Definate bacofoil beanie time on that one. Remember the US, Russians and quite a few others track every single orbiting object. If the US went up there and started stealing other people’s satellites that is very close indeed to an act of war. Hence only a real handful of missions (mainly to do with testing materials exposed to lots of radiation/hard vacuum) will need sample return.
US spy satellites have returned their pictures by radio link for quite a few years now, and in any case previously only returned a film capsule.
It just pisses me off a little to have people criticize a country’s attempts while there country isn’t doing dick. As far as Im concerned this is the best system Ive seen so far and I would rather see my tax money spent on this than paying some lazy people to sit home and collect welfare. 
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Ok buddy my country my not be doing Dick but we have better things to spend our money on than a stupid dick project to begin with. If it was not for the Russians who put a sattaliete into space you would never have gone to space, The US just had to get back theire ego to show the world that the Russians are not so good.
Plaese to spend so much money on a project that is so dangerous and a waste of money is insane. How much do you know about my country?
Columbia had damage on its first flight. The Russian did not.
Please just calm down and just think aout the waste of money. Yes it is great to learn more about space, but I do not give shit if there is live out there as long as they leave me alone.
I just want to know where was the US when DR Chris Barnard did the first hart transplant? If you do not know he was a South African ! ! ! If it was not for South Africa the moon missions would not be a success and we also build the first sheap salt water purifying sustem. A Do not get me wrong I am not attacking the US but just wont let someone say things he does not know anything about.
Thank you.
Henk
What have I said that proves I don’t know what I’m talking about? You obviously think your OPINION matters more than mine, everything I’ve said is my opinion as is everything you have said is yours. Show me…what have I said in this topic about the shuttle that is not true. I wont hold my breath for the South African space program to show the world how to do it right.
Frankly I would say that the U.S. has its problems and it was a tragedy that the people on columbia died. But I am accusing noone, or whos country is better at space traveling. the only reason the columbia exploded as we all know, was from missing heat tiles.
If you want to say something about my country you must know what you say or please just do not mention it.
Now lets not get into the game of who is the best lets get back to topic.
Henk
Actually im not saying anything about your country or anyone elses country. My point is i’m not going to be in this little fight going on.
HG, In this thread you said “you wont let someone talk about something they dont know anything about” AGAIN I ask…Show me…what have I said in this topic about the shuttle that is not true.
:?
Mate I did not say anything about the shuttle, I talked about your comments;
“It just pisses me off a little to have people criticize a country’s attempts while there country isn’t doing dick.”
That is what I meant.
Henk
I guess I should of said dick in the space program.
Sorry mate if I was rude but your post looked agresive.
Henk
I guess I got a little excited because you said “The Russian space shuttle is way ahead of the US one and does not have the problems that the US shuttles have” Its just not fair to say that after only 1 mission to space compared to the 113 missions the US shuttles did.
I don’t even think the Russian mission was manned was it?
Nope, but it was verry successfull and proved that it is possiable.
Henk
I guess we can say that the Howard Hughes H4 Hercules or known as the Spruce Goose was a success also. It did make one succesful flight.
Keep it calm please guys. Please stick to the specifics of the Space programme and not ‘my country is better than yours’ arguments.
We all know that our countries are better than any others after all and the arguments soon break down into way off topic slainging matches.
WTF? Nowhere in this thread did it ever get to the point for a mod to step in. :?
In my experience here once you start saying things like ‘what has your country done’ etc it all starts to go a bit pear shaped. I am simply being pro-active instead of reactive here as I can see where it was heading.
Apologies if I got the wrong end of the stick though.
Cool Firefly, we sorted out that kind of thing a long time ago. Well the H-4 only flwe a few meters over the water. The thing of the Russian Buran is that it is beter if you look it was built late in the 80’s and the US Space shuttle was build late 70’s early 80’s. The US shuttle first flew in 1981 and the Russian one 1989. It is obvious that the Russians saw the faults of the US one and thus emproved on it.
The report that was done after the Challenger dessater showed that NASA only wanted the publacity and keep the whole thing on time rather than looking at the shuttles safty and the safty of the crew. The report done after the Columbia dessater was that the manegers did not care what the technicions said about the safty of the shuttle and thus cost 7 lives again.
To over look taht is insane and to say back in 1986 it is a tragedy and they will make sure it will not happen again, but it did.
Just take a look at the Buran and you will start to appreciate it. I was always a fan of the US space shuttle but then I took a look at the Buran.
Henk
The first shuttle accident was caused but some rubber O rings, which if they went with a one piece booster ( wouldn’t need O rings ) in the first place, the accident would have never happened but they decided to fix the problem by heating the O rings instead.
The second problem was caused by debris (insulation foam ) coming of the external fuel tank. I think they could fix the problem by having the insulation on the inside the tank but people much smarter than me make those decisions.
Think about it for a moment…Do you really think they designed the shuttle to take things to space? NO…it would be much easier to just use rockets and throw them up there. People can talk about tin foil hats all they want but it was designed to bring things down, whether for repair or spying. I cant prove that but that’s what I think but I was there for the first 5 landings and the 3rd landing was much heavier than the other 4. Did they bring something back…I don’t know but from the looks of the lake bed after, I would say yes.
I’m sure there are systems on the buran that could be used on the shuttle and maybe make it a better spacecraft but I really think a space vehicle that has only done one unmanned space flight ( buran ) needs much more space flight testing before anyone could come to the conclusion its a better system than what the US is using.
Space exploration is hazardous and dangerous and expensive and NOT EASY.
I think the managers should have been fired for not listening but after after all was said and done the O ring expert that said it shouldnt fly was let go.
Yes, the Buran does need more testing and that the mannegers should have been fired.
The problem with Columbia is that you should see the pictures of the shuttle before they place it on the launch platform, it looked reaky bad and it was thus just fixed on the surface and not propperly, meaning they did not look at the tiles proppely and thus they could not have taken the puch it took. It was realy poor of NASA not to make Columbia to dock at the international space station and not to give the crew the space equipment to be able to fix damage on the craft. That was realy bad of them. The crew could have docked at the space station and stay there until NASA could get to them or make it so that they could fix the damage.
I think the shuttle is a great idea except that they should improve it so that it could be the best thing to use in space exploration and not the rockets. NASA should have thought ahead instead of staying still at one point and thus when the time came to improve they did not have anything.
Henk
Major manufacturing difficulties for a start, and I think there are probably safety problems with the integrity of the solid fuel charge as well if you go to single piece boosters.
Would work if you had a double skin (skin - insulation - skin) but that would be substantially heavier. Putting the insulation on the inside of the tank would give you major contamination problems. And contaminated fuel could quite easily cause a major accident, so there’s no way they’ll just plain put the insulation on the inside of the tank.
The real reason they didn’t use a double skin was their attitude that “it won’t be a problem” and because to do so would substantially increase the launch weight with a consequent reduction in payload performance.
Ummm… STS-3 landed at White Sands, not Edwards. Are you sure about the mission numbers? Good index of missions, payloads, landing weights, etc. can be found here: http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/missions/missions.html
Looking at the list again, STS-4 (third landing at Edwards) landed on the concrete runway - not the lake bed - and completed the rollout while on the runway. Hence there would have been no marks on the lake bed because it never touched it.
Final comment - listed landing weights for the shuttle are all in the region of 200,000lbs (roughly 100 tonnes). Even the biggest satellites launched are going to struggle to exceed 10 tonnes, so a 10% increase in ground pressure. This is well within the range of ground pressures to be expected from even a marginally bad landing or the effects of a slightly damp lake bed.
In summary, something about your observations doesn’t stack up. If you could look through that list of shuttle flights to see if it jogs your memory on anything I’d be grateful.
Edit: Just noticed that when STS-3 landed at White Sands it was carrying:
Payloads included the 8,740lb Office of Space Science (OSS-1) Pallet consisting of the Plant Lignification Experiment, the Plasma Diagnostic Package (PDP), the Vehical Charging and Potential (VCAP) experiment, the Space Shuttle Induced Atmosphere experiment, the Thermal Canister experiment, the Solar Flare X-Ray Polarimeter, the Solar Ultraviolet and Spectral Irradiance Monitor (SUSIM), the Contamination Monitor Package and the Foil Microabrasion Package. Also in the payload bay was the 11,048lb Development Flight Instrumentation (DFI) Pallet and the 448lb Aerodynamic Coefficient Identification Package (ACIP).
That’s roughly 10 tonnes of returnable cargo, so if you were at White Sands for that flight that may explain things. The shuttle does frequently carry either palletised loads or the Spacelab cargo bay laboratory, in which case landings will be substantially heavier. Many of these cargoes (particularly Spacelab) could more efficiently be dealt with using a permanent space station (such as Mir or ISS). Since the US did not have one between skylab and the ISS, they bodged up a cargo bay lab for the space shuttle to get at least some work done. A permanent space station would have been substantially cheaper and more efficient, and so far as I’m aware Spacelab hasn’t flown since the ISS started operations…