Military experts say Iran�s new fighter jet is actually a US plane from the 1970s

[Leonhard]

I'm fascinated by urban exploration, but I'm not nearly brave/foolhardy enough to attempt it myself.

I have a thing for it as well, though I've never done it. There are youtube videos of it. Even of people going into old mine-shafts.

[Zymologist]

I have a thing for it as well, though I've never done it. There are youtube videos of it. Even of people going into old mine-shafts.

Somebody should start a thread on this stuff. The old mine shafts sound really interesting.

[One Bad Pig]

No, what would have been really moronic was keeping the Space Shuttle. It cost too much. Unless more money was to be poured into NASA (not happening), then it was either "Keep running with the Space Shuttle" or "Stop the Space Shuttle project and start on something else".

Of those two I prefer the latter. I don't understand why you'd prefer the former?

It was by all accounts a failed project if you study the goals the project had. The goal was a rapidly resusable space plane with a large cargo capacity cheaper to fly than ordinary rockets. That failed. It was not rapidly reusable. And it was a lot more expensive than conventional rockets.

What would you have done if you weren't allowed to increase the budget for NASA?

And now you have SpaceX who's making actual strides towards reusable rockets with Blue Origin (made by Jeff Bezos of the Amazon fortune) making strides to match them. What's not to like about that?

Yes, the Space Shuttle fell well short of its operational goals. I agree that it needed to be replaced. The problem is we haven't followed through on the "start something else" bit. Several attempts were made to design a replacement. Money was being continually spent to upgrade the shuttle; we could've reached a point where that stopped and the funds diverted to the new design. Instead, we just stopped. SpaceX is a great concept, but that's not a huge drain on NASA's funding.

[Cow Poke]

There are some fascinating photos taken by an urban explorer featuring an abandoned Russian space shuttle facility:

https://www.businessinsider.com/phot...-mirebs-2015-6

[Sparko]

I have successfully derailed another thread!

[One Bad Pig]

I have successfully derailed another thread!

The new topic is much more interesting than Iran cloning planes.

[rogue06]

I have successfully derailed another thread!

Is that a pirate line dance?

[Leonhard]

Yes, the Space Shuttle fell well short of its operational goals. I agree that it needed to be replaced. The problem is we haven't followed through on the "start something else" bit.

Yes, NASA has. That's the point of the COTS program. The designing and building of rockets should no longer be a NASA business. They tended (a bad habit they picked up during the Apollo era) to sign hugely expensive cost-plus contracts, which basically encouraged subcontractors to be as expensive as possible and go over budget. Even if NASA could clean up that history, NASA is also (again because of history) spread across many different states.

This means that while they're good at doing science, and engineering a few custom missions, they're bad at doing something repeatable in a cheap way. However this is where companies can do a lot better.

The COTS program let companies compete for NASA resupply contracts, and in the later stretches of COTS this will also involve sending astronauts to the Space Station.

SpaceX is the leading competitor though Blue Origin is catching up. SpaceX received funding from NASA with the ultimate goal of creating a capsule and a rocket, that would allow astronauts to access the International Space Station. Boing is almost done with their own capsule which will ride the Atlas V rocket which is the work horse of the US Air Force - ironically using Russian built engines. Blue Origin has been rather quiet with their own development, but their work on their John Glenn rocket is proceeding as well.

Money was being continually spent to upgrade the shuttle; we could've reached a point where that stopped and the funds diverted to the new design. Instead, we just stopped. SpaceX is a great concept, but that's not a huge drain on NASA's funding.

NASA has spent 6 billion dollars on SpaceX in total I think. Its rather cheap compared to the Space Shuttle, especially in terms of development and results.

Even if the Shuttle had been kept, unaltered, it was still extremely dangerous to fly. It was always a very wonky design. It was unstable during reentry. If power was ever lost on the space shuttle then it would become unstable and burn up, where as capsules are self-stabilising and can be manually controlled to some extent by shifting around its center of mass. At least one Russian re-entry did lose power and had to use those techniques, but survived due to the inherent superior qualities of the capsule designs.

The only thing the Shuttle was at the end was an over-engineered astronaut bus. It is massively overkill for that task. Part of the reason why it cost so much was that it was built for other things than ferrying astronauts.

Hindsight 20/20 they should have gone for the Dyna Soar. Much cheaper, and space station parts could always be launched on other rockets.

[rogue06]

Yes, NASA has. That's the point of the COTS program. The designing and building of rockets should no longer be a NASA business. They tended (a bad habit they picked up during the Apollo era) to sign hugely expensive cost-plus contracts, which basically encouraged subcontractors to be as expensive as possible and go over budget. Even if NASA could clean up that history, NASA is also (again because of history) spread across many different states.

This means that while they're good at doing science, and engineering a few custom missions, they're bad at doing something repeatable in a cheap way. However this is where companies can do a lot better.

While NASA is an independent agency they're also part of the executive branch of the U.S. government. Private companies tend to do a better job at keeping costs down.