Watching 747/Endeavour fly over Ames I thought, “Never again will there ever be something like that.” Now everyone argues about whether Shuttle was economic or not, or it kept us in LEO for decades… these days we ***cannot*** design and build such a thing as much of the infrastructure is gone.

The space shuttle could never have been the future. Not enough lift. What was required after Apollo was to roughly double or triple the thrust of the Saturn V.

If my company ever gets going I will spend every last dime rebuilding the shuttle program to its former greatness. Ugly? It’s one of the most beautiful spacecraft ever built. How can you call a tiny coffen on an oversized ICBM pretty? Go back to your old folks home and a time that should be forgotten. The Space Shuttle could have been the future but we are now left with a castrated space program.

I’m thinking about those responsible for those engines because after stage separation, pumps have to spool up, engines have to ignite, thrust needs to build up…. all without tedious monitoring by hundreds at the firing rooms at the Cape.

Listening to those that were there gives reason at least what and why Shuttle is what it is. I wonder of what we are currently working (SLS, VSE, CCdev, etc) and Spudis pointed to his series on “VSE, a brief history” which I am currently digesting.

They are the best tool there is for moving forward; Santayana and all that.

The point where the past cannot teach us anything about the future is a subtle one. Most of what we are discussing is in no way unknown territory. I am taking some big leaps with beam propulsion but other than that the evidence for travel to the Moon using chemical propulsion is all in.

The mistakes are glaringly apparent and I am always puzzled by the success of those who continue to promote so many failed concepts from the past. And even more curious how anyone can fall for such deceptive promotion.

The SLS is the only project that has any hope of taking human beings outside the gravitational field of Earth again. Yet the only HLV in development on Earth is underfunded and under constant attack from the space clown wannabe mob.

Planetary defense and survival colonies have become real issues after so many near misses and the growing bio-terror threat. Yet our leaders are content to ignore these threats while pandering to defense contractors.

Then there is the matter of solar energy beamed down from space- the ONLY way we can possibly provide a western standard of living for a world population projected to climb to over 10 billion in the coming decades. The ONLY way that energy will ever become available is by way of the Moon.

I agree with Joe; we are at a critical decision making point in history concerning space. The situation may deteriorate and the window of opportunity will close. IMO we are an endangered species and what is most dangerous is our collective lack of vision concerning space exploration and colonization.

I first read the Project Horizon Report when I was in College (around 1980) and have re-read it several times since over the years.

The cryptic reference to the person who wrote the report is somewhat puzzling since there were several authors, but I assume you mean Von Braun. I have already (in a previous post) paid sincere homage to Von Braun (and his team) but invoking his name is not a talisman that ends all decent.

I also have to assume when you talk about “a vehicle that had thousands built and several per day launched” that you are referring to the V-2 Rocket in it version used as a warhead launcher during the blitz in World War II. Sorry but I suspect that is an “honor” to his work Von Braun would prefer be left out of his biography. That is as much politics as I am going to get into. The technical part is that the V-2 (a suborbital warhead launcher in that iteration) is in no way comparable to a multistage vehicle with hydrogen/oxygen upper stage intended to put substantial payloads into LEO.

What I am now going to now say is in no way intended as an insult to anyone. These “alternate history” discussions (What would have happened if someone had made a different decision 50 years ago?) are fascinating up to a point and that point quite reasonably varies among individuals, but mine has been reached. I am much more concerned with what is going to happen from this point forward.

Just as an example, you are a big supporter of BEO missions supported by extensive LEO assembly. The EVA/EVR capabilities to support such activities currently exist. But as the current situation is going by the end of 2015 this country will lose that capability. It will not even be able to perform EVA maintenance on the ISS (another “service” we can buy from the Russians). Yet here we are debating whether or not Von Braun could have made Project Horizon work in the 1960’s.

I understand- doing it as close to the original airliner-liner-to-space fantasy as possible. IMO bringing the SSME’s back was the devil in the details- and this mistake is where the the ultimate rocket engine, the RS-68, came from. The only part of the whole system that made any sense was the most damned- the SRB’s. And because they were segmented they were not powerful enough (rail limited diameter) and turned out more expensive than anyone expected. Building monolithic solids using submarine hull technology and barging them in was the better course but was killed for political payback to thiokol (or so it has been alledged).

Aerojet was so sure their giant solids were going to dominate launch vehicle technology that they built a huge facility in Florida and tested the most powerful booster ever fired there. It is abandoned now.

The point I am trying to make is that hauling 75 tons of wings, landing gear, cargo bay, and airframe into orbit- expending a huge amount of energy making it “go fast”- just to bring it all back down again was……stupid. It is opposite of what rocket science and the laws of physics call for if you want to put alot of mass into orbit. It was really sending three rockets up to do the work of one and doubling the cost of those three rockets by making them “reusable.” How did we make such a stupid mistake? We were conned in the same way we are being scammed right now by private space.

It is the oldest game there is; appeal to human greed and you can steal them blind. Tell people you can give them something for nothing and they will believe despite all evidence that it is too good to be true. The shuttle shell game was all about going cheap and we should know by now-

THERE IS NO CHEAP