The spooks and the turkey

[pmn1]

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/748/1<br /><br />The spooks and the turkey<br /><br />Intelligence community involvement in the decision to build the Space Shuttle<br /><br />by Dwayne A. Day<br /><br />Monday, November 20, 2006<br /><br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[CalliArcale]

Probably the biggest albatross around the Shuttle's neck, design-wise, is the "too many cooks" factor. In a noble but doubtless futile attempt to save money by merging requirements, the government decreed that the Shuttle should serve not just NASA but also the USAF (which immediately resulted in the Dynasoar cancellation) and other DoD interests. The latter would include the intelligence community, who otherwise had to work through the USAF.<br /><br />Unfortunately, these three groups did not always have the same objectives in mind, and so in trying to satisfy all their demands, the Shuttle design ended up being a host of compromises between conflicting requirements. One of the most immediate impacts was weight; the Shuttle is a lot heavier than the original USAF and NASA concepts for a winged spaceplane. This in turn led to scrapping the SSTO idea and reducing the percentage of reused components. It's one heck of a vehicle; it can do things no other vehicle has ever done, and will probably not be duplicated for a long while to come. But one does have to question whether it really *needed* to be able to do those things. In particular, its early use as a satellite launch vehicle has been pretty much superceded by the lowering costs of the expendable launch vehicle industry.<br /><br />Side-thought: I wonder if the failure of the Shuttle to meet its lofty goals (in particular, cheap access to space) was a harbinger of the telecommunications bubble of the 1990s? <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em>  -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>

 

[nyarlathotep]

I think the biggest thorn in NASA's side was abandoning faget's stub-wing design in favor of a delta wing because of the USAF's demand for ludicrous crossrange. That tacked on an extra 25 tonnes of deadweight which could have otherwise been used for payload and a more robust heatshield. <br /><br />The stupidly large middeck also makes absolutely no sense. Why couldn't all of that labspace have been put in a module in the cargo bay?<br /><br /><font color="yellow">Side-thought: I wonder if the failure of the Shuttle to meet its lofty goals (in particular, cheap access to space) was a harbinger of the telecommunications bubble of the 1990s?</font><br /><br />No, that was caused by Greenspan's loose monetary policy during the mid 90's. I'd also pin the housing bubble to the entirely unnecessary helicopter dumps made for the three years following the September 11 attacks. Personally, I think Friedman is right. Most of these instabilities would go away if the Federal Reserve was to be replaced by a really small shell script.

 

[CalliArcale]

Directly speaking, you're right about Greenspan and the telecom bubble. That's not what I meant, though. In hindsight, it's just that it almost seems like the Shuttle's failure to provide CATS was a sort of omen. After all, CATS was a big deal in the telecom bubble too, and it failed there as well. (For a similar reason, too, at least as far as the bubble hit the satellite launch business: insufficient payloads, which kept launch costs up, which in turn dissuaded potential satellite customers, and round and round it went.) <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em>  -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>

 

[nyarlathotep]

I don't think it had anything to do with it. The stake through the heart of the NGEO market was the development of wavelength division multiplexing. During the years between 1997-2000 huge amounts of fiber was pulled chasing non-existant markets and then DWDM bumped up already overprovisioned routes by two orders of magnitude almost overnight. As most of these costellations required revenue from trunking to close their business plans, they no longer made very much sense. Moores law enabling very cheap DSLAMs then lopped off the head.<br /><br />The 800 satellite Teledesic constellation however was ludicrous from the beginning. I'm sure most in the industry were laughing their asses off while taking Craig McCaw and Bill Gates' money.

 

[CalliArcale]

Arg, I'm not coming across well today, am I? I didn't mean to suggest it had anything to do with it -- just that it was a bad omen. I don't believe in bad omens, but sometimes one notices eerie connections and has to comment on it. Sort of a failed joke, though it wasn't really meant to be funny; just idly interesting. So nevermind. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em>  -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>

 

[pmn1]

Can we have a 'what if'.....what if there had been no military involvement in the STS.<br /><br />What might we see in orbit and in use today? <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[bpfeifer]

"what if there had been no military involvement in the STS"<br /><br />The Shuttle would be smaller and lighter, with a correspondingly smaller cargo bay. Several things that have been built for the shuttle to launch would likely be smaller, like some of the ISS components.<br /><br />I don't know if the flight profile would change the thermal protection system requirements or not, but I suspect they would. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> Brian J. Pfeifer http://sabletower.wordpress.com<br /> The Dogsoldier Codex http://www.lulu.com/sabletower<br /> </div>