Why The Space Shuttle Only Launched Three Deep Space Missions

[@mattcolver1]

I worked on PAM-S. Since it was a one time mission we kept the cost of construction down by using some fixtures to assemble it made of plywood. NASA kind of scoffed at this method, but we were able to hold tolerances better than required and save money at the same time.

[@dmacpher]

It’s a “bio-composite”😂 Others have used wood as well, most often in heat shields iirc

[@book3100]

Whatever works, right? But that's cool too. I love ingenuity on a budget.

[@nate_river_]

Fascinating. If it works, it works!

[@michaelmcconnell7302]

amazing

[@kargaroc386]

If it works and its stupid, its not stupid

[@garyhill7667]

Thank you for putting this video together. I worked as a spacecraft system engineer/manager at JPL from 1979 to 1981. During this period none of the spacecraft I worked on ever flew, including the NASA Solar Polar spacecraft. Each was delayed - delayed - and ultimately canceled. I wish people could see the Shuttle through our eyes as the space science eating monster that it was.

[@ebikeengineer]

I've got to say you get some good info. I worked on the I&T team for Mars Observer, one of our guys formerly worked on Magellan and he told us about 'raiding' a museum to borrow components for testing. I never thought I'd see that story in a historical documentary.

[@geraint8989]

Indeed! 8:45 was, for me, the most astonishing part of this brilliant video, which is itself one of Scott’s most fascinating. He regularly finds new angles and incisive insight into known topics of interest, but in constructing this video he has touched on a whole interesting topic that had never even occurred to me. Also interesting to see that his work draws interest from pros from within the field, such as yourself, as well as quasi-physicists such as myself.

[@paulcarpenter999]

We older space nerds remember the 20 year period after the Viking/Voyager missions being a LEAN time for unmanned missions. It's tragic Carl Sagan passed right before seeing the resumption of ambitious missions.

[@tomfowler2091]

I agree absolutely.

[@mickwilson99]

Sagan, the rationalist, was not - I suspect - someone who would care to have been described as anything other that "died". Not "passed". Just dead.

[@Austden]

@@mickwilson99 lol you're probably right. but since he is DEAD.. and not just PASSED, I'm sure he can't actually care

[@Svensk7119]

@@mickwilson99 Dr. Sagan was still a romanticist as well. He was the one who insisted on the disks on the Voyagers.

[@patrickcoin9457]

The reason the US launched so few interplanetary missions in the 1980's was that cost overruns on the space shuttle ate the NASA budget during the period when money was needed for development, basically the 1970's. I heard Bruce Murray explain this at a talk he gave in Pasadena circa 1979-80. All sorts of great things had been planned, but the shuttle ate their budgets, and then proved unreliable as well.

[@Globovoyeur]

This IMO demonstrates the downside of skimping on development funding: it almost inevitably results in higher operational costs, and often in schedule slippages as well.

[@chrisjohnson4666]

@@Globovoyeur what it demonstrates is NASA should of never thrown away all the Apollo hardware just as it was beginning to mature... for less than the cost of the shuttle they could of done a moon mission every other year had a skylab style space station and an ever improving super heavy booster in the form of a Saturn V... The SIB was an excellent LEO platform and both were becoming more efficient nearly every launch... Think about an up rated Saturn V with Atlas or even Titan style SRBs for boosting interplanetary missions... NASA basically threw it all away save some infrastructure...

[@agentdrozd]

@@chrisjohnson4666 Apollo infrastructure was not sustainable financially though, especially with the budget cuts of the early 70s

[@chrisjohnson4666]

@@agentdrozd my point is the budget cuts made no sense and in the end shuttle cost more per launch than moon missions...

[@hydrocarbon82]

I thought it was because we were waiting for Reagan's tax breaks for the rich to trickle back into the IRS via the working class. We're still waiting for that funding.

[@frozenthirdyear]

The Shuttle was a pretty cool launch vehicle, but the main reason it's my favorite real-world spacecraft is because of its aesthetic design and its sheer cultural legacy. It's always the first thing that comes to mind when I think of a fictional spacecraft being described as a space plane. Also, adorably stumpy nose. 10/10, would boop snoot.

[@nate_river_]

Concorde and the shuttle were both jaw-droppingly beautiful birds that looked like gifts from the future. One day, we'll make something that truly rivals them in aesthetics, but both forever have a special place in my heart.

[@Local_homosexual]

I've never heard someone say they'd boop the snoot of a plane but I agree

[@johannesgutsmiedl366]

Ultimately it was, unfortunately, a huge waste of money... an idea born in a time when enthusiasm (and thus funding) for spaceflight was seemingly endless brough into the cold hard reality of the post apollo budget cuts. The shuttle as conceived, a fully reuseable space plane, would have been amazing but in the end it became a huge flying compromise built to fulfill a huge list of unnecessary requiremenst and really not doing anything to justify the cost. I mean just look at what the soviets did at the same time: the Salyut stations, the Venera missions, Mir... they even had money left for Energia/Buran, which was simply a better version of the shuttle as it was ultimately built. In the end the Shuttle was a huge weight around NASA's neck, and the agency is definitely better off without it. I will not deny it was cool.

[@mrwalrus1923]

Even though it hasn't flown in a decade, its design is still iconic and will be for years to come. Not gonna lie its upsetting to see fictional spacecraft reference design elements from Space X's dragon and falcon 9 instead of the Shuttle. A big appeal for the Shuttles design to me is that it was purely function over form but still managed to be visually beautiful. Although Dragon is also amazing a lot of it's design feels like cosmetic "sci-fi" elements tacked on.

[@ahfreebird]

Reject capsule, return to flying brick!

[@SRFriso94]

Yeah, even though it was expensive, inefficient, and dangerous, it's very hard to deny that the Space Shuttle was just cool. Coming in for a controlled landing like a plane rather than dangling from a few pieces of cloth, it's very easy to see how people would consider going back to Crew Dragon and Starliner is a regression.

[@simonm1447]

To be fair the purpose of the Shuttle was a completely different one than the one of Dragon and Starliner. Dragon and Starliner are made to fly to a Leo space station, while the Shuttle could build these stations, and could even return satellites to earth or refuel satellites in orbit. On the other hand a Dragon launch costs a fraction of a Shuttle mission. The Shuttle was expensive and occupied parts of the budget which can be spent now for other things

[@bongscott3738]

The shuttle was a joke.

[@FalconWing1813]

@@bongscott3738 Sir I half to disagree. And please reply back explaining why you feel this way. I look forward to your educated and professional response. Thanks

[@Noise-Bomb]

@@bongscott3738 you could certainly argue it was given it's extremely high launch cost and comparably low cargo capacity but I would still describe it as an overall success given it's achievements. There is a reason the Russians tried to copy it and there is a reason they didn't follow trough with it...

[@SolarWebsite]

@@bongscott3738 No, I disagree with that assessment. Yes, mistakes were made, in design and operations, but it was a highly capable spacecraft that could do stuff that nothing else, before or since, could do. Also, it was the only spacecraft that looked like a *spaceship*. It was large, could do complex stuff, was manoeuvrable and landed gracefully like an airplane. It just didn't deliver on safety, launch cadence and cost. Without the Freedom space station it also had nowhere to fly to until it flew to Mir and later the ISS. That was unfortunate, call it criminally optimistic if you will - bit it was no joke.

[@RS-ls7mm]

The main spacecraft for Magellan was mostly spare parts but the radar was all new. I designed part of it.

[@devikwolf]

It's commonly said that the ISS couldn't have been built without the space shuttle... but that's also because of how many ISS components were specifically designed with the expectation of being delivered on the Shuttle. Wouldn't it have been equally possible to construct ISS using a method similar to how MIR was constructed, with multiple unmanned launches meeting up with the station and then being docked remotely? More difficult, more dangerous, and more expensive, but still perfectly possible. If the US hadn't built the shuttle as an integrated cargo and crew vehicle, ISS would have taken a vastly different form.

[@RCAvhstape]

Sure, you could've kept the Saturn V around and launched multiple Skylab-sized modules to create a nifty gi-hugic station.

[@tycannah4271]

ISS 16 modules took 10 years and 30 missions to assemble and carries 6 crew typically whilst the Chinese Tiangong has three modules that was assembled over 18 months and supports 3 people. Definitely don't need a shuttle to build these modular stations.

[@StevePemberton2]

One advantage of the Shuttle was that it could bring up modules built by other countries without requiring them to have complicated automatic docking systems. Another advantage of the Shuttle was providing efficient work crews. Astronauts could be trained for specific assembly and repair tasks, with training conducted all the way up to shortly before the mission. The crew would then fly up, bringing needed tools, supplies, equipment and in many cases new modules with them, and as a team execute nearly perfectly choregraphed EVA's. And all of this with little to no disruption to ISS crew members who could continue with their scheduled duties. Without the Shuttle, ISS astronauts receive general training, and are sometimes trained for tasks that they might be called on to do during their six-month tour of duty on ISS. It works, but it's a more difficult and less efficient way to do it than it was with the Shuttle. Not saying that the automated method for assembling the U.S. side of the station wouldn't have worked as well or better, just pointing out some advantages of the Shuttle.

[@earthlingjohn]

don't forget the Shuttle downmass capabilities

[@StevePemberton2]

@Wolfman I agree that robots and probes can do some things better, but not everything. If you have ever been to a car factory you will have noticed that part of the process lends itself to robotics, mainly everything to do with the body such as stamping out body panels, welding them together, dipping them into baths of corrosion protection, painting them, even installing windshields. But then you notice that when it comes to installing the interior pieces, such as trim panels, carpeting, wiring etc. this is still done by human workers. If these tasks could be easily automated I'm sure the car manufacturers would do so, but when you watch the workers install all of these pieces in an enclosed space you can easily see why those tasks are more easily (and apparently more cheaply) done by humans. It's the same thing with commercial airliners. Contrary to the popular belief that planes can now fly themselves, pilots are still needed. The automated systems are good at some things like keeping the plane flying straight and level for hours at a time, and monitoring the various systems in the plane. But human pilots are better at other things such as managing navigation, dealing with constantly changing ATC requirements, reacting to various types of delays including holding patterns, communication, decisions regarding weather, and maintaining situational awareness of other traffic in the area, not just being aware of their presence (which a computer can also do) but to understand the potential intentions and actions of surrounding traffic and how it might affect your aircraft. But most important is the ability to deal with unforeseen circumstances, which is the bane of any automated system. The story of Qantas Flight 32 is a perfect example. Or US Airways Flight 1549. I think space travel will continue to be a mix of human and automated systems working together. Remote operations of equipment can be very effective, the problem is the time delay between Earth and Mars for example makes this very difficult. One interesting idea is to build a small space station in Mars orbit, where astronauts can remotely control rovers and probe (and helicopters) and other robotic equipment on the Mars surface with miniscule time delay. Flying to Mars is relatively safe, it's landing on Mars that is dangerous. Using this method astronauts would only land on Mars when their presence is needed.

[@anthonystownsend]

My uncle got me a large framed photo of Columbia for Christmas when I was 3 or 4 , so 1989 or 1990, sitting on pad 39-A at night time with all the spot lights on. It was on my bedroom wall until I left home then when I had my own family and home, I placed in my garage workshop. Unfortunately we had a fire last year and I lost it but it was my favourite thing to look at everyday.

[@thanksfernuthin]

So cool. All of the obstacles, set backs, accidents led to advanced capabilities. The Galileo antenna led to much more data being sent from space craft when their antennas DID work properly.

[@lukevaxhacker7762]

I worked on a simulation and training team who trained operators for the IUS 1988-1992 who worked at Onizuka AFB. STS-34 with Galileo launched specifically on the morning of October 18, 1989. At 5:04 PM Pacific TIme the day before, the Loma Prieta earthquake hit. The base suffered some damage, but was sufficiently operational that they could support the mission. The sim team is on to observe operations and I showed up for work along with coworkers and the team.

[@paulbrooks4395]

If there’s one thing that space travel, exploration, and engineering should teach us, is that we are amazingly capable when we work together. We can do great things when we cooperate.

[@bilthon]

Wait, so this means that if it wasn't for the Challenger disaster we'd probably had Galileo orbiting Jupiter already by the time Shoemaker-Levy 9 hit it?

[@petevenuti7355]

And with faster data transfer for better frame rate video cuz the antenna wouldn't have been damaged going back and forth from storage. (I don't know if that's true, but it's always insinuated)

[@Globovoyeur]

@@petevenuti7355 Season 14 episode 21 of PBS Nova is "Rocky Road to Jupiter." Broadcast 7 April 1987, it covers the problems of the Galileo mission. I'm not sure whether it's available online.

[@PiDsPagePrototypes]

@@Globovoyeur All of Nova is available online, but you may need browser that includes a VPN/Anonymizer to find the peer to peer magnet links... particularly useful for those of us geoblocked

[@YueYukii]

i never ever realised shuttle was used for these missions. Its freaking cool im still learning new bits of stuff about this awesome spacecraft.

[@jdsahr]

Thanks for talking about Magellan. I used Magellan as a detailed example of an SAR for my radar class. It turns out that basically the Magellan radar had to be exactly the radar that they built -- there wasn't much wiggle room for transmitter frequency and operating mode. It was remarkably successful, and very clever, for such a relatively low-cost mission. Also, there were *three* radio experiments onboard: The mapping SAR, radio altimeter, and a (receive only) radiometer.

[@paulhaynes8045]

As someone else in the comments already said, the Shuttle, like Concorde, looked the part - looked like the future, like what science fiction had promised us. And yet both turned out to be too expensive and technological dead-ends. And we're back to old-fashioned rockets, capsules that land in the sea, and subsonic aircraft. As someone who grew up with the space race and the moon landing, who watched 2001 A Space Odyssey in rapture, and whose dad worked on Concorde, I'm still struggling to understand this. I know the nuts and bolts of the answers, but I still look at the Shuttle and Concorde and think how right they looked, how beautiful. How could that be so wrong??

[@TheEvilmooseofdoom]

The problem is they made it and stopped. No incentive to improve or evolve the system. Even when they lost one and needed a replacement they made no effort to evolve or improve the design. That's one of the results of the cost plus system and legacy contractors. Complacency. Now private companies, who have to compete, are motivated to evolve innovate and change things.

[@johannesgutsmiedl366]

Because they were both products of national pride combined with insufficient funding, is the short answer.

[@williamerazo3921]

The 1970s was the end to push aeronautical and space tech to its limits.

[@scoremat]

Great optics/ambitions, but the technology just wasn't there yet. All of this is about to change with StarShip!

[@paulhaynes8045]

@@scoremat hmm. Do you mean the rocket that's only flown successfully once (from a short hop) and can't be human rated because of the way it lands? Or perhaps the booster bit, which is far more straightforward, but, after years of development, hasn't yet even managed to successfully fire all it's engines at once?

[@Crunch_dGH]

Here’s a vote for an episode on Halley’s Comet. Not just how the US mission was done, but the results of the international efforts & what, given projected technologies, scientists are hoping to do on the next pass.

[@Shloz]

One note, regarding the issue of Halley's comet that you bring up in your opening: If I recall correctly, NASA built a probe to send in 1986 to Halley's comet, but it was on board Challenger when it was lost - which then meant that there was no more time (nor any shuttle launches, and probably no budget) to prepare another attempt.

[@StevePemberton2]

Actually it was just a free flying satellite that Challenger would have released, it would have taken measurements of Halley from Earth orbit, then be retrieved by the crew prior to return to Earth.

[@michaelphillips8321]

And I am proud to say that I was the Shuttle Payload integration engineer who worked all these missions.

[@marcmcreynolds2827]

Stories? Anecdotes? And any "dirty laundry" is welcome : )

[@gregzsidisin]

My understanding is that the Galileo antenna issue informed Cassini, which used a solid dish that didn't require deployment.

[@mattheww2797]

The Space Shuttle, the perfect example of when too many government agencies have their hand in the cake batter

[@weirdwes6725]

Look at SLS

[@fsj197811]

Thanks for sharing. I still miss the shuttles.

[@r0cketplumber]

A friend of mine calibrated the UV spectrometer for Galileo. It was cool to see Jupiter in the sky and think, "Whoa, Wayne's hardware is Out... There!"

[@jameskelly3502]

You don't have to be perfect, to be beautiful. The shuttle wasn't perfect, but it successfully did things no other vehicle could. -Perform short term micro gravity experiments. (Up to 2 weeks) -Launch/ deliver large payloads -Act as a counter-weight to install space station modules. (Very important in micro gravity) -Service satellites and telescopes. -One of my favorite moments was when astronauts tested the technics for building a truss structure, in micro-gravity and in spacesuits, for the then "proposed" ISS. They did this from the safety of the large cargo bay.

[@andrewahern3730]

I thought power levels on shuttle were based on performance of original spec, so “107%” is simply 1.07x the max thrust of the original engines

[@miroslavmilan]

I thought it was simply 1.07x the nominal thrust. Something like an afterburner, which you can do for a limited time only, before overheating and overloading the components, not at a sustained level. But I really don’t know, you could be right.

[@StevePemberton2]

It was a lot easier to do that then to rejigger all of their tables and calculations to correspond to the new 100% thrust levels.

[@hughie522]

Fascinating stuff as always, Scott. The Halley Armada sounds really interesting too!

[@susanyoung6579]

Scott, could you please talk more about solar missions? I'd love to hear more about the poles of the sun. Thanks.

[@jdsahr]

I happen to know one of the JPL engineers who had to deal with the aftermath of the main antenna on Galileo. She was involved in the data compression process that, as you said, "saved the mission."

[@brian6421]

The data compression was almost an entire project within a project. Not only did JPL need to devise different types of data compression based on the each type of data, but they need to commandeer the redundant backup spacecraft computer to run the new data compression algorithms. They in essence completely re-architected the spacecraft while in flight to Jupiter while communicating to the spacecraft with a data rate in the kilobit per second data rate. It also needed to be completed and tested before it arrived at Jupiter. Talk about technical and time constrains!!

[@hoggs4354]

Scott could you do a video on the 'SABRE' design from Reaction Engines and the proposed space launch system? The concept looks interesting but I'm not sure if it'll beat SpaceX in terms of cost efficiency.

[@oadka]

+1 to this. I heard about it for the first time 5 years ago, yet no launch of it so far :(

[@jacquesstoop2587]

I also asked for this a while back. He mentioned briefly in a video once but a whole video would be amazing!

[@subverted]

The deep space mission launches seemed more like an attempt to find new uses for the shuttle after the primary mission was scrapped post-Challenger. The shuttle program had a far more extensive DoD mission intent than most people realize today and that was completely scrapped after the disaster with Challenger in favor of other launch vehicles. My grandfather worked extensively on the payload and cargo integration side of things and coming out of (a very recent) retirement to consult on the mission fixing hubble was one of the highlights of his whole career.

[@00andJoe]

The thing is all of the deep space launches were planned for the Shuttle pre-Challenger, and were in fact (as Scott explained) severely kneecapped by the post-Challenger tightening of safety constraints that ruled out Centaur-G.

[@subverted]

@@00andJoe Yes but I believe all of them were planned after the o-ring issues were discovered in the late 1970s? From what I remember being told they still built out SLC-6 at Vandenberg for the DoD missions with the hopes that the o-ring issues could be resolved but it was never used.

[@jamesocker5235]

Sad that a known ring issue was ignored in favor of time line. Once again after Apollo the bean counters and money stealers ruined NASA’s proper engineering programs.

[@D_Rogers]

The Space Shuttle was my favourite functioning 1960's spacecraft design... until 2011..... :) Space planes are an interesting idea, potentially a good way to glide your engines back to earth for re-use..

[@Pacolitis]

I love all the photos of TDRS in this video! I love supporting it!

[@stephenhammond6962]

Great video, Man Scottley 👍

[@lewismassie]

1:52 A guy on youtube called Reach flew this orbit in KSP. Would highly recommend it. I suppose the shuttle had never really been designed to be anything more than a LEO launching machine

[@dsdy1205]

That is true. The shuttle was just one part of the Space Transportation System, which consisted of various stations, ferries, and the Shuttle, to altogether form the beginnings of an actual space infrastructure. Of course Congress would only fund the Shuttle, which is how it came to inherit the STS name. There is a lot of lost potential behind those 3 letters.

[@oadka]

damn thats crazy!

[@tomryner5830]

Hale-Bopp was the one for me. Walked home from a night out with my gal and a bit after our eldest son was born 🙂 That comet has an affect on the libido

[@WhatsOnTheOtherEnd]

Is there video of these deployed stages burning in orbit from the shuttle? Or was "safe distance" out of LOS? I wondered last night if we have 3rd person perspective of an in-orbit deep space launch.

[@noisecloud2846]

I love that you do this please never change sir

[@panda4247]

Let's be honest, the Shuttle was not an ideal vehicle for interplanetary missions. Because the vehicle itself is heavy and wants to return back to Earth, its payload capacity is limited and can't be easily extended (i.e. no bigged upper stage). It was great for assembling ISS in LEO and servicing satellites, but it makes sense launching one-way interplanetary missions on something else

[@thomasackerman5399]

You're not entirely telling the whole story, Scott. When it came time to launch Cassini to Saturn, the Shuttle almost had to step in and take over from the Titan IV since the Titan IVs were having one failure after another, either first stage or the Centaur upper stages. Dan Goldin NASA's then administrator behind the scenes began looking at putting Cassini on Shuttle and that meant possibly reviving the Centaur G-Prime that Challenger and Atlantis would've used for Galileo and or Ulysses. So, NASA really threw the dice with the Titan IVB that ultimately launched Cassini in 1997 and I wonder how different things could've been had that one gone pear-shaped.

[@chriskerwin3904]

Titan IV was just a piece of cobbled together garbage. Let's fling a Centaur and it's payload, with an old ballistic missile strapped between the two highest perfoming solid booster motors ever built. That doesn't make the Shuttle any better.

[@hjalfi]

The fact that Galileo launched on the Space Shuttle is fascinating, because one of the main --- in fact, probably only --- advantages to launching on a human-rated vehicle is having staff on hand to do the orbital checkout. If they'd unfolded the antenna then, they'd have been able to spot the problem and had someone go outside to whack the stuck bit it with a hammer. I'm guessing that the antenna was too fragile to withstand the boost phase unfolded, which is why that only happened later, but there was definitely a missed opportunity there.

[@sealiesoftware]

Unfolding the antenna with the astronauts nearby was the original pre-Challenger plan. The problem was that the post-Challenger Venus-Earth-Earth trajectory took Galileo too close to the sun. It would have overheated. Part of the solution was to add a small sunshade on top and keep the antenna folded behind it. That sacrificed any possibility of astronaut assistance, which as you pointed out would have been nice to have.

[@hjalfi]

@@sealiesoftware That makes a lot of sense! Shame they didn't take the opportunity to do what the shuttle was _really_ good at and launch two shuttle missions with some on-orbit assembly for an extra boost phase engine. It would probably only have doubled the entire price of the Galileo mission. /s

[@mercerconsulting9728]

Sorry if this is off topic, but you're really good at this and I'm curious: the RS25 engine has various components on the outside that resemble red plastic. Obviously they're made of something special, but what exactly is the material used for these?

[@mercerconsulting9728]

@@GeneCash thanks for that!

[@mumblbeebee6546]

Thank you Scott, this was such an interesting and detailed view into a lesser-discussed range of explorations! I wonder if I can buy any Unicode activists a couple of beers to make a shuttle emoji happen? :)

[@jimmyzhao2673]

Yes, The Space Shuttle looked cool.

[@stephenhammond6962]

Great video, Man Of Scottley 👍

[@frankgulla2335]

Thanks for the report on the Shuttle and planetary probes.

[@waynep343]

During the early shuttle missions. A friend who worked at Kcbs tv in los angeles put a mobile tv van at edwards up on blocks. Ready to extend the mast. Plug in a portable camera and cover the landings. With a staff owned sports car. They could speed the many miles from hollywood to Edwards with just 2 crew and the camera to cover the landings . Its almost 90 miles. No way a mobile tv van could go fast enough. Cbs2 covered a lot of landings. One shuttle landing that sent double sonic booms knocked the poorly attached accustic tiles off the ceiling of my flat roofed bungalo in the korea town area of los angeles.

[@MCsCreations]

Fascinating! Thanks, Scott! 😊 Stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊

[@budwhite9591]

Apollo Saturn V is by far my favorite.

[@Tim4706]

Scott if I remember correctly the 1986 doomed mission of Challenger carried the Spartan Haley Spacecraft to observe Haley's Comet it was supposed to be released by the shuttle and then picked up at the end before they came home Judy Resnick was to deploy it and retrieve it look that up I'm sure you'll find it

[@TheEvilmooseofdoom]

You remember correctly!

[@StevePemberton2]

Although as implied in your message, Spartan Halley would have only observed Halley from Earth orbit, it was not designed to fly to Halley's comet like the spacecraft from other countries. This was also true of the Astro-1 observatory which was scheduled to fly on STS-61-E which would have been the Shuttle mission immediately following Challenger, but that mission was cancelled after the Challenger accident.

[@hoghogwild]

All Shuttle and now SLS launches have the RS25s thrusting at 100% Rated power Level(RPL), when full Block 2 RS25s were introduced, the RS25s would increase thrust to 104.5% shortly after the stack cleared the pad. the 4 SLS RS25s leave the pad at 100%RPL then increase up to 109%RPL. This will continue through Artemis-4 when the supply of 16 Rs25D engines that were used during STS are exhausted. NASA currently has 18 new build RS25s engines on order called RESTART RS25s. Each one costs about US$100,000,000 each and each SLS Core Stage uses 4 of them and only once as they are expended and dumped in the Pacific These engines will launch at 100%RPL and then increase thrust up to 111%RPL. Artemis-1 through Artemis-8 will use the D6AC steel segments SRBs that were used during STS. Instead of 4 fueled segments per boosters(called Redesigned Solid Rocket Motors=RSRM as they came into service following STS-51L Challengers last attempted mission) SLS uses 5 fueled segments per booster(called Redesigned Solid Rocket Motor-Five=RSRMV). There were 80 segments left over from STS, enough for 16 boosters or 8 flight sets. For Artemis-9 NASA will begin to use a new SRB case made of wound filaments. While these cases will be lighter than the steel 5 segment SRBs, their overall weight will be heavier as they will include more propellant than the old boosters. It should be noted that the 5 segment steel cased STS based SRBs make their max. thrust approx 4,000,000 pounds force thrust about 15 seconds after leaving the pad. Having the liquid RS25s and the solid propellant RSRM-V engines come off the pad at a lower thrust and then increase after gaining soem altitude helps to prevent damage to the MLP (Mobile Launch Platform STS) or ML(Mobile Launcher for SLS) and its associated LUT(Launch Umbilical Tower) and other ground infrastructure. NSA rates SLS at 8.8 million pounds force thrust, but at max thrust we have 2 x 4 million lbs force thrust for the solids and just over 400,000 pounds force thrust x 4 for the liquids giving us at least 9.6 million pounds of maximum first stage thrust for SLS. But hey, what do I know?

[@tsr207]

Interesting video ! - I visited BAe to see Giotto in its final check out -wonderful spacecraft -flew through the comet tail and afterwards flew on to another encounter.

[@elmurcis1]

Wait... they had sattelite at L1 and managed to do some magic with orbits to get it to visit Haley comet? I love space for years but had no idea about this event, Oly crab!

[@NoNameAtAll2]

and the orbit was even designed to bring it back close Earth and, with further corrections, to high Earth orbit and people even gathered everything starting with documentation from NASA and ending with fpga emulating old antenna coding hardware to do that and they managed to communicate with the spacecraft! but propellant tanks are dead :(

[@dinoschachten]

I love the conclusion that you can absolutely be awesome even if you suck at launching deep space missions. :D

[@unoriginal_content]

Where can I find videos that talk about older nasa missions? Because that was incredibly interesting, and had the photos and videos from the mission.

[@liquidmandotcom]

Great report Scott Manley.

[@TheZoltan-42]

Shuttle was the premium launch solution. Astronauts checked how the satellite felt, and then politely opened the door before saying goodbye and letting it leave on its journey. Rockets just yeet them out into space.

[@sonichockeyaug]

The Shuttle flights meant to carry Centaur-G were nicknamed “Death Star” missions by the Astronaut Office due to the inherent extra risks. The prospect of performing an RTLS abort with a fully fueled cryogenic upper stage, the sharp decrease in mission training time, the short turnaround between the Ulysses and Galileo flights (both in a span of 2 weeks); it was a MESS. Rick Hauck, assigned as commander of STS-61-F (the Ulysses flight), told his crewmates that if anybody believed their mission was too dangerous, they could request another assignment.

[@spaceranger3728]

There was also a concern with the Shuttle Centaur/Planetary missions that a loss of vehicle event (explosion) on the pad might exceed the safety margins of the RTG's in the space probe and release radioactive material over the Cape.

[@SirFloofy001]

Honestly if they had made a multi vehicle program all based on the shuttle tanks and boosters and engines such as SLS, the shuttle may have been much less expensive because it would only be needed for repairs in orbit or transportation to and from the ISS. (for example they would have the shuttle for repairs and transport, SLS could be designed in later if a vehicle that powerful as needed for something, they could have an SLS type medium launch vehicle with 2 shuttle engines and 2 halfsized boosters and a halfsized tank or even a new long skinny tank for basic everyday launches, and maybe even a single engine twin booster cube sat launcher once that became a thing. If they had done something like this the price of producing the engines would decrease as they would basically be mass produced for 2 or even 3 different rockets instead of being produced a limited number just for reuseable vehicles. Maybe they could have produced a disposable version that doesnt have to be tough enough to withstand the hole flight of the shuttle)

[@titan401CT]

Fun fact: Since the first stages of IUS were completely spent, they are still in GTO today. Which means they can still be spotted from Earth when they approach close enough with the help of any small telescope! It's like seeing a museum artifact, providing a testament to these wonderful missions.

[@acanuck1679]

The Space Shuttle was awesome, though flawed nonetheless. Thanks for this.

[@nicholasmaude6906]

Although it was never used, Scott, but IIRC there was a three-stage version of the IUS.

[@donjones4719]

Which brings us to the interesting question of the best use of Starship: should deep space probes should be launched with their own hydrolox propulsion stage, deployed from the cargo bay, or should a Starship be expended, using a larger amount of low efficiency propellant? Edit: Cost is not the only consideration but is to be included. A new hydrolox stage may be developed. Size of the probe is an important consideration - larger, heavy probes are easier to build (less exquisite engineering needed) and can have more capabilities.

[@edki669]

Just get a Vulcan or Ariane6 or SLS, if you're really in a hurry, hydrolox upper stage already included

[@sirmicro]

Hydrolox is the only way

[@chriskerwin3904]

Depends how much each costs to build but generally, a dedicated transfer stage would get you more performance. Why would you want to carry 120 tons of extra mass for your 5< ton probe? You have that huge payload bay to carry tons of propellant in lighter tanks for your transfer stage. If you were going to expend a Starship; why not have it throw a probe and a transfer stage together?

[@donjones4719]

@@edki669 SLS is $2 billion, NASA's own figure. The build time is very slow, both are reasons that NASA cancelled plans to launch Gateway components on it and cancelled plans to launch interplanetary probes on it.

[@owensmith7530]

The Vinci expander cycle engine from Arianne 6 is what you want for a hydrolox upper stage on Starship, or for that matter SLS. It has about 3 times the thrust of an RL-10, it's not far short of the maximum thrust possible for an expander cycle (there's a limit based on how much the hydrogen can expand).

[@mgabrysSF]

Those posters at 01:11 are AWESOME btw.

[@richardstansbury7847]

Very in depth of course

[@professor-josh]

That early CG of the Galileo mission looks neat!

[@HankMeyer]

I can't help but get choked up hearing about how much creative cost-saving tricks they had to use just to get missions funded back in the day.

[@ncb5455]

Scott I think a full video on this absurd maneuver shown at 1:51 would be greatly appreciated!!!

[@DavidStrchld]

As I understood it throttle at over 100% for the space shuttle was not overtaxing the engines in any way. The 100% was the original standard for the space shuttle. Over the years improvements were made that increased thrust, but NASA decided to keep the original standard of what 100% was, but it was perfectly fine to go up to the new limits.

[@scottmanley]

Right, except that there was the ‘normal’ operating point at something like 104% and contingency power setting which were higher and required more post flight inspections.

[@John-ci8yk]

Thanks and thumbs up.

[@CavstudWillie]

Love your videos Scott! Been watching for a LONG time

[@RichardBrake-fo4iw]

I read that Galileo also had a memory upgrade during the enforced lay-over. This provided the extra capacity to store pictures and then transmit them during the part of the orbit away from Jupiter. So the delay that damaged the Hi-gain Antenne (shipping it across the US) also provided the work around. I believe that the scientists were really worried about uploading the new software to run this, as if it went wrong there was no easy fix with Galileo on its way to Jupiter.

[@WatchesTrainsAndRockets]

ISEE-3 DID NOT do a close encounter with Halley. Instead, it flew by Giacobinni-Zinner about a year before the Halley Armada arrived at Halley. During that time, it did fly through the tail of Halley with the closet approach to the comet being 28×106 km (17×106 mi) according to Wikipedia. In contrast, the most distant approach by a member of the armada was by Sakigake at a distance of 6.99 million km. All of the rest passed closer than 200,000 km.

[@gooncaveenthusiast]

Love the screensaver

[@rzero21]

2:59 what's in the full image in the background? something about chilling?

[@cybergoth2002]

I believe that's Osaka from Azumanga Daioh and the text says "I'm chilling, vibing, doing hot girl stuff"

[@hogey74]

Despite understanding the Shuttle differently to when I was a kid, it remains a tremendous credit to all who made it work. I also love the irony of how the Russians actually flew models of the type NASA actually wanted, and that it may have a good future in Dream Chaser form.

[@spacecadet35]

The question is not "Why did the Space Shuttle only launch three deep space missions?" The question is "Why did it launch any at all?" Using the Shuttle to launch a deep space mission was the most expensive option available and had the greatest risk to human life. Sitting in a crewed Shuttle with a rocket stage full of LOX/LH2 is not really a good idea. But the main problem was that the Shuttle was sucking up all of the funding of NASA for space flight and they had to pay for it and justify its existence somehow. So one of the justifications for the Shuttle funding was that it could launch deep space missions and do satellite recoveries. While the Shuttle was an interesting idea, its implementation was flawed.

[@eamonahern7495]

I saw on a documentary on discovery Channel one time that the hubble repair mission was the furthest from earth that astronauts had been since the moon missions were cancelled.

[@rbvfeehfbudenrj]

scott you are the man

[@danwylie-sears1134]

We should have nearly mass-produced interplanetary spacecraft (landers, orbiters, and fly-by probes) and space telescopes, with constant upgrades between versions.

[@bearlemley]

Scotty the most excellent !

[@paulguastavino3222]

hey scott where did you get that visualisation of the JUICE orbit trajectory? is this in the public domain?

[@chris-hayes]

The JPL poster at 1:13 is pretty great

[@DartmanX]

I figured using the centaur was too dangerous, and they preferred to Fly Safe.

[@marca5883]

Fascinating stuff💚🇬🇧🌱 many thanks Scott👍

[@Bulldog-vc7ho]

I worked on both Magellan and Galileo during my time at KSC

[@wings9925]

Great, as always! Don't mention the LEGO Ulysses though, I'm still sore about the way they handled its release 😅😭

[@locknut5382]

Subscribed. Thanks. 🙂 What's the curious object which tumbles across the closing screen?

[@steveadams7550]

I was surprised a srm segment was not used as a booster from the shuttle.

[@jimsvideos7201]

_Voir_ is, fittingly, the French verb for "to see."

[@brianjaber3171]

Just like your shirt…AWSOME!

[@samsonsoturian6013]

Cheap Soviet rocket engines were a factor. For much of the shuttle's life there were copious supplies of abandoned Soviet rocket components.

[@General12th]

Hi Scott! "But then Challenger happened" is the rallying cry of the 1980s space program.

[@MonkeyJedi99]

Honestly, complaining about the space shuttle's interplanetary mission capability is like complaining that your mountain bike is not good at pulling rail cars. The shuttle was built for a set of jobs that it did fairly well. And it was a sexy platform that drew a lot of interest into space activity.

[@TheEvilmooseofdoom]

Complaining? You mean in the comments?

[@throwback19841]

pretty cool to see an upper stage lit in orbit from the third person

[@ProjectPhysX]

Ulysses will do another gravity assistent by Jupiter in 2098 and then possibly get ejected out of the solar system.

[@contestvoter]

The Shuttle's legacy being SLS is a big step backward, but not if its legacy is commercial space craft. The best view of the Shuttle is to see it as an engineering program, whose follow on would be the Dreamchaser.

[@gogamarra]

The contribution from the shuttle is somewhat over-emphasized and limited. It's more of an iterative effort taking the best of and upgrades from Project Apollo. Recall the RS-25 SLS engines work started as Saturn V next generation upper stage J-2s and the SRB tech was developed for Gemini/MOL and used for Viking/Voyager missions prior to the shuttle. The shuttle main computers were Skylab computers. The tiles, control surfaces and analog cockpit were dumped. Not saying the shuttle contribution was zero, just not the overwhelming factor.

[@greggweber9967]

As higher radio bands were developed, it became necessary to name each up and down to Extremely High and Low Frequency. Same with trips to or studies of more distant things in space?

[@kimmoj2570]

Astronauts called G-class Centaur (Shuttle compatible) "Death Star". Death of themselves. Very high perf hydrolox stage with Atlas like balloon fuel and oxidizer tanks inside Shuttle cargo bay. Some astronauts refused to fly the missions. Shuttle was most pathetic satellite/probe launcher. Shuttle lived as long it did as cargo truck to ISS and keeping Hubble flying. All dreams of commercial sat launches had to be scrapped. Even the heavy NRO payloads moved to Delta IV heavy, as Shuttle never launched to Polar orbit from Vandenberg. USAF had built Shuttle launch facilities there, with huge costs. Never to be used.

[@edreed2803]

Is that Osaka from Azumanga Daioh at 7:07