how many rocket scientists are here?

Question

i was actually wondering what you thought about NASA investing so much into the shuttle and so little into more conventional vehicles i don't really have an opinion i just thought i would ask someone that knows more than me about the subject i've heard people comment about the return on the shuttle program could we be getting more done for our money with rockets?

Answer 1

Good question. The shuttle is very expensive to operate and is of course vulnerable to potential safety problems. However, the shuttle is still the world's preeminent manned spacecraft. By a very wide margin. There are only three other operting manned orbital space vehicles in the world:
Russian Soyuz
Chinese Soyuz (they call it something else, but trust me its basically a Soyuz)
International Space Station

The ISS is in a different category because it doe not travel from the earth into orbit by itself. And that is the primary reason the Shuttle is still operated by NASA. The Space Shuttle is the only vehicle that is capable of completing the assembly of the ISS. The Soyuz is a three person capsule that can do absolutely nothing but transport people into orbit and return them to the Earth. Docking to the ISS is the extent of it's "special" capabilities. The shuttle is many times larger and more complex. It typically carries a crew of 7 and can carry huge amounts of cargo to earth orbit. The US, European, and Japanese modules of the ISS will all be carried to space by a shuttle. Once there, the shuttle will use it's robotics capabilities (and its crew which is not trivial) to help install and activate these modules. These are incredibly complex and difficult tasks which the general public doesn't fully appreciate. The shuttle also can reboost the ISS to higher orbits and resupply it with large amounts of food, dry goods, nitrogen, oxygen, water, etc. On some missions over 1000 pounds of water alone is transferred from the shuttle to the station for crew use. Add to this it's ability to service other satellites like the Hubble Space Telescope.

All this adds up to a vehicle that capabilities that are decades ahead of anything else that is even on the drawing boards. Even the new US spacecraft (the Crew Exploration Vehicle) will not have nearly the capabilities that the shuttle has. But it will accomplish it's mission (which is not to build a space station) and it will most likely have fewer instrisic risks in its design (like a side mounted crew compartment for example).

Answer 2

there's about 6 of us here.

Answer 3

hiiii i wond chat u ?
u wond or no