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Comment by Reason077 | Hacker News Reader

From the article:

> ”You've probably heard, for instance, that the space shuttle will retrieve damaged satellites and return them to earth for repair. Not so. It can't. Simply and flatly, can't.”

Interesting article, but the Washington Monthly’s sources were wrong here. The space shuttles could, and did, retrieve satellites from orbit and return them to earth several times during their operating life:

STS-41-C (launch) / STS-32R (retrieve): LDEF

STS-41-B (launch) / STS-51-A (retrieve): Palapa B-2 and Westar 6

STS-46 (launch) / STS-57 (retrieve): EURECA

STS-72 (retrieve): Space Flyer Unit (SFU)

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Was this a more economical approach than launching those missions on an expendable rocket, and just building brand new satellites?

The shuttle program launched 135 missions at a cost of $209 billion (2010 dollars).

Vision is only 20/20 in hindsight.

In this case, hindsight merely justifies the foresight: at no point did satellite return-to-Earth provide any economic justification for the shuttle program, even in conjunction with other imagined benefits.

Agreed…just like the Fog of War…

Hindsight brings sharper clarity because fifty years of distance changes how FUD looks in retrospect…

> "Was this a more economical approach than launching those missions on an expendable rocket, and just building brand new satellites?"

Assuming you already have a Space Shuttle, then the answer was apparantely yes. Lloyd's of London, as insurers, paid NASA for the recovery of Westar 6 and Palapa B2. The cost of the recovery was said to be $10m, vs. the $180m insurance value of the satellites (both in 1980s dollars). [1]

I suppose many of today's satellites are relatively cheap and considered more expendable, but back in the 1980s these things were very valuable pieces of kit.

Besides, most of the retrieval missions performed by the Space Shuttles were not "failed" satellites but rather long-life science platforms that were designed to spend time in space and then be returned to earth for analysis. Now days, many of those sorts of missions can be performed on the ISS, but back then the shuttle was the only option.

[1] https://www.lloyds.com/about-lloyds/our-market/what-we-insur...

The part you did not quote is that, at the time the Shuttle was being designed, 2/3 of satellites launched were in geosync orbit. Looking them up now, Palapa B-2 and Westar 6 were both intended to be in GEO but failed, and were retrieved in LEO.

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