Space shuttle Endeavour's giant orange external tank begins final journey
latimes.com
latimes.com
The shuttle program cost $269B in today's dollars [2] so you need a lot of other benefits, not just fixing the Hubble.
[1] "the Hubble cost-to-launch was $4.7 billion in FY 2010 dollars" https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/499224main_j...
[2] "The US Congress and NASA spent more than US$192 billion (in 2010 dollars) on the shuttle from 1971 to 2010" https://www.nature.com/articles/472038d
They had to take it into the shuttle's cargo bay to do the repairs. They worked on it for 5 days and changed the faulty instruments and also changed the solar array and gyroscopes.
Correct me if I'm wrong but Soyuz just doesn't have the capacity to do that type of mission.
But technically, bringing Hubble to the Shuttle cargo bay doesn't change things much. Ok, the telescope isn't flying anywhere - but if you have a Soyuz nearby, you could also attach it to Hubble firmly enough, just as with Shuttle. And just as with Shuttle you can't avoid having to work with the instrument in spacesuits - since you can't bring Hubble into the pressurized environment where the spacesuits are not needed.
So, I don't know for sure how many technical details should be overcome for that mission to work - but in principle you at least can get to the Hubble with something different than the Shuttle. Today it could be the Crew Dragon, and 10 years ago it could be Soyuz.
The thing that still sticks in my head was his description of the shuttle as an experimental vehicle, which he described as having 700 "critical" components. Critical in this case means that if that component fails you lose the vehicle. He stated that by contrast the 747 had zero critical parts.
It's still the best engineering talks I've ever heard.
Actual number 2 in 135.
Couple years later, I'm walking down the street and I see this giant orange tank and a slew of workers dismantling traffic lights to make space for it [2].
I'm gonna make sure I'm there for this as well, right on my kids birthday.
More pics: https://idiallo.com/photography/39/los-angeles-space-shuttle...
[1]: https://cdn.idiallo.com/photo/39/freewaypark.jpg
[2]: http://cdn.idiallo.com/photo/39/spfuel_tank_back_lg.jpg
I hope we can fly something as cool looking and mindblowing as them again some day.
They certainly have enormous cultural cachet. There's a reason why, even now, it's pretty common for movies to use a shuttle when they want a rocket that takes people to space.
Too bad they were hot garbage when it came to actual performance.
> I hope we can fly something as cool looking and mindblowing as them again some day.
I like to think that we're already doing that right now.
The Falcon 9 is doing the job the Shuttle was created do to: it's a cheap, powerful, and reliable taxi to LEO.
Maybe. There's a plan to use the Dragon capsule to reboost the Hubble and possibly EVA to it. No one knows what exactly will happen, although if you're interested in learning more, the potential mission is Polaris II[1].
But that ignores the bigger point - the Shuttle had a bunch of rarely used capabilities. And the tradeoff for that is that it's main mission: taking people and cargo to space was severely compromised.
It would have been easy to just buy a new Hubble with the savings if the US had a reasonably designed and priced rocket instead of the Shuttle.
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Well, yes - that's kind of the point. If NASA didn't have the Shuttle's fully amortized $1.5B/launch cost weighing it down they'd have been able to do a lot more things.
> Also, how are you getting that new Hubble off the ground without a shuttle?
Who knows what rocket NASA should have gone with. But the easy answer is: they could have kept Saturn V around for the few really big payloads they needed it for.
Another option is the Delta IV Heavy. It's longest fairing is just a little bit short of what's needed for Hubble. I'm sure a 1-off xl fairing would be quite expensive, but since the difference between a Delta IV Heavy launch and a Shuttle launch is $1B, there's quite a bit of room in the budget to work with.
"Well, yes" sounds so smarmy. Well yes, I wasn't disputing the fact either. It is just reinforcing information
Nope. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_National_Reconnaissance_O...
"On February 17, 2016, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (then known as the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope or WFIRST) was formally designated as a mission by NASA, predicated on using one of the space telescopes."
> Also, how are you getting that new Hubble off the ground without a shuttle?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Grace_Roman_Space_Telesc...
"As of July 2022, Roman is scheduled to be launched on a Falcon Heavy rocket under a contract specifying readiness by October 2026 supporting a NASA launch commitment of May 2027."
Can it get people there to get out into space and turn some wrenches? Absolutely.
Could it haul a new full-diameter mirror? No. It's constrained by it's diameter, and the cargo capacity is the Dragon's trunk. Bigger rockets may be required, but nothing about the shuttle is strictly necessary there.
The thing the "space plane" had that was entirely unique was the capability to load something large into the cargo bay and bring it back down. But in practice that capability was barely ever used. Starship might eventually offer that capability, but it won't be as gentle as a shuttle landing.
There may one day again be a beautiful space plane, should that particular need become important again.
Source: NASA, SpaceX.
https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/armstrong/f-a-18...
Some footage from one of the fighters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVPNDhOWutk
Are there particular capabilities they have that would necessitate that type of aircraft specifically? I would think that they'd have really high operating costs compared to (e.g.) a turboprop of some kind.
"Chase aircraft also are used as camera platforms for research missions that must be documented with photographs or video. Aeronautical engineers monitor and verify various aspects of a research project by extensively using photos and video."
from
https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/armstrong/f-a-18...
> The cranes that will lift the spacecraft are quite tall — the tallest of which will be about the height of City Hall.
> At liftoff, the white rocket boosters were set underneath the shuttle’s wings and produced more than 80% of the lift.
The pedant in me wants to point out that the external tank is not "Endeavour's" because the external tanks were not recovered after flights so that one has never been on a mission and could have been a tank for any shuttle mission.
I remember, possibly incorrectly, that there was a contingency rescue mission stacked but not flown, though I think that the stack did fly on a NASA designated mission (as opposed to the usual Congress designated missions). Though I think that was Atlantis.
The external tank destined for display at the California Science Center is
ET-94, the last flight-qualified external tank in existence. This lightweight
tank (LWT) — donated to the Science Center by NASA — was ordered to support
science missions for space shuttle Columbia.
I know that the ETs were updated after Columbia was lost, but I did not realize that a complete tank was built before the changes, yet not flown.
[0] https://europeanspaceflight.com/the-case-of-the-missing-vega...
It sure is Endeavour’s now, for hopefully many decades longer than any other tank.
Around 2.75 Libraries of Congress.
Amazing video lecture recordings for anyone who wants to demystify the Space Shuttle for themselves: https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/16-885j-aircraft-systems-enginee...
The external tank's orange color is the color of the spray-on foam insulation. The first two tanks, used for STS-1 and STS-2, were painted white to protect the tanks from ultraviolet light during the extended time that the shuttle spent on the launch pad prior to launch. Because this did not turn out to be a problem, Martin Marietta (now part of Lockheed Martin) reduced weight by leaving the rust-colored spray-on insulation unpainted beginning with STS-3, saving approximately 272 kg (600 lb).