OrionWorks wrote:
From Thomas Malloy
IMHO, if I set out to
design the worst possible vehicle, I'd end up with the shuttle.
The space shuttle suffered the fate of dwindling budgetary constraints
during the design phase. I believe one of the original shuttle designs
placed the reusable vehicle on top of multistage rockets.
Too expensive, ergo, we paid the price in other ways.
The original plan was to build the vehicle out of titanium.
Unfortunately, someone ordered the destruction of the shop where the
Blackbird was built, and NASA had budget constraints. Between that, and
wanting it to land like an airplane, they ended up with a space truck
that costs NASA $10,000 per pound for payload placed in low earth orbit.
IMHO, returning the crew in a bell shapped capsule, and using the rest
of the space for cargo would have helped.
Then Richard Macaulay wrote;
>The shuttle could not have been "by design".Nobody is that >intelligent.
>The question was studied and the report given by an adjunct of the
>Dime Box Saloon science group called the LBJ bourbon and >branch water
debating society ( no affiliation with the LBJ Johnson >Space Center
Houston)
They must have drunk up all the bourbon in the Dime Box Saloon when they
came up with that white elephant.
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