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Endeavour Launch Now Slated For Monday
For anyone camping in Florida through the series of delays in the shuttle Endeavour's launch, it may be nearly time to get out the earplugs and champagne: though there's a fair chance of yet another weather delay, for now the shuttle's final launch is slated for tomorrow. If you're thinking of driving in to catch a glimpse, good news — a Monday launch may mean a smaller crowd.
Godspeed, Endeavour. It's a real shame to retire these workhorses. Are they expensive? Yes. Are they exactly what was envisioned in the 70's? No. But, so what? They're still incredible machines that do things mankind has NEVER been able to do before.
"But so what?" Two words: "opportunity cost." Let's keep in mind that everything we could have done with the Shuttle, we did by the time of the Challenger accident. The US developed a reusable launch vehicle and it used it. Hubble and the ISS did not require the Shuttle.
Hubble due to its mirror, required a vehicle with the fairing size of the Shuttle, but repairing it was unnecessary. We could have used the funding for Hubble repairs to instead make and launch more space telescopes.
The ISS, after being shrunk slightly in width, could have been launched on the Titan IV or the Delta IV Heavy. We could have also launched a much smaller Mir-sized space station for a small fraction of the cost of the ISS (no international "coopoeration") and have gotten most of the functionality of the ISS.
Finally, with the money we would have saved by discontinuing the Shuttle way back when (say 1990), we could have manned missions beyond LEO, research into low gravity (not zero gravity) effects, ISRU research on the Moon or Mars, etc. You know, things that actually advance our knowledge of and presence in space and on other worlds.
They're workhorses, and it's a damned shame that we, as Americans, have gotten ourselves into such a political quagmire that we can't figure out how to keep man in space. Depressing.
You ought to check out SpaceX's activities then. The Falcon Heavy, for example, is a game changer. If they can hit their price targets, they'll be launching payload for about a factor of 20 to 50 less than what the Shuttle can do and they can launch more mass than a Shuttle could launch.
If you want to launch station segments by themselves like the Russians do the segments become more expensive, smaller, and less capable because each segment has to be its own spaceship complete with guidance, altitude and attitude control, and docking capability.
The shuttle allowed for the segments to be large, cheep, and uncomplicated. Plus the entire integrated truss system witch is quite literally the backbone of the station could not have happened without the shuttle. You would have to get your power from smaller solar arrays, which would greatly complicate the power system. Same problem with the radiators.
The shuttle did a great job with the ISS,
To bad the ISS hasn't done a great job for science or exploration. It has just been a large overpriced diplomacy tool, mostly used to keep the Russian aerospace industry alive after the collapse so they wouldn't wonder off and wind up in china or Iran.
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