30 years Challenger

[milenio3]

And we have the paper scale model as homage, thanks to Alfonso Moreno.

I made mine... almost 10 years ago!

thank you, sir Alfonso for keeping my photos in your gallery.

Godspeed Challenger forever!!

The photo is from our old gradparent forum, as POTW.

[richkat]

John Kennedy killed our space program, the Moon race was a dead end. NASA was working on higher-faster and would have flown into space if left to do it the way they wanted, but they needed a way to "out do" the Russians for JFK. They knew that a Moon race would start them out even with Russia, and we could out do them if we started even........Rich

[N96HBK]

I feel very sorry for the loss.....:( They could've lived if they didn't launch it with everything frozen....

[luke strawwalker]

Originally Posted by richkat

John Kennedy killed our space program, the Moon race was a dead end. NASA was working on higher-faster and would have flown into space if left to do it the way they wanted, but they needed a way to "out do" the Russians for JFK. They knew that a Moon race would start them out even with Russia, and we could out do them if we started even........Rich

I'd say shuttle was more of a "dead end" than Apollo.

"Flying" into space is all well and good (IF you can make it work, which NOBODY has, and you can bet that it's not for lack of trying). If you want to measure success as shooting some sort of souped-up X-15 type plane into orbit by whatever means, piddle about some, and come back, then sure, the pre-Moon Race space program's plans for such might seem pretty good.

Simple fact of the matter is, we haven't come up with anything better... evolution of the same ideas, but basically even today SSTO is about as dead as it's always been. Even a fully reusable TSTO (two stage to orbit), which is a much simpler idea to execute, still has the problem that its SO complex and limited in capabilities and would be SO expensive that it really wouldn't make sense to develop, even if you could get the funding.

Plus, getting into ORBIT (not 'space'-- X-15 and SpaceShipOne go into "space" but not into orbit, hence they're of no value beyond manned sounding rockets-- ORBIT is where everything starts) is an order of magnitude harder to do than getting into "space" suborbitally. Getting into orbit with a meaningful payload is something else. Shuttle basically required the lift capability of a Saturn V to orbit a 20 ton payload in a manned reusable payload fairing, at much greater expense than a Saturn V would cost, despite having over 5 times the payload capability to orbit. That's false economy, all the "neat" factors of "reusability" aside.

The other thing is, if you're content to piddle about in Low Earth Orbit, the shuttle was okay, if expensive and dangerous. Forget about doing anything beyond Low Earth Orbit with a shuttle-type spaceplane-- it took basically everything the shuttle was capable of to stagger up to the 385 mile high orbit (IIRC) that they released the Hubble Space Telescope into... Grab a standard 12 inch Earth globe like you'd see in any classroom... The highest shuttle ever could fly was only 1/2 INCH above the surface of that classroom globe. Apollo, on the other hand, flew the equivalent of 30 feet away from that globe to a softball... (that'd be the Moon, all in scale). It would be impossible for a huge space plane like the shuttle to ever fly to the Moon, because of all the dead weight of wings of heat shield that basically you only need in the last 30 minutes of the flight to land on a runway.

There's a REASON why we're going back to "capsules and boosters" again... it just makes the most sense to do the job, especially if you plan to go somewhere beyond Low Earth Orbit...

It's just too bad we're stuck with the super-expensive and most limiting bits of the shuttle hardware, the SRB's and SSME's, on the new SLS rocket... it would have been FAR better to just scrap all that shuttle junk and build a modern version of the Saturn V... or just farm it out to an operation like SpaceX that looks to be on a far better track for making a sensible reusable rocket first stage, rather than being stuck 40 years in the past due to "institutional inertia" and political interests trumping good engineering sense...

Later! OL J R

[luke strawwalker]

Originally Posted by N96HBK

I feel very sorry for the loss.....:( They could've lived if they didn't launch it with everything frozen....

It was a million wonders we didn't lose a shuttle before Challenger. Several launches had come within seconds of disaster-- SRB casings burned through to the point they had to be scrapped due to burned O-rings and stuff like that. IIRC the flight before Challenger, the one with Senator Jake Garn, returned with a huge hole burned through the SRB... fortunately on that flight it burned through facing AWAY from the tank, and late enough in the flight that the hole didn't grow too large and overpower the flight control systems... it had burned through not long before SRB burnout and separation.

The O-ring problem that doomed Challenger was well known and understood beforehand. Several boosters had come back with varying degrees of damage due to failed O-ring seals, and the problem was demonstrably worse the lower the temperature. The coldest weather a shuttle had been launched in previously was 53 degrees... and it suffered damage from a failed O-ring seal. Launching Challenger in 27 degree weather was negligent any way you cut it. That's why Roger Boisjoly, one of the propulsion engineers from Thiokol in charge of the SRB's who was overruled by the launch committee who decided to launch anyway despite the cold weather concerns, said "they're gonna kill somebody" before the launch.

The shuttle program was desperately trying to "vindicate" the shuttle system and make it operate at the ridiculously over-ambitious levels originally envisioned for it. The shuttle was originally discussed as being capable of up to 70 flights a year-- one every 5.2 days! Officially the number settled eventually at 50 flights, roughly one per week. The shuttle was already years late (first flight in 1981, after slipping from 1979, and having originally been planned to be in flight by 1977, but that date was quickly abandoned in the earliest history of the program). The shuttle had been plagued with problems and its weather restrictions for launch (and its emergency landing fields both at the Cape and on the other side of the Atlantic) played havoc with its operational schedule. The most flights NASA ever managed to get off in a single year was 9, which was in 1985, the year before Challenger, IIRC. Shuttle would never again even approach that modest flight rate, and eventually only flew 135 times over the 30 year operational life of the program.

In addition, had Challenger launched and returned successfully, there were a lot of things in the pipeline that would have made the loss of a shuttle virtually inevitable. When Challenger exploded, they were working on the Shuttle Centaur booster, which would have put a liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen stage INSIDE the shuttle payload bay, to launch satellites and probes headed for geosynchronous orbit or elsewhere in the solar system. If there was a problem, the shuttle COULD NOT land with the fully fueled Centaur aboard, so a sophisticated and tricky "fuel dump" system had been designed for the shuttle to allow the Centaur to be drained of fuel, presumably during an abort-to-launch-site or trans-Atlantic abort, in order to make the shuttle light enough to be able to survive landing on the runway with the Centaur stage still aboard. Also, the first flight of a shuttle from the West Coast pad SLC-6 at Vandenberg in California was in preparation when the Challenger was lost. Despite complicated redesign of the pad and launch systems, it was not at all certain that a shuttle would not suffer severe or crippling damage during a launch from SLC-6 due to acoustic effects damaging the shuttle or its fragile tile heat shield... Plus, shuttles had been returning with damaged tiles from foam shedding off the External Tank, even to the point of gouging, splitting, or knocking off tiles during launch, which allowed the extreme heat of reentry to even burn a hole through the aluminum belly of the orbiter on at least one occasion, fortunately for that crew, in a non-essential area that didn't structurally weaken the vehicle to the point it would break up, as Columbia did over a decade later...

Shuttle was an unnecessarily complex and expensive system that was technologically very brittle, designed with too many compromises and with extremely limited abort options, most of which were highly unlikely to succeed. IMHO the shuttle SHOULD have been canceled after the loss of Challenger, and we should have gone back to a simpler capsule system, perhaps designed for reusability (as Orion/MPCV ORIGINALLY WAS, but that's been phased out) using a simpler booster vehicle, perhaps like the "Jarvis" launcher (which would have been a modern-day "Saturn IB" type replacement, using a shuttle ET-based first stage housing two Saturn V type F-1 or F-1A engines under it burning kerosene and oxygen for a first stage, topped by a new second stage of the same ET diameter and basic structural design powered by a single J-2S engine), or even the ALS/NLS proposals which would have been much closer to shuttle-hardware design (and using throw-away versions of the SSME for launch).

Instead, we stuck with the shuttle for another 17 years until ANOTHER crew got killed, this time burning up and breaking up on reentry and scattering debris over a 500 mile stretch of NE Texas and Louisiana... Again in another TOTALLY 100% preventable situation, had the managers been paying attention and put safety first and solved the problems that were glaringly showing themselves. FINALLY after the loss of Columbia, the idea that the shuttle was a super-expensive, risky, and unnecessary system whose time had come and gone long before, and which NEVER HAD and NEVER COULD operate "as advertised" and fulfill the purpose for which it was built (CHEAP, ROUTINE access to space) finally sank in and the planned phase-out and retirement of the shuttle was instituted...

Yes, shuttle was "amazing" in a "gee-whiz" sorta way, highly innovative, and in a manner of speaking, successful, in its own way (and in spite of itself as much as because of itself). But as far as being a means of "cheap, reliable, steady, routine, and safe access to space", it never was that and never could be... it was an experimental system that was kept around for 30 years despite massive evidence that it was incapable of being what it was originally intended. The Shuttle BECAME the space program, instead of the other way around... just like ISS is doing the same to the space program now...

Later! OL J R

[axm61]

Japanese artist Yoshimishi Nakagawa made a beautiful display with my model as a tribute to Challenger and her crew.

[elliott]

That's a fine memorial. Good-looking model too. The model designer should also be complimented.

[richkat]

Right on the money Luke Strawalker...
amx61, that's a very beautiful display...great model......Rich

[godai]

Well, not about models, but about Challenger.

I'm also a wirter, and I'm working on a book now that runs an alterbative history path. Most of it takes place in Poland in 1980's and the protagonists are cosmonauts. On one mission, one of them talks to Scobee, the commander of US Soace Shuttle Challenger briefly, over the radio, on orbit. It is May 1986 in the book time. I just felt live keeping them alive.

[Mechanic]

Originally Posted by richkat

John Kennedy killed our space program, the Moon race was a dead end. NASA was working on higher-faster and would have flown into space if left to do it the way they wanted, but they needed a way to "out do" the Russians for JFK. They knew that a Moon race would start them out even with Russia, and we could out do them if we started even........Rich

I'm not sure how you rationalize that Kennedy killed the space program. Most of the people I've seen interviewed give Kennedy the credit for inspiration and motivation to do "something great".

After we landed on the moon Nixon had a huge hand in the direction NASA went (shuttle & LEO). Depending on the source, he had questionable motives and he wanted to kill anything associated with Kennedy. He took a lot of credit for the achievements of NASA and NEVER mentioned Kennedy when he spoke about the space program.