But wait, if you have a reusable craft, wouldn't that negate a bit of profit that would otherwise come from building another, and another, and another non-reusable rocket? I mean, the number of missions flown by shuttles, how many non-reusable rockets would that have taken?

It would have been vastly cheaper to just use the non-reusable rockets. By far the biggest cost is the fuel, and that didn't change with the creation of the shuttle. In fact shuttles were probably more expensive to get into orbit.

Possibly, but perhaps members of Congress--and of course I know you have to take into account the congressional lobbying from LMC and Boeing and the like I'm not ignorant of that--were persuaded by the argument that there would be less "crap" floating around in space from thousands of launches. I mean, there IS that to consider, right? That's a crap-ton of garbage floating around. Every piece of it has to be cataloged and tracked by U.S. Space Command. I have heard complaints about that.

http://go.cnn.com/?stream=cnn

If the link works you can see what they mean by remote avatars... In real life, not just James Camerons' concept.

No it did not work. Went to current news it seems...

Not only that could any non-reusable craft have been able to repair Hubble, for example? I was reading more on the Shuttle but I didn't find any dollar-amounts.

JimHackerMP, you do realise that to get up there, every shuttle did need a massive unre-useable set of rockets? And much more in terms of weight and power than was used for Apollo type payloads?

JimHackerMP wrote:Not only that could any non-reusable craft have been able to repair Hubble, for example? I was reading more on the Shuttle but I didn't find any dollar-amounts.

It would probably have been possible with a one-off mission. The shuttle had the advantage that it was bigger and so more able to change orbits and match to those of satellites and so could complete more than one task per mission.

Mind you it might actually have been better to just replace Hubble with a better model later (as they did)

The key problem with the shuttle was the opportunity cost. The same budget spent elsewhere could have produced vastly bigger results.

From the wiki article I just linked to:

Some speculate that, had NASA avoided the Shuttle program and instead continued to use Saturn and commercially available boosters, costs might have been lower, freeing funds for manned exploration and more unmanned space science. In particular, NASA administrator Michael D. Griffin argued in a 2007 paper that the Saturn program, if continued, could have provided six manned launches per year — two of them to the moon — at the same cost as the Shuttle program, with an additional ability to loft infrastructure for further missions:

If we had done all this, we would be on Mars today, not writing about it as a subject for “the next 50 years.” We would have decades of experience operating long-duration space systems in Earth orbit, and similar decades of experience in exploring and learning to utilize the Moon.

That's not true Danivon: the rockets were recoverable (and were indeed recovered). The red tank, which would not fall off until the shuttle was much, much higher, was (I kid thee not) compressed paper.

sonofa******!!!!!!!!!

I just posted what I thought was a really good argument (partly a political one if not scientific) and Redscape asked me to log back in, erasing it. So I'll return with a better answer, tomorrow.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/stati ... s/746.html

http://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/ ... tandr.html

Re: Remote avatars.
The first link is the baby steps being taken towards this in the space program.
The second describes "downloading one's consciousness into a machine. That's the idea where man could explore space without the limitations that our frail bodies put on the mission.

Well that sort of thing sounds a bit more advanced than our present level of technology. In fact it is something I hope to never see. But as far as practical matters, I don't think it's relevant right here.

But, the space shuttle: Six Saturn launches per year, from 1981 (date of the Shuttle's first launch) to today means that, by the end of this year, there would have been 204 Saturn third stages floating about in Earth orbit, and U.S. Space Command already has over three thousand (I do not recall the exact number) objects they must track in outer space, to avoid collisions with military and civilian satellites. And those are big-ass objects, too. Saturn rockets are huge. All the junk they have to track in orbit and you just increased it by 204.

Yes, I agree the Space Shuttle program was, on the whole, a financial, political and even scientific disaster. But the rockets were recoverable rockets, as I mentioned to Danivon. The big red tank was simply thick, compressed paper. And I doubt that, had we no spacecraft to recapture and repair Hubble, like the Shuttle, that NASA would have been given the funds to launch a new one. "Wait, that thing screwed up and you want to launch, ANOTHER?" would be the prevailing opinion. A bust it may have been in many ways as I mentioned, but the Hubble couldn't have been repaired without it and it's very unlikely they would have been given the funds to launch another one with such a failure. Don't forget that it was with Hubble if I'm not mistaken that the first exosolar planet was discovered, via the light "wobble" effect (whatever they call it). Hubble was an invaluable asset in unmanned exploration of space.

But yes, I see what you're saying, and Administrator Griffin is likely correct, the exact dollar-amounts notwithstanding. I would be nice if we had a lunar colony right now, or a Mars landing. I would really have liked to have seen that in my lifetime and I likely won't, possibly.

There is however another aspect we might not have covered. As the shuttle was indeed a boondoggle, it's at least forced the government to consider more international cooperation and the opening up of space to private industry in ways that were not open before. We might not have done that if not for the financial "ouch!" caused by the Shuttle program.

Well, maybe. I suspect it would have gone the other way though. Cheaper access to space for the last 30 years would more likely have spurred on private involvement to a much greater extent.

Space debris really isn't a problem btw. It's easily manageable.