the ISS with regular visits made it obsolete almost before it was ever used. Yes, I know it flew for about 15 years and 20-ish missions, so Spacelab did have a few good years to help with the gap between Skylab and ISS. Hubble, as already stated, was it's crowning glory, both the launch and the repair/refurbish missions.

It was stubby in launch configuration. Some say it was ugly. However, it screamed 'Merica every time those double sonic booms hit and it landed on the Canavaral runway. It grew on me. It looked pretty cool with the spiral wingtip vorticies and chase planes following it home.

The smoky SRB's were a letdown to me after watching the Saturn V rise on a huge column of fire, but it was still pretty cool to watch in the absence of something better. Yes, it did eat up crap tons of money and it did set the space program back due to its huge costs, and NASA's in attitude that we just want to hang out at the space station instead of exploring new worlds and going where no man has gone before. However, I'm still a bit melancholy about its retirement.

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I love sanding.

That's not completely fair to see it as a concrete 2 of 5 loss. While they wanted to compare it to an airliner, it was still a big honkin rocket, so in another viewpoint, it's success rate was 133 for 135. That's 98.52%. Considering the complexity and the design being locked back in the 70's, that was absolutely amazing.

Of those two failures, one could have easily been prevented by listening to warnings from McDonnel Douglas for 15 or so years, from looking at melted o-rings after pretty much every launch, and from Ebling and Boisjoly along with a couple other Thikol engineers all but standing on their heads naked to get them to postpone the launch. The other failure...well, it's a wonder it didn't happen sooner, which makes the 133 for 135 record even more amazing.

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I love sanding.

If the STS was still operational today, there is a perfect mission for it...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space...20in%20diameter.

The diameter is at the limit, but

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Starliner

The crew rides inside the shuttle crew compartment and the spacecraft in the cargo bay.


Bill

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It is well past time to Drill, Baby, Drill!

If your June, July, August and September was like this, you might just hate summer too...

Please unload your question before you ask it unless you have a concealed harry permit.

: countdown begin cr dup . 1- ?dup 0= until cr ." Launch!" cr ;

Give a man a rocket and he will fly for a day; teach him to build and he will spend the rest of his days sanding...

The payload bay was 15 ft dia. I just looked up Starliner. 15 ft! I think a good old fashioned country boy engineer could figure out how to shoehorn it in there.

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I love sanding.