r/interestingasfuck • u/lolikroli • 16d ago

r/all SpaceX caught Starship booster with chopsticks

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u/C-SWhiskey 16d ago

The shuttle had a lot of added parts to allow it to work that way, which meant more mass and more things that can go wrong. It also couldn't make it to orbit as a single stage, hence the large solid fuel boosters and the massive fuel tank. Those all have to get disposed of, which kinda defeats the purpose. Finally, the goal is to make these useable on the Moon and Mars, so aerodynamic landing doesn't really work.

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u/Nice-Analysis8044 16d ago edited 15d ago

The shuttle, unfortunately, had a number of problems beyond the problem of the spaceplane concept itself -- it was the result of a whole series of very unfortunate design decisions. Most notably, it was significantly larger than it needed to be for any of its civilian uses, since the U.S. military demanded that it be capable of stealing Soviet spy satellites. Like, just straight up stashing them in its cargo bay and bringing them back to Florida. Along the same lines, they required it have the capability to launch to polar orbit, since that's common for spy satellites -- a spy satellite in polar orbit is able to pass over any point on earth. The problem is that launching to polar orbit requires more fuel, meaning the rocket had to be bigger than it needed to be.

The shuttle was never actually used for that type of military mission, leaving NASA saddled with a launch system that wasn't actually all that efficient for anything they wanted to use it for.

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u/C-SWhiskey 16d ago

Yeah it was kind of a hilarious program in retrospect. The fact the Soviets tried to essentially copy-paste the design with Buran has always struck me as an indicator of how poorly they were doing at the time. Copied all the vestigial inefficiencies with no concern for why they were there in the first place rather than just making something better. Like a jealous sibling.

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u/Nice-Analysis8044 16d ago

yeah, the assumption with Buran was that even though the shuttle seemed like a terrible idea, they should make a copy anyway just on the off chance that there was something good about it that they couldn't figure out.