Re: Here We Go Again!

On Fri, 8 Jun 2007 11:18:49 -0400, in a place far, far away, "Jeff
Findley" <jeff.findley@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> made the phosphor on my monitor
glow in such a way as to indicate that:

:> You're being just slightly disingenuous here, don't you think? Just
:> why did the Shuttle *have* any requirements driven by the Air Force,
:> Rand?
:
:More than anything else, to gain political support for the program. With
:the Air Force backing the project, it was far more likely that NASA would
:get the funding it needed to actually build and fly the thing. It
doesn't
:mean that the Air Force spent its money actually developing the shuttle.
It
:did, however, spend money on programs which planned to use the shuttle,
once
:its development was completed.
:

Still disingenuous. What it meant was that money that would otherwise
have been put in the USAF budget for development of launch capability
went into Shuttle instead, which is why Shuttle had USAF requirements
all of a sudden.

I don't think that directly follows.

The Air Force wanted to develop bigger payloads and wanted a bigger launch
vehicle. They also wanted to start flying manned space missions with an all
Air Force crew. This is something they wanted to do since the beginning of
manned spaceflight. Unfortunately, all prior programs to put a man in blue
in orbit failed (e.g. X-20, Blue Gemini, Mol, etc.). The funding (and
political support for that funding) was never there to fully complete
development and actually fly someone.

The shuttle had the potential to give the Air Force a manned spaceflight
capability. After all, the Air Force requirement for large crossrange
doesn't make sense for an ELV, yet they levied this requirement on the
shuttle. Also, the development of SLC-6 was paid for by the Air Force
because they really wanted to be able to launch large payloads into polar
orbits.

I believe that backing the shuttle got the Air Force more capabilities than
they could have gotten by trying to fund their own next generation launch
vehicle.

Unfortunately for the Air Force, the shuttle turned out to be a real hangar
queen. The flight rate was too low and the costs were too high. Even
before the Challenger disaster they started to turn back to ELV's.

Also, the notion that funds would have somehow been transferred from
NASA to the Air Force displays a profound lack of understanding of the
congressional appropriations process, and federal space policy, works.

Of course, what really happened was that NASA and its contractors
needed something to do to staunch the bleeding from the end of Apollo,
and the Shuttle was the "next logical step" (just as the space station
was the "next logical step" after Shuttle). Given that NASA was going
to have this make-work project anyway, and the insane notion that a
single type of launch vehicle would provide a flexible, affordable,
robust means of space access, it made sense to get Air Force
requirements as well, since they were going to be forced to use it as
the "National Space Transportation System."

But the notion that the Air Force would have ever gotten (or even
wanted) funding for something like a Shuttle is ridiculous.
.

Relevant Pages

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