re over zealous shuttle critics khayash hsc usc edu ken hayashida writes rockwell international in downey california in conjunction with the other shuttle contractors delivered the world s most important and most revolutionary space vehicle ha one cannot argue with the fact that it flies lands and is reusable watch me it flies it lands it gets rebuilt in my opinion these were the only appropriate specifications for this program that s not what they told us back in the s it has been a test program from the start a logical follow to the x program and the later x series lifting bodies it isn t a logical follow on a logical follow on would have been either a russian snowfox type thingey for the lifting bodies or something like mmi s space van or boeing s tsto or the airbreathing tsto the military is allegedly using now that probably cost less to develop than the shuttle does to fly for a year the engineering specs that the guys in the trenches had were to develop a system which was man ratable could land reliably and could be reflown these goals were quite visionary for the s and i would argue that they are challenging even today including for the dc x program keep that attitude and it ll be a couple centuries before we get real access to space unless another country without all that baggage comes along and kicks our ass in the space race i do not recall a flight week specification in the final nasa specs for the space shuttle program if you have such documents i would find them most revealing and interesting as far as i can tell the only people touting a flight per week flight rate were people on capitol hill or selling books to the general public or nasa hq that doesn t give the rest of the program plausible deniability if we deceide that it wasn t worth the money we ve spent which is by now probably a lot more than apollo imho political statements in the halls of the us congress are not admissable as engineering specs because specs should be determined by nasa dod and contractors not by congressmen senators or presidents missions are defined by political leaders but not the engineering specs yes but it gets sold on the basis of the political statements you re saying basically that it met the engineering specs which is questionable imho so it s a success never mind that you couldn t get the funding the shuttle eats with those engineering specs in a thousand years the shuttle is the only reusable space vehicle this automatically qualifies it as an unparalleled engineering success you could argue about its political success but engineering wise it is clearly the most advanced machine ever flown i argue that engineering and technical data for hypersonic flight is valuable in and of itself shuttle should be justified or criticized on the basis of economics you can get hypersonic flight data with an x or a follow on x type vehicle for much less and economics and engineering are interchangable engineering in the absense of economics is basically just physics and in terms of physics the shuttle looks like a failure next to the x then henry wrote hs sorry support that i can arrange for launchers all goes to launchers hs that i have some hope of riding some day at the moment that s hs dc x s hoped for successors i was disappointed by this and other similar statements from those vocal in support of the dc x program your support of dc x is based on hopes my support for the shuttle program is based on record the shuttle program has a bad record i once had hopes for the shuttle program by now i know those hopes were false all i have for dc x and similar and dissimilar experimental vehicles are hopes but at least i know they aren t false hopes yet i did support the shuttle way back when it didn t do nearly what it was supposed to it s time to move on to something that might do the job of orbital delivery better or at all i think that it is also important to note that i do not object to dc x it is visionary i originally posted i like the dc x idea and i am really hopeful that it ll be a stunning success unfortunately dc x ers are not willing to return that support the proven shuttle program explain why you folks criticize shuttle when shuttle is exactly what you guys need in order to learn how to operate dc x on orbit we don t want to learn how to operate on orbit it launches it shoves out the payload it lands it doesn t waste payload hauling up and down edo pallets and the like the only thing to be learned from shuttle is how not to build a launcher finally that bit about the proven shuttle are you hoping you can tell a lie enough times and get someone to believe it i enjoyed your later postings regarding the comparisons between the shuttle and the soyuz project although i may disagree with your method of analysis you probably will disagree with mine i think that the total impact of the shuttle program must be judged on the scientific and technical merit not on timelines and schedules do you agree how much science and technology could have been done is the money spent on shuttle had been spent differently as for now we need to stop thinking of dc x and shuttle as mutually exclusive learn about economics and the current budget realities in the united states please thanks for your time phil fraering number one good faith you convert pgf srl cacs usl edu you not tortured by demons anon mahen missionary
