Why does the Space Shuttle look so Weird???

The Space Shuttle didn't look like rockets that came before it or rockets that came after it. Why did NASA choose such a strange design?

[@Stoic_quotes1]

this youtuber is so underrated

[@goldenshatter]

Still is

[@dyshallow]

@21:50, another weakness of serial staging is that you have to light the engines in flight - no option of pad-abort if the liquid engines failed to light. Not sure if this was a big consideration for RS-25 or not though.

[@EagerSpace]

Yes, you do have to light in flight. In development, staging failures aren't that uncommon but they are fairly rare in operations. You do have to carry the extra hardware to do an air light. The RS-25 needs ground support to ignite, but the earlier designs would have required air ignition - they just deleted it from the engine to save weight.

[@PetesGuide]

@@EagerSpacecan you do a video that covers that and other SSME design process?

[@jackalopewright5343]

It was definitely still a consideration in 1972, in particular with the idea of having the main engines reusable. Some were against air-start of reusable engines.

[@dsdy1205]

Leaves me wondering what if NASA had held on to the synchronous station somehow, and left the launch service provision to interested contractors. I don't know if this would even have been possible given the economics and politics of LV development back then, but something to think about

[@jgottula]

Hey, I just wanted to say, I love the videos you do! You deserve a lot more recognition and viewers/subscribers than you actually get. (We should figure out how to boost you to greater visibility in the online space community; I have no doubt there are lots of people out there who would love your videos, if they only knew they were out there.) Also, I loved this video in particular, since for me, some of the most fascinating things in the history of US spaceflight are the various proposed post-Apollo ideas (e.g. beefed up Saturns with nuclear upper stages and all kinds of other similar variations) and all the historical details pertaining to what STS (in its original sense; the actual Space Transportation System that was going to be… like… an entire “system” and not just kinda one vehicle) was originally going to be, versus the various factors and tough no-win compromises that ultimately led us to what we ended up with: a very peculiar, non-ideal, and not-even-as-originally-envisioned Space Shuttle; a space station that after a loooong time and various ideas (Space Station Freedom etc) eventually did finally materialize in the form of ISS; and then essentially nothing else whatsoever in terms of human spaceflight for literally 4-5 decades because there was only barely enough budget to afford Compromise Shuttle + Russian-partnered Space Station. It is really sad looking back and seeing all the things that could have been; from awesome Saturn-derived stuff, to the earlier, less-shitty Shuttle proposals. But it’s also super fascinating, in terms of how we got where we got, and why things ended up the way they were. And I think really only a sub-niche of spaceflight fans are at all familiar with the details of the Apollo follow-on ideas and the early STS plans and what happened to them (let alone the public in general). So I really love videos that dig into these kinds of topics. Keep it up! 😃

[@EagerSpace]

Thanks for writing that. Do you have thoughts on what would help boost? I sometimes link from Reddit if it's relevant/allowed in a specific sub; I don't do twitter (though I could), nor do I do any other social media. I have another talk about shuttle coming up; I did this video first because I needed it as a reference for the one I'm working on. The teaser for that video is that the issues with shuttle in general - the compromise design, the accidents that destroyed challenger and columbia, and the high cost - were all due to one decision that NASA made. But first I need to complete my current video, which is on Specific Impulse.

[@OzearEimaj]

@@EagerSpace I think you'd have a great time fitting in on Twitter. The space community is very active and are always looking for more content to discuss! I've already shared a few of your vids over the weekend as I ended up binging a few!

[@EagerSpace]

@@OzearEimaj Thanks for linking. I have a twitter account that I've started posting on.

[@zeevtarantov]

Could you comment on whether you think the "shuttle and station" idea itself makes sense? I don't see how space exploration is really advanced by shuttle and station. Also, do you think it would have been better to scrap shuttle as soon as it was realized it would not be cheap to fly and try a new design? I understand that by that time it was a boondoggle / jobs program and not a rational choice.

[@EagerSpace]

That's a whole separate video... Given the money NASA had, I think the answer is "no" *if* your goal is space exploration. But as it was clear that the NASA budget was going to tank, the NASA concern was largely that they had all these people working for the agency and they needed money and projects to keep them employed. And some empire building, as well. From that perspective, it made sense as it was at least *a* path to keep NASA moving forward. An alternate choice would have been to go back to something like the Dyna Soar project, and work your way up to reusable vehicles incrementally. I think there's an interesting path there, but it's not clear if shuttle-level money would have been available. I do think that the reality of shuttle was that the high operational cost meant there was never going to be a "version 2" of shuttle, and that did keep humans stuck in LEO for 30 years.

[@astron4606]

NASA: Give us the perfect concept for this new vehicle Companies: *ALL THE PLANES, SHOVE PLANES UNDER THE PLANES AND PUT MORE PLANES ON TOP OF THOSE PLANES* Other companies: *B I G*

[@EagerSpace]

I just love the "let's put one airliner on top of the other airliner" design. Liquid hydrogen is such a stupid fuel for this; it makes everything immense.

[@astron4606]

@@EagerSpace Very much so lol, would make me want to use Kerolox instead tbh

[@richardbloemenkamp8532]

I like how you hide parts of your images by simply putting black rectangles over them rather than waste time to try and recreate the images with the part subtly wiped out. It shows your focus on the essentials rather than on flashy looks. Just found the book on Google. It looks great, thanks for the recommendation. In an society with high inflation you should present a high initial investment cost together with a similar sized loan. Even though interest may be substantial, over multiple years the value of the loan disappears as snow before the sun. I think that is basically how part of the baby-boom generation acquired their real-estate wealth without suffering too much.

[@EagerSpace]

I like that you make a my laziness into a feature.

[@geryz7549]

Great job! Looks like a lot of effort went into these videos - underrated channel!

[@EagerSpace]

I really enjoy looking at all the old shuttle design concepts - they had a lot of really bizarre ideas back then.

[@BillBakerB]

It is an underrated channel! Or undiscovered? Anyway fan here too. Thanks for the videos Eric.

[@dinoduderocket]

Stumbled across your channel thanks to your space shuttle abort modes video, really really interesting stuff and I'm addicted to binging all of your presentations, thank you for making all of this

[@planetsec9]

I'm upset that we didn't even get Shuttle-C/SDHLV, would have wanted to see what they could have done with the ET+solid design without a crewed orbiter.

[@EagerSpace]

I think Shuttle-C would have been interesting but it would have required that NASA actually have a use for it. I guess they could have used it for some of the ISS stuff.

[@whitedrawf]

Amazing video as usual your graphics are always very nice to look at

[@EagerSpace]

Glad you like them!

[@daniel72_751]

Another great video - did the airforce ever consider launching for polar orbit from Cape Canaveral so after a single orbit the shuttle would be over the USA? Seems a simpler option?

[@EagerSpace]

Because the earth is rotating towards the east, even if you launch directly east you end up with an orbital track that moves to the west, so your next orbit will be over the US. I think if you look at my "space shuttle abort modes" video there's a mention of an abort once around site in Texas.

[@drinkwaterinvestments7482]

Hi, I have a question about Solid vs Liquid. It look like only advantage Liquid rocket have is higher performance and control burn over solid. What if there is a biofuel that have the same performance as liquid fuel? Is it scientifically possible to have a stronger solid fuel over liquid? There is a rocket company called blushift, they used substance from a farm to make solid fuel. The CEO said the bio fuel is just as powerful as liquid fuel.

[@zeevtarantov]

If they could get the Isp of kerolox or methalox in solid fuel form, the military would have been all over that for all their missiles. Instead, the military spends money on trying to make stuff like Hexanitrohexaazaisowurtzitane to increase performance of solid rockets.

[@EagerSpace]

To oversimplify... To get a high ISP, you want to have exhaust particles that are as light as possible, because that gives them the highest possible speed, and ISP is just exhaust velocity / 9.8. That is why liquid hydrogen / liquid oxygen performs so well - the hydrogen part of the exhaust is very light and therefore comes out very fast. Solids have a poor ISP - around 250 or so - because the exhaust stream is pretty heavy because of the composition of the fuel - there's a lot of nitrogen and carbon in it (plus some aluminum), and all of those are fairly heavy. They also don't combust very completely.

[@alan-sk7ky]

I was under the impression that USAF having lost Dynosoar in the mid 60's the 'trade' for AF money was the Shuttle having wings and crossrange ability. Otherwise we would have ended up with something along the lines of a big HL10

[@EagerSpace]

"The shuttle decision" talks about this, and you can find the PDF online. The crossrange requirement definitely drove bigger wings, but looking at the earlier shuttle designs doesn't show anything that looks like a pure lifting body; they were either short X-1 ish wings (probably not practical due to reentry heating) or delta-wing designs. I *think* this is because of the aerodynamic requirements from the large and long payload bay (the AF pushed NASA towards the larger of the options they were already considering but not really beyond that because NASA wanted big for the space station).

[@astron4606]

In short, it's a rocket with a plane stapled to it

[@EagerSpace]

Pretty much.

[@PetesGuide]

At 12:45 can you explain why nasa had committed to hydrolox only so early?

[@EagerSpace]

Interesting question. The full answer would require a video, but I'll summarize here. The F-1 kerosene engine and the J-2 hydrogen engine used on Apollo were both gas generator designs - they burn a little bit of fuel and oxidizer in the gas generator and use the exhaust to drive the turbopumps. Merlin uses that design as well. It's a simple design, but the downside is that the exhaust from the turbines doesn't go through the rocket nozzle, and that means it's low efficiency; with a roughly 10% loss. The Soviets came up with a different idea - a staged combustion engine that would burn a little bit of one propellant with all the other propellant. That generated enough gas to power the turbopump, and then the exhaust fed into the combustion chamber. That gave a significant increase. They flew it in the Proton starting in 1963. The US wanted that technology for the shuttle, but there was a problem. If you run kerosene and liquid oxygen, you need to do an oxygen-rich design where you burn a little kerosene with all the oxygen, and that gives you lots of hot oxygen and hot oxygen likes to eat everything, and the US engineer opinion was that it wasn't feasible to develop. If you go with hydrogen as a fuel, you can add a little oxygen to the hydrogen in what is known as "fuel rich", and hot hydrogen is much easier to deal with. That pushed the RS-25/SSME to be a hydrogen engine. What the US engineers didn't know was that the soviets had already perfected the metallurgy to do oxygen-rich staged combustion - the NK-33 was used on their N1 moon rocket and they later perfected it with the RD-170 and RD-180. Those were very reliable engines - the RD-180 flew on Atlas V rockets - but it's not clear how well it would have worked in a reusable environment like shuttle; we know there are some issues reusing Merlin engines on Falcon 9 because of the sootiness of kerosene. So that's the story...

[@Allan_aka_RocKITEman]

@Eager Network - Eric Gunnerson >>> Something occurred to me while you were talking about about the crossrange issue, although I suspect I might already know the answer. Some of the early shuttle designs included turbojet or turbofan engines on the orbiter to be used during landing. Those designs were abandoned when it was understood the shuttle _could_ be operated strictly as a glider. Deleting the jet engines would lower the weight of the vehicle and allow for more cargo to be carried to space. IF the jet engines had been retained, would that have given a shuttle design with low crossrange wings {non-delta wing} the ability to cover the needed crossrange distance?

[@EagerSpace]

Tradeoffs are always interesting... The crossrange gliding ability is roughly - perhaps very roughly - controlled by the area of the wings and the fuselage. If you can extend the glide with the engines then that gives you more ability for crossrange, so you would need less wing for a given crossrange requirement. Whether the short stubby wing design would work depends on the details; with enough jet engine and enough fuel I think the answer is probably yes. I don't have a good sense on how that would compare to the design they chose. Remember that the big thing that drove shuttle design with complexity and budget. The jet engines and tanks would be another system to design and develop, and in shuttle days you couldn't simply overrun your budgets. The engineering looks finicky to me as well; finding a place to tuck the engines, a place to store fuel, a way to keep it liquid (jet fuel freezes at low temps), and figuring out how to get intake air to them seems difficult.

[@Allan_aka_RocKITEman]

@@EagerSpace >>> Rodger all that...👍👍

[@marcocambray7725]

Glide

[@adodgygeeza]

Hydrogen fuelled vehicles are potentially very easy to thermally protect. They are light low density structures which enter higher more gently and with lower peak temperatures. Your thermal protection can also do double duty as insulation for the tanks. The issue is really on the first stage as that ends up enormous and with a much higher dry mass. As all the metrics assume cost follows dry mass all the shuttle analysis came out with tremendous costs for the program. Ironically a propulsive leaving first stage with a hydrogen fuelled delta wing space plane would likely be a very competitive system.

[@StealthTheUnknown]

*Swallow* *smack* *inhale* Anyone else with misophonia here relate? I love this channel, just discovered you and you rekindled a lot of the love I used to have for the shuttle. For that I’ll gladly suffer a little through some of your videos. Thank you for sharing this amazing content, sir!

[@theOrionsarms]

From the same reason V2 rocket was built with huge fins(Russian and American version made few years later don't have it) , people know airplane and think that to travel to space you need something like that, is like how early cars were made like a horse carrige, but aerobreacking isn't flying and the logical thing to do is to put a small round heatshild under the base of the upper stage of a rocket not covering a huge side with tiles like shuttle was made or starship is built today, I think space shuttle was a mistake built to last and ruining imagination of the next generation of engineers.

[@EagerSpace]

It seems difficult to put a heat shield underneath the base of a stage; it would need to be pretty wide to produce enough wake to protect a tall stage, and you would probably need carbon-carbon to deal with the heat. And I'm not sure how you would control the flight path.

[@theOrionsarms]

@@EagerSpace the flight would be controlled in the same way current capsule are doing, using RCS thrusters to to tilt the ship like Musk explained in the interview from Everyday Astronaut video, and about position of heat shield obviously would be putted under the base only before aerobreaking and jettisoned after that like all martian probes are doing, and obviously you can't make the shield in a single piece,it need to be made from three sections or more and partially folded like James Webb telescope mirror for example, I mean solution can be find if you think out of the box.

[@theOrionsarms]

@@chyza2012 if you want to say that all capsule are cone shaped or the very hot air would hit body of a re-entering vehicles after passing edge of heatshild, both claims are wrong soyuz capsule is a cylinder with rounded caps (at least the part that aerobreacking), and all serious scientific paper says that after hot plasma detached from edges of heatshild would go away from body of vehicles because of shock waves, and the gap in the air behind heatshild would be wider than diameter of heatshild in a length few times diameter of heatshild , you need to understand that solution that I presented here isn't my invention, was proposed at the beginning of the space programs by experts, but the people that made decisions preferred to put money into a space plane because they didn't understand what advantages have a simple and lighter design, so things are how are from the wrong reasons.