
STS-135 Live: The Last Shuttle Mission - ColinWright
http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/135_splash/index.html
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ck2
Total lifetime cost of shuttle program under NASA $200 Billion (a bargain).

Total cost of Iraq War (2nd one) $750 Billion (published, unofficially twice
that)

Cost of care and benefits for injured/killed troops through 2050 $1 Trillion.

We could have had a dozen James Wright telescopes and a round-trip or two to
Mars.

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drgath
The Iraq War could balloon to even 3 times that, $2.4 trillion according to a
congressional report. All the money we're spending for war? It's all borrowed,
which means interest.

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pvsnp
You mean $2.4 Trillion?

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drgath
Fixed, thx.

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marshray
Saw it as a bright dot and heard the sonic boom as it flew over.

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InclinedPlane
It bears repeating that the Shuttle was not a good system, it should have been
ended long ago. Yes it's inspiring, I've certainly been inspired by it, and
yes it's better than nothing, but it's worse than almost all of the reasonable
alternatives, by a lot. It did not live up to any of the promises that were
made to get it built, in most cases it missed them by a factor of 10 or more.
For the few unique capabilities the Shuttle did have (large cross-range flight
on landing, return of payloads from orbit, satellite repair) it paid a heavy
price in the cost, complexity, and safety of every single launch and yet those
capabilities were very rarely used, if at all. Worse yet, the Shuttle was in
many ways less flexible and more limited than previous vehicles.

On the whole the decision to build the Shuttle resulted in about 3 lost
decades for manned spaceflight in the US. Decades and billions of dollars
spent doing busy work and treading water in low Earth orbit. And slowly but
surely the organization which put men on the Moon morphed into a typical
bureaucratic mire with the most important goal to merely funnel high-paying
government aerospace contracts to key congressional districts. When people
look back at this era of manned spaceflight they will be occasionally awed by
the accomplishments of the Shuttle but more they will wonder how we managed to
waste so much time and effort on such a limited and flawed program.

The Shuttle system has had its fair share of victories, but it's past time for
it to rest in peace.

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drgath
I almost entirely agree with you. The only point of contention I have is we
couldn't realistically end a low-earth orbit program without something else in
place. The private sector had been interested in it for years, but never did
anything about it, until recently. I'm not sure why it finally happened.
Computer technology? Advancements in aerospace engineering? The web exploding
and creating billionaires who now view space as their next personal challenge
(see: Musk, Bezos)? A combination of all 3 is most likely.

Now that the private sector is taking over the mundane LEO missions (in
comparison to what is possible), it's time for NASA to get back to doing what
it was originally created for, adventure.

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hartror
The stuff I have read points to the X-Prize as the catalyst, though you are
likely right in that there was a combination of factors that allowed these
enterprises off the ground.

Certainly a load of geeks flushed with cash didn't hurt at all.

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purephase
Any reason why they let it sit on the runway unattended for so long? I would
imagine a flurry of vehicles descended on them immediately upon touchdown.

It seems lonely just sitting out there like that.

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ErrantX
The crew are doing final checks and making it "safe" - and the ground grew do
remote external checks for leaks etc. (there are a few toxic bits and pieces
they don't want to walk into if they are leaking :)).

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lutorm
I imagine it's also quite hot...

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ErrantX
Interestingly... no. The heat tiles are an incredibly cool* bit of engineering
that retain heat like mad.

To the extent that you can technically pick up a panel that is super-hot
inside and it will take a reasonable lenght of time to actually burn you! (the
quote I remember reading was that at 750 Celsius inside, it would take around
15 seconds to burn you). They are designed specifically like this to slowly
soak up the heat of re-entry (because if they heated up too fast it,
obviously, makes them useless :)). Think "thermos flask".

The tiles (at least the outside of them) cool significantly during the latter
stage of the re-entry glide so are maybe... 100-200 Celsius upon landing. You
can brush against them and not feel it.

(all of this is my recollection from reading a technical paper some years ago
about the HRSI tiles they use)

* err, pun not intended :) honest

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lutorm
_cool significantly during the latter stage of the re-entry glide_

Yeah, I guess that makes sense. Makes me think of how people have picked up
metorites that have just landed and noticed that they are cold. (Though that's
because the hot part has been ablated away during descent and the inside is
space-temp, i.e. quite cold.)

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ColinWright
Down.

That's all folks.

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ColinWright
15 minutes to go as I type this.

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ColinWright
1 minute to touchdown

