Shuttle launches from California
- Thread starter Ar-Pharazon
- Start date
The Air Force was originally going to have their own fleet of Shuttles.
When the costs went over $2billion each and the price of launches skyrocketed,
(plus the NASA shuttles were underutilized), they cancelled their orders.
Plus the environmental groups promised to sue them for decades to stop all the launches.
When the costs went over $2billion each and the price of launches skyrocketed,
(plus the NASA shuttles were underutilized), they cancelled their orders.
Plus the environmental groups promised to sue them for decades to stop all the launches.
The Air Force was never going to have its own fleet of shuttles as such, but had the Challenger accident not happened, the plan was for Discovery to be more or less permanently assigned to Vandenberg, where almost all the launches would have been Defense Department flights. It got that assignment because it was initially the only orbiter light enough to carry the DoD's heaviest planned payloads, and part of the reason Atlantis and Endeavour were funded was so there was at least one more of the lightweight 'production line' orbiters in existence if Discovery was lost. Had Columbia and Challenger (and Enterprise) been lighterr, then production might have stopped after Discovery due to the budget pressures.
Not quite. The problem was that the cost skyrocketed during development. NASA took care of that by making a design change. The shuttle was originally spec'ed to haul ~40,000 pounds into a polar orbit, which was a USAF requirement in order for the shuttle to replace the Titan launcher in a heavy-lift role given USAF plans for a new fleet of heaver and more complicated spysats. After the design change, the STS could only lift ~20,000 pounds into polar orbit. It was worthless for USAF work. Given the relatively bloated budged of the DoD, the USAF would have bought any spacecraft so long as it could do the job and the STS couldn't any more.
Just one of many scope reductions in the shuttle program that left it fairly useless, extremely expensive to operate (since they were targeting acquisition costs during development, not even worrying about operationals), and ultimately vulnerable to disaster. The early shuttle proposals were fully reusable (no o-rings and more than 4 launches a year) and featured alloy heatshields that would have needed a lot more than foam to damage them. My personal favorite had a S1C-based first stage (the first stage of the Saturn V) with wings and a fully automated landing system to bring it back to Kennedy after each launch.
The environmental issue was brushed aside early on. The USAF was actually well into rehabbing the old launch complex at Vandenberg. By the time shovels hit the ground, it's very rare for any project to be stopped due to public pressure.
Wow, i never heard of this before today. And i like how much more scenic the place is, compared to Cape Canaveral. Well as much "Scenic" you can get from being right beside the ocean.
Beautiful images.
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