Зачем создали Шаттл?

[Вадим Лукашевич]

Справедливости ради отмечу, что когда я говорил выше об отсуствии скольжения при торможении шаттла/"Бурана" в атмосфере, то я был не совсем прав.
В ряде случаев у "Бурана" скольжение имеется при перекладках по крену

[eng. Alex]

Некоторые штрихи к истории создания "Шаттла".

Beam Me Out Of This Death Trap, Scotty
5 ... 4 ... 3 ... 2 ... 1 ... Goodbye, Columbia

By Gregg Easterbrook
The Washington Monthly
April 1980

Even as the Apollo 11 moonship was being primed for what President Nixon called "the most important event sine Creation"--the August 1969 moon landing--plans for a space shuttle were being drafted. By spring of 1969, Apollo's impending success seemed assured. The technological precision of Apollo was nothing short of remarkable; its builders and astronauts accomplished more than even the most optimistic among them predicted. But even NASA officials had to admit that being on the moon didn't amount to much. Getting there was all the fun. Some space venture had to be found to succeed Apollo.

The shuttle was to be nothing more than that--a space truck to lug things back and forth to orbit. The craft itself would have no scientific function. It was assumed by task group members that, once the shuttle was approved, somebody, could devise some missions for it. "First you have to get the horse," said Dr. Jerry Gray, former NASA scientist and now public policy director of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, "then you decide where to ride him."

What could you do, OMB asked, for $5 billion? Design of the horse was referred to committee, where a compromise was found. A partially reusable shuttle was conceived.

The drydocked Columbia represents at once all the shuttle program's problems. They are: delays; cost overruns; performance underruns; and lack of work for the horse to do. Delays, the least important problem, are the easiest to understand. "People don't appreciate that the shuttle, as a technical goal, is much more ambitious than the moon program," says Eugene Covert, an MIT professor and rocket-propulsion expert. "The schedule couldn't possibly have been met."

The people struggling with the tiles serve a useful function. They make the rest of the project look good by comparison. "You have to keep your pole a little shorter than everybody else's," says a NASA engineer. "That's why everybody likes to be under the tent of tile delays." The Air Force, a partner in the shuttle project, is happy to be there under the tent. It's supposed to build a small rocket booster, the Inertial Upper Stage (IUS), to ride in the shuttle bay. IUS, will float away from the shuttle and fire satellites into the high altitudes that shuttles can't reach. It's based on conventional throw-away technology and should be the easiest part of the project, but it's two years behind schedule and $144 million over budget. Yet Secretary of Defense Harold Brown recently assured Congress that IUS is not a problem--because of "revised operational requirements and shuttle program delays."

Walk into NASA headquarters with a long enough line of credit, and you can buy yourself the top floor of a rocket. For $23 million, for instance, you can buy the services of a Delta, a rocket that will toss 2,750 pounds of whatever you have into the 22,000-mile geosynchronous orbit used by communications satellites. For $33 million, you can get the more powerful Atlas-Centaur, which could kick a small payload out of earth orbit altogether. If you plunk down $50 million or more, you could probably arrange to get a Titan III, the rocket the Air Force uses to launch military satellites. A Titan III, the Clydesdale of space horses, will heave 29,000 pounds into due-east, low orbit.

The money you pay is "total cost incurred"--NASA's price for everything associated with the launch, covering the rocket itself, the fuel, the command personnel to fire it, and the guys who sweep up the pad afterwards. Commercial rocket launches, by law, must be financially self-supporting.

Back in 1972, when shuttle designs were still on the table, a consulting company called Mathematica did some cost-benefit studies for the project. Mathematica estimated that, under certain conditions, an individual shuttle flight would have a direct cost (fuel, command salaries, sweeping the pad) of $22.4 million. In 1975, NASA froze that number. It started selling contracts for shuttle launches at $22.4 million per, for the first three years of flight--a guaranteed price with no escalator for inflation.

What happens to the cost of shuttle flights at the end of three years? "Then our direct-launch price will go up to reflect true costs," Lee says. All the evidence is that "true" costs will be high indeed. Flying and refitting the shuttle--even assuming all goes well--will be more expensive than predicted. All the things that you used to throw away and forget about now must be returned to earth, fixed, and cobbled together for another launch. Lee says the "true cost" of a launch is "about 25 percent" more than will be charged in the first three years. The "true cost" of one flight of the shuttle thus approaches $40 million. Costs keep rising, like a rocket gushing flame and trembling to get off the pad. But NASA says the shuttle is still a bargain, payload for payload. Better keep a close eye on that cost-rocket. Once those things get moving, they really pick up speed fast ....

So how many shuttle flights a year seem reasonable? Maybe 20, insiders say, with the largest share devoted to launching defense satellites.

Like most mythology, the "retrieve and return" business has a basis in fact. When the shuttle was being planned, there was supposed to be a "space tug." This was to be a robot rocket vehicle of some kind, assembled in space and left there. The shuttle would bring it fuel and satellites to move around: The tug would take a new satellite out to high orbit, then go find a damaged one and tow it back down to the shuttle.

The tug proposal has been killed. Every year NASA sticks it back in the budget under a different name, and every year it gets killed again. It gets killed because people don't want their satellites back. "A communications satellite has absolutely no salvage value," says Larry Weekly, spokesman for SBS, Inc. "They almost never fail, and by the time they wear out, after seven to ten years, they're obsolete. It's much cheaper to build a new one." Especially, Weekly adds, since the cost of a new satellite--now running $20 million to $40 million--is likely, to be less than the cost of sending a repairman after an old one.

"Oh, the shuttle will definitely cost more than equivalent expendable rockets," said Kaplan plainly. "The payoff is not in dollars, but in flexibility and expanded horizons."

The external fuel tank, for instance, is full of oxygen and hydrogen cooled to -400°F. to make the gases flow as liquids. Ice will form on the tank. When Columbia's tiles started popping off in a stiff breeze, it occurred to engineers that ice chunks from the tank would crash into the tiles during the sonic chaos of launch: Goodbye, Columbia. So insulation was added to the tank. But while thermal cladding solves the ice problem, it adds weight. The entire vehicle, loaded, weighs 4.5 million pounds. Say you add one percent. Doesn't sound like much. One percent comes to 45,000 pounds. That's almost all of the payload.

The original reason the shuttle was supposed to lift 65,000 pounds was to satisfy not commerce or science, but the Defense Department. DOD plans to launch all its military spy satellites on the shuttle, using NASA tracking facilities and astronauts. "DOD was brought into the shuttle planning because they wanted something big with a lot of payload," Doug Lord explains. "Without DOD, there would have been no reason to make the shuttle so big."

Technical problems are just that: technical. Much of what's wrong with the shuttle will someday be fixed. If money is no object, as it usually isn't in space launches, we can pay more for reusable shuttles than for throw-away rockets if we have to. But the question never answered is--what will the shuttle do that rockets couldn't do?

[Apollo13]

Of course, it once cost money to develop the Delta and the Titan and what all, and that money is not amortized to each flight. But those rockets are already developed. That money's already spent.

Забавно, но когда шаттл уже был готов, тот же самый аргумент можно было приводить против его закрытия. Если бы не Колумбия...

[zyxman]

Забавно, но когда шаттл уже был готов, тот же самый аргумент можно было приводить против его закрытия. Если бы не Колумбия...

Даже и без Колумбии в крайние годы полетов Шаттла были огромные проблемы от того что просто от времени стала сыпаться интеграция.
- Было порядочное число организаций, которые поставляли запчасти и расходники для Шаттла, и которые просто прекратили существование.
И надо заметить, что со всей старой техникой (или старой разработки) подобные проблемы - и с Дельтами, и с Титанами, и с Союзами.

[Apollo13]

То-то "коррупционеры из Юты" никак не могут пристроить хоть куда-нибудь ТТУ от шаттла.

[zyxman]

ТТУ от шаттла это несколько другая песня - это ведь технология по которой можно делать Першинги и другие твердотопливные большие ракеты, и ТТУ для Шаттла, для этого бизнеса, всего навсего увеличение серийности производства.

[Chilik]

И надо заметить, что со всей старой техникой (или старой разработки) подобные проблемы - и с Дельтами, и с Титанами, и с Союзами.

С машинами серийной сборки всё-таки проще: выпускаются листки изменений и модификации. А тут - как сделали, так всё. Замена крупной системы на живой машине весьма неприятна, да и с подтверждением безопасности непонятно как быть.

[Chilik]

Некоторые штрихи к истории создания "Шаттла".

Beam Me Out Of This Death Trap, Scotty
5 ... 4 ... 3 ... 2 ... 1 ... Goodbye, Columbia

eng. Alex

Зарегистрирован: 21.07.2004
Сообщения: 666

Мда....  :shock:

[zyxman]

И надо заметить, что со всей старой техникой (или старой разработки) подобные проблемы - и с Дельтами, и с Титанами, и с Союзами.

С машинами серийной сборки всё-таки проще: выпускаются листки изменений и модификации.

И вносят путаницу.

А тут - как сделали, так всё. Замена крупной системы на живой машине весьма неприятна, да и с подтверждением безопасности непонятно как быть.

Да жизнь вообще сложная штука , но самолеты как-то по 30 лет и более летают, с кучей регулярных ремонтов и модернизаций, а корабли и побольше ходят, и везде требуется подтверждение безопасности.

[eng. Alex]

Topics covered: The Decision to Build the Shuttle
Instructor: Guest Lecturer - Prof. John Logsdon

Lecture 4: The Decision to Build the Shuttle

Download this transcript - PDF (English - US)

[eng. Alex]

Download this transcript - PDF (English - US)

Из стенограммы (стр. 28 файла по ссылке выше):

It's that link of human spaceflight to national image of the United States, plus the employment impacts in the '72 election that were the fundamental reasons for going ahead with the shuttle.

You may make a judgment that those aren't great reasons, but there they were.

[instml]

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/main/index.html



Endeavour Departs Space Coast, Heads West

Secured atop NASA's modified 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, space shuttle Endeavour is headed west after a 7:22 a.m. EDT departure from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The early-morning takeoff marked the beginning of the final ferry flight of the Space Shuttle Program.

The flight path will take the aircraft to the northwest, across the Florida panhandle and toward Houston after low-level passes over NASA's Stennis Space Center in southwest Mississippi and Michoud Assembly Facility east of New Orleans.

Arriving in the Houston area at approximately 9 a.m. CDT, the SCA crew will initiate a 1,500 flyover of various areas of the city, including downtown, before heading to the Clear Lake area. The SCA and Endeavour are predicted to land at Ellington Field at about 10:45 a.m. CDT.

The SCA/Endeavour will depart at dawn on Thursday and make a fueling stop at Biggs Army Air Field in El Paso before proceeding to Dryden Flight Research Facility at Edwards Air Force Base, California. On Friday it will depart Dryden for a flyover of northern California and areas of the Los Angeles basin before landing at LAX between 11 a.m. and noon PDT. In October, Endeavour will move to the California Science Center to begin a new mission inspiring future explorers.

[instml]

Шаттл "Индевор" отправился в полет к месту вечной стоянки

МОСКВА, 19 сен - РИА Новости. Самый младший американский шаттл "Индевор" отправился в свой последний полет на "спине" специального самолета-носителя - в пятницу он прибудет в Лос-Анджелес, где встанет на вечную стоянку в Калифорнийском научном центре.

"Индевор", построенный в 1994 году на замену погибшему "Челленджеру", провел на орбите 299 дней и в минувшем году вернулся из последнего космического полета эпохи шаттлов.

В среду на самолете-носителе - модифицированном "Боинге-747" - "Индевор" взлетел с посадочного комплекса шаттлов в центре имени Кеннеди. Конечная точка его маршрута - Лос-Анджелес. По дороге корабль посетит главные космические центры, связанные с программой шаттлов.

По договоренности с Федеральной авиационной администрацией США самолет-носитель провезет "Индевор" на небольшой высоте над космическим центром Стенниса и заводом в Новом Орлеане, где шаттл был собран. Затем самолет с кораблем пролетит над различными районами в окрестностях Хьюстона, а затем совершит промежуточную посадку в космическом центре имени Джонсона.

В четверг шаттл покинет Хьюстон и пролетит над исследовательским центром Драйдена и авиабазой Эдвардс. После ночевки в Драйдене, "Индевор" пролетит над северной Калифорнией, над исследовательским центром Эймса, Сан-Франциско, облетит Лос-Анджелес и приземлится в его аэропорту.

С 30 октября шаттл займет свое место в калифорнийском научном цене в специальном павильоне.

После закрытия программы НАСА Space Shuttle ("космический челнок") в 2011 году все "ушедшие на пенсию" шаттлы займут места в американских музеях. Шаттл "Дискавери" уже занял почетное место в Национальном музее авиации и космонавтики Смитсоновского института в Вашингтоне. Американский шаттл "Энтерпрайз" в июне 2012 года был доставлен на музей-авианосец Intrepid в Нью-Йорке. Планируется, что в начале 2013 года "Атлантис" займет свое место на постоянной выставке в Космическом центре имени Кеннеди во Флориде. Судьба шаттлов "Челленджер" (Challenger) и "Колумбия" (Columbia) была трагичной - "Челленджер" потерпел катастрофу при запуске 28 января 1986 года, а "Колумбия" - при входе в атмосферу во время посадки 1 февраля 2003 года.

Теперь единственным средством доставки экипажей на МКС стали российские пилотируемые корабли "Союз". Причина прекращения полетов шаттлов - выработка ресурса кораблей и огромные финансовые затраты на подготовку и обслуживание космических челноков.

http://ria.ru/science/20120919/754309556.html