Yes, I understand that’s possible in principle. My point was that it would not have been done — waning interest in space by politicians would ensure such an outcome.**

I don’t get the impression that the Shuttle bolstered the interest in space of politicians.
I assume the waning interest in space by politicians occurred shortly after Apollo 11.
Though it does not seems like that they generally had much interest of which was reduced.
Or I would say there were many other things which cost less had more of their interests..
And seems many in public tend to imagine the Shuttle was capable of going to the Moon. Which indicates to me, a lack of specific interest.

It seems Shuttle unique and remarkable achievement was related to Hubble Telescope.
But the Next generation telescope didn’t want to follow Hubble.
Why is that? Are they merely misinformed?
And Hubble came from existing defense satellites. Which also did not require the Shuttle.
One could also point to ISS.
It was bigger and better than Mir. But the Russia has very little funding for it’s space agency. And of course Russians didn’t need a Shuttle for it’s space stations.

Anyways, it seems NASA could done other things which could held held the interest of politicians- assuming that is important, or as important engaging the public in general..
It seems to me what make politicians happier less things that bother them- so on time and under budget is probably what they want the most.

So I don’t get that there was some emergency that the Shuttle
program solved.
And seems to me that SpaceX gets as much public involvement as the Shuttle did, and it’s not like SpaceX is trying that hard- or one say it’s a minimalist effort, and not something they are required to do. And they are not even sending any crew yet.

It seems there was a lot missed opportunity.
Which is generally speaking is hard to measure.
Now, of course this does not mean I want ISS to be crashed into the Ocean somewhere around 2024, nor that I don’t like the Hubble pictures.

And I think the New telescopes should have been made to be serviced in space. And I knew the shuttle could never reach the moon.
I guess on personal level, I just know there is a lot to do.
At moment interested in what we going to find out about Ceres.

One is that another factor that will kill “commercial” space joyrides is when the first group of uber-rich passengers gets killed. Look at the dent the SpaecShipTwo accident has already put on Virgin Galactic. Imagine losing half a dozen millionaires and billionaires in flight. Corporate boards would put an end to wannabe astronauts risking their necks for a few minutes of weightlessness and a fabulous view.

The other point goes to your comments about airships. The R101 disaster happened, in part, because it was a government subsidized “socialist airship” (as the detractors dubbed it). The R100, built by Vickers, made a successful journey to Montreal and back. But the demise of the R101 on her maiden voyage ended the entire enterprise, and the R100 never flew again.

The Germans were far more successful in taming big, hydrogen airships. But the newsreel footage of the Hindenburg disaster spelled the end of their dreams, as well. Although the Zeppelin company was planning to build a fleet of even bigger ships with Goodyear, utilizing helium as the lifting gas, that plan was nixed because of the Nazi regime. Even if it had gone forward, those giant airships still would have been subject to the weather-related problems you cite.

In short, long-distance airship travel was a dead end. Those glorious dreams of giant luxury airships routinely crossing the world’s oceans carrying 100 passengers each never came to fruition.

I suspect some of the “commercial” space ventures will be, too — especially, as you say, if taxpayer dollars should dry up.

In some aspects it reminds me of the British airship industry collapse. This is an amazing story not well known and a “what if” that has always fascinated me. There were two problems with the commercial airship industry that spelled it’s doom but those problems were not insurmountable. The first problem was hydrogen and the expense and lesser lift of the alternate helium. The solution was a double envelope with an outer layer of nitrogen as a barrier to ignition. The second problem was the turbulence found at low altitudes which virtually guaranteed airship disasters when they were ripped apart in storms. The solution to this was pressurized cabins so the airships could fly above the hazardous weather. Unfortunately the technology to easily cook gasoline into hydrogen and separate nitrogen out of the air, as well as superchargers to effect high altitude pressurization, was not available and an alternate history where thousand foot long airships numbering in the thousands filled the skies of Earth never happened.

The two problems with space travel are the rocket equation and space radiation. With microwave beam propulsion systems as proposed by Kevin Parkin, Single Stage to Orbit commercial space travel could finally become a reality. The problem is to escape Earth gravity it would really require beaming energy down from GEO as a surrogate second stage and this means Space Solar Power. The second problem is space radiation and the only way to shield space travelers is with a massive water shield massing several hundred, and more likely, several thousand tons. The solution is the ice and mineral resources on the Moon. The ice, as I already commented, should be the main focus right now of all space advocates. Hopefully Human Space Flight is not delayed a century or more in the same way the British airship industry failed to launch.

Big Gemini was my favorite!

This was my favorite “what if” shuttle design, using the 260 inch monolithic solid rocket booster.

http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4221/p375.jpg

True, but your capability to string together random buzz phrases continues to improve.
– dynamic
– constantly improving
– newly competitive advantage
– vibrant

Next time work in
– innovative
– game changing
– paradigm shifting
and of course the ever popular
– 21st Century (presumably to be someday updated to 22nd Century)

Then your list of clichés will be complete.

Niskanen was wrong then and is still wrong.

George Low was flat wrong as is evident in the Department of Defense, NASA’s Science program, and now the manned ISS program using contracted launch services for their space program needs. This launch services sector provides reliable and dynamic and constantly improving competitive launch services as evident in the operations of the EELVs, The Falcon 9 vehicles, ULA’s next gen rocket program that will lower the cost of their services, SpaceX’s reusability efforts, and the newly competitive advantage on the global launch market that will increase America’s winning of that business. In the case of NASA, the commercial crew program will deliver two capsules before the end of the this decade that exceed the crew transport capabilities of any other nation’s manned space program and using the commercial launch vehicles. You can have a vibrant continuing space program using Niskanen’s idea.

If you’re going to point to a gap between one system operating and another new system, that gap existed even with the space shuttle with the gap between Apollo and the Shuttle. It existed with Project Constellation with the gap between the Space Shuttle and Ares 1 operations. It exists even with SLS and Orion being created. A gap is not the same thing as “the space program is cancelled” even if it is falsely maligned as such, and the non-commercial launch services approach can and does have gaps.

No need to hate a phrase just because others have misused it. For instance, your post lists several other concepts that (believe it or not) have been the subject of trade studies. They were never selected for implementation and that leads to the main point of that part of my post:

“Each of those solutions have positives and negatives, the trick is picking the best which is always to some extent subjective. Which is why the decisions made can always be argued and re-argued.”

If you want to see some very different concepts that were never selected you might want to check out the links at my post dated April 11, 2015 at 3:20 pm. Keep in mind that those are only some of the iterations for use of Apollo/Saturn (and even Gemini) hardware in new configurations and with incremental upgrades.

The Goose is a fascinating aviation story but I do not see the parallel with the shuttle. For all it’s faults the shuttle did place twenty plus tons at a time into LEO on 134 of 135 missions. If not for breaks after the two losses and certain difficulties in “turning around” the orbiter a much larger number of missions would have been launched. The solid fuel technology used has always been the most interesting part of the system to me. Super powerful monolithic versions had already been tested but were not used, while pressure-fed liquid boosters would have eliminated the toxic exhaust products. They were poor choices but still provided more power than has ever been seen from a pair of boosters. The 5 segment version for the SLS at 3.6 million pounds of thrust is awesome.

The SRB’s at 650 tons each and producing 1400 tons of thrust each flew 271 times (counting the Ares1X) with one failure. Some of the first steel casings over a quarter century old were used on the Ares1X so the SRB segments were very reusable- they just did not “break even.” Since very precise methods of inspecting the casings and solid fuel were eventually developed and insured a perfect record, I personally consider enabling that reliability by recovering the boosters for post flight inspection more than breaking even. If the Challenger SRB had sprayed hot gases outward at a different angle instead of searing a hole in the support strut…..history would be different.

As I have commented, it was a case of going cheap. A cargo version of the
shuttle would not have risked astronauts lives hauling satellites and would have had a much larger payload. So in an alternate history the shuttle in a crew and separate cargo version could have become the successful sole provider of access to space. As I commented below the Air Force certainly could have used the orbiter as a spy plane with a large telescope and other sensors in the cargo bay to point down at the Earth. Dr. Spudis has also commented in the past about what a superb observation platform it was.

A upper stage may have eventually been designed to be carried by the cargo version up to a waiting Moon return craft of some kind. But going cheap often means you end up with nothing. In reality there was a proposal to put a Centaur in the cargo bay as a “space tug” and the two senior astronauts at the time threatened to resign before riding with a “bomb” in a vehicle that already had no escape system.

The biggest mistake in my view was Sidemount. It was the opportunity to make it all good with a real space program and escape LEO. I still get depressed whenever I think I about it.

As for justifying the shuttle cargo bay as a “work platform”, I might agree if there was any gravity. A shuttle without a cargo bay could just as effectively latch on to a satellite, or use a separate expendable container as an anchor. I don’t want to demonize the shuttle, may it rest in peace, but I am no fan either. If we learn the lessons it taught I consider it worth the money. And in my view one of those lessons is that bringing an empty cargo bay back to Earth was a huge waste and a fundamental mistake in the design. In any case LEO was not the place to go so besides the obvious flaw of wasting most of the lift of a Saturn V class propulsion system on wings, landing gear, airframe, etc., I believe the entire concept was a mistake. Before anyone is too offended let me repeat: If we learn the lessons it taught I consider it worth the money.

But….I have commented before on loading that bay with extra life support pallets and a solar panel array and doing 6 month missions with it. So a small lab and that equipment would have filled up the bay and been worth bringing back to Earth. We would not have needed to spend 150 billion dollars (by one of various pricing schemes) on the space station to nowhere. And the entire NewSpace abomination would have been aborted.

It would have been the ultimate spy plane and that the Air Force ignored this I attribute to the defense industry not liking the lower profit margin of Human Space Flight.