The space shuttle blows my mind every time I see one. It's huge - the size of an airliner - and would glide back at Mach 25. It's a humbling level of accomplishment.
An unfunded project that never gets built is objectively worse than a military-funded project.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PGM-11_Redstone#Redstone_der...
But it was the direct predecessor to microwave communications. It was just portable military distance measuring equipment (like the model-99 dme w/ ~1cm @50km) that used a signal they found easy to piggyback voice and data on. And included that in the field units.
AND 2nd, after a dozen or so more hugely expensive projects (ranging from failure to moderate success to "achieves objectives"), it led to the Airforce NAVSTAR program, which you know as... GPS.
So the question becomes: What was the actual "objective" value provided by those expensive initial radar experiments, despite failing to achieve their direct objective?
And it's moot for both these cases because the technology was needed for direct military applications anyway.
What's the practical or ideological benefit of industry-industry R&D when the military is going to be the only customer, or at least the only paying customer for the first years/decades of use?
I agree with you in general, with it being better for governments not picking the winners of markets or deciding who gets research money.
But military is such a unique (yet universally needed) type of market, that practicality here means treating them as a large customer with unique product needs ( products unlikely to be revenue generating on the public market), even if you don't treat it as direct government allocation or a fixed/manipulated market.
The only way I can think of to avoid that entirely would be some libertarian version of an all private, defense-by-contract type military.
And then you'd have concerns about whether that could hold up to peer adversaries, and dozens of other wildcard concerns.
Space X does better work in part because it can make its own decisions and focus on long term goals.
We're talking about just one of many successses on this page.
E.g., my astronomy professor mentioned to me in a conversation that the original design for the Hubble was smaller due to expected budget, but that it got up-sized because it turned out that they could piggy-back off of other relevant military development, and iirc, that went beyond just the larger available size of the shuttle bay.
The X37s would like a word. Also, "Rods from God" has something to say
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37
https://endwar.fandom.com/wiki/Kinetic_Strike
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Rods from god may be the source of "jewish space lasers" <-- the comment by a senator on how the wild-fires have been started in US and AU, meaning that a tungsten rod from space rained down molten tungsten to start fires...
Fun stuff to speculate on.
The original NASA spec had a smaller cargo bay and wings because it would have mainly been a crew ferry. As a result it would also have been launchable on top of a rocket instead of strapped to the side, giving better safety. Significant cargoes would have been launched independently.
The US Space Shuttle was the (heavy) inspiration, but the Soviets put their own spin on it.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_design_process
My point is that they aren't capabilities, just specifications and promises for a cutting edge, developmental technology.
The Soviets (at the time) didn't "copy" it. They stole the plans and made it from them, adding in a few alterations, although the plans they stole were purposefully flawed.
If you're up for it, you can visit the Buran's in their final resting place in Baikonur. They're just sitting there rotting away. Here's a video of some kids who broke in and had some fun exploring: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-q7ZVXOU3kM
Article about the Soviet's espionage to get the plans: https://www.19fortyfive.com/2021/12/buran-how-russia-stole-t...
There were several. A couple of examples: the shuttle could delay release of a payload, maneuver while in orbit, release the payload, then maneuver again. So conceptually, you just put a satellite into an orbit and your enemy doesn't know exactly what orbit its in. I'm sure eventually they would find it, but the military still wants stuff like that.
Another example is the ability to grab a satellite and bring it back to Earth. To my knowledge, this was only ever used with the "long-duration exposure facility" because it'd probably be considered an act of war to steal another country's satellites but here again, it's the kind of thing the military would ask for.
So the idea is that the shuttle launches with a secret payload, and every 90 minutes you see it pass overhead. This goes on for days or weeks. Eventually it lands.
What happened? Well what you don't know is that on day 2, while it was over the Pacific and you weren't tracking it, it fired the OMS, deployed a payload, then fired the OMS again to return to it's previous orbit.
There's a whole other satellite out there and you don't know about it until you find it by some other means. And eventually you will find it. But the military is happy to pay for that short window of subterfuge.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37
[2] https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/36440/this-is-our-firs...
[3] http://www.spacesafetymagazine.com/aerospace-engineering/spa...
According to wikipedia those things cost around $6 million to manufacture and spacex was the first to ever bother retrieving them.
HEXAGON KH-9
There were 11 classified (ten successful) DoD space shuttle missions:
https://www.space.com/34522-secret-shuttle-missions.html
That's roughly 8% of shuttle missions.
Since the earth is rotating under the orbital plane of the shuttle, this requires a large amount of cross-range maneuverability on reentry so it could land back in California rather than ~22.5 degrees west of Vandenberg in the pacific ocean, and this required large wings.
I don't believe it's known for certain outside of classified circles what was to be brought back. One theory was that it was to snatch a Soviet spy satellite out of orbit, but it's entirely possible given the timelines that the classified requirement was to pull a film cartridge from a US spy satellite in polar orbit and return it quickly to earth for processing.
Given that many details of the keyhole program were recently declassified [1], is there any chance we'll get to know the true nature of the shuttle program? (And if so, when might it happen?)
[1] (a decade ago) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-9_Hexagon
So the "classified DOD project xyz" tasks are listed right there on the published official mission lists and schedules, and quite easy to look up on both Wikipedia and straight from NASA.
But the thing not achieved was Vandenberg launches, which would allow more N-S polar orbits that are often more useful to the military.
The less official but still obvious thing not achieved was the Airforce building a manned military space station (as far as we know...).
No, we never got the Vandenberg polar launches we were promised.
And I don't think anyone anticipated just how quickly miniaturization and automation were going to advance when it was designed in the 70's or even as missions began in the 80's.
Even autopilot was a controversial cutting edge technology that was excluded because of the focus on human centered missions.
But back to military- it's not a coincidence that Hubble fit so perfectly in the shuttle cargo bay.
(Hubble being a spare keyhole spy satellite body, with borrowed mirror fab tech.)
But it would be interesting to know just what else the military had in mind, besides their not-so-secret ambitions for militarized manned space stations.
I assume Hubble was built that size because it would fit? No coincidence indeed. And what does that have to do with the military?
Hubble is a military spy satelite design.
You can get really close to it, in the current temporary building. Wonderful. You can almost touch it, and you can smell it, and see the scuff and scorch marks. Go before they raise the money for a bigger building and stand it up.
Both Endeavor and Vasa[0] are super, super cool.
https://icdn2.digitaltrends.com/image/shuttle-948x1500.jpg?v...
https://www.nasa.gov/centers/armstrong/news/FactSheets/FS-01...
Also, the comparison with the Statue of Liberty is also misleading. The Statue of Liberty is on a huge pedestal that makes it stand much, much higher; the orbiter and boosters wouldn't reach the top of the SoL.
Not sure what size you'd expect the shuttles to be, but being in the same ballpark as the statue of liberty (without pedestal) seems a great deal larger than my expectations.