Why were the shuttles retired? Would the tech have evolved to make them more effective and efficient? Why was there a return to rockets? Are they as reusable?
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In: Technology
The space shuttles were incredibly expensive to launch and maintain (far more than anticipated), they were aging (having been designed in the 70’s and built in the 70’s – 80’s) and the Challenger and Columbia disasters showed that there were fundamental safety concerns. They also weren’t really needed anymore. By 2011, the ISS was mostly completely, and so the shuttle’s job was done. Everything else that the shuttle did could be done faster and cheaper with traditional rockets.
As for what could have been done to make them more effective and more efficient, not much really. The problem with the space shuttle was that it had a bunch of design compromises to please different interested parties. NASA, the Department of Defense, and Congress all demanded certain concessions, and the end result was a vehicle that was a jack of all trades but master of none. Obviously the shuttle had many technical upgrades over the decades, but the fundamental design couldn’t be changed, and a lot of the cost overruns and inefficiencies were baked in by that point because of how Congress funded the shuttle program.
So as we see now, traditional rockets are much cheaper than the shuttle and can sustain a much higher launch cadence. So they’re cheaper and more efficient. Some of them are at least partially reusable, which brings costs down, and others are not reusable but just cheap to build and launch.
They were expensive and crashed a couple of times, the original concept was a reusable vehicle that would make space flight cheaper, it turned out that not much could be reused. Part of this was down to a political process called pork barrelling where government funding is spread around the country to different states to get the elected representatives from those states to pass the money for the spending so those representatives can claim the jobs benefit from government spending; this is a major factor behind the O ring failure.
The idea of the space shuttle was that the orbiter and split booster rocket could be rapidly reused with little maintenance done. The main problem was that was not the case at least for the orbiter. It needs to be stiped down and examined thoroughly. This is a result of the wear on the part that needed to be checked. this includes the electrical wires. If you can’t produce the orbiter with minimal work lifting it with a dry mass of 78 tonnes and a launch mass of 110 tonnes is a waste.
The cost of each launch was so high that single-use rockets would be cheaper.
It alos had a fundamental safety problem, the orbiter was on the side of the external fuel tanks and solid booster rockets. If stuff falls off the tank it could hit and damage the orbiter. Because the tank’s container cryogenic hydrogen and oxygen ice would form on the surface. Insulation that was used on it could alos fall off. There was no way the orbiter with the crew could escape if a problem like that happened at launch like the Challenger. If the damage was to the heatshield it could disintegrate on reentry like Columba did. You could not fix the orbiter in orbit so the solution during the last mission was to have another shuttle stand by to be launched that could rescue the crew and bring them back.
If the spacecraft with the crew is on the top of a rocket nothing can fall on it and damage it. You can alos add a launch escape system so if the rocket below explode or break apart the crew can get away with solid rocket boosters and survive. It has been use used twice on the Soviet/Russian Soyuz and the crew survived.
You could add some escape system to the orbiter, the first test flight did have ejection seats for the crew of 2. The Soviet Buran did one unmanned test flight and the European Hermes that was never built would have used that. The problem with the shuttle is the crew would need to be reduced both because of the weight and because they were seated on two levels. A system like that would not be as good as the launch escape system that you can have on top of a rocket.
In regards to reusability, Dragon II launched on the Falon 9 resute the capsule and the first stage. The second stage and the truck are not reused. The cost of making a few new parts is lower than attempting to recover them.
Space X Starship might be able to reuse almost everything if it works out. The question I have in regards to is will there be some crew escape system?
So the space shuttle system was never reusable in a cost-efficient way and it had inherent safety problems. Reusability is meaningless if the cost is so high that single usage would cost less.
Frankly they’re really expensive to operate without much upside and if what you’re really trying to do is just going into space, a Soyuz is just much better. It’s well designed, infinitely cheaper to operate and doesn’t have any trouble connecting to the ISS.
Have a look at the falcon 9. It’s the only reusable rocket currently and it lands on its tail.
The cost for a falcon 9 launch is a fraction of any other launch system. You were looking at 450 million to launch a shuttle in 2011, spacex is sub 15 million vost based on statements by musk about never losing money on a launch.
Retail price for a falcon 9 is ~65 million, still a fraction of shuttle.
The shuttle could carry 27500kg to orbit, and the falcon 9 is 23000kg. Do you’re not looking at a big mass difference.
The thing the shuttle did that we do not have an equivalent of is being a platform for people working in space. For that it was unrivaled and we have nothing even close today.
Leaving out the economics of the shuttle though, it had significant design flaws that put the crew at risk on every launch. And there was no budget to build a version 2.
When you make a rocket you’re building an incredibly complex and expensive thing that’s not reusable to get a few tons at best into orbit. On paper the shuttle is great because it’s reusable, so it has a quicker and cheaper turn around than making a new rocket and it’s more versatile.
In practice this wasn’t the case. The Shuttle never managed to be quite what it was meant to be. Turn around was neither as cheap nor as quick as it was supposed to. Many things needed complete replacement after each flight, and multiple checks needed to be carried out to avoid accidents. The accidents that did happen really took off most of the public support for the shuttle. Ultimately times changed from when it was built and NASA realised it was unnecessarily complex. Core issues still had no solution and too much money was tied up into keeping them running and the fleet was getting long in the tooth. When it came down to deciding whether they’d make another one, the choice was obvious. They wouldn’t. Instead they’d use Russian rockets for the ISS and turn to the private sector for the rest for the most part.
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