China plan small space shutter within 3 year.

Just imagine if Dr Tsien was still with the Amercans when the concept of the shuttle was being explored. His influence might have come through because in his concepts he had the shuttle perched on the top of the launch rockets.That way none of that insulation stuff would have damaged the shuttle. I wonder if his concept would have been better

because it screw up.

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Huh?? This is incrediable. the US has a very sucessful space program that is still in operation. Russia space program is barely decernable and you think the US screwed up because they are using a tried and true technology. A technology that is updated constanly.

Truely, I fail to see the logic in your statement.

How can the Russian space program be barely discernible when they're the ones sending up American astronauts to the ISS?

crobato said:

How can the Russian space program be barely discernible when they're the ones sending up American astronauts to the ISS?

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Perhaps those words are a little strong..

I should have posted the Russian space program , while active, is not as robust and active as it once was.

The Buran design did seem to be a better overall setup than the US shuttle, too bad it never had the chance to become fully operational.

I've been reading a lot about the space shuttle program and space programs on astronautix and other great sites. I learned a few things:

1. The concept of a winged orbiter like the shuttle is valid. The Space Shuttle is perhaps not the best implementation of this concept, however.

-The shuttle was apparently designed to meet a military requirement to carry and retrieve a "big bird" satellite from orbit. By the time the shuttle was built, this requirement no longer existed. So the shuttle was built larger than necessary.

A smaller shuttle with a less impressive cargo bay, for instance, could have been designed for a more gentle re-entry, perhaps avoiding the need for the heat-tiles used by the shuttle.

-If the shuttle had been smaller and launched from the top of the booster stack, so many problems could have been avoided. Pieces of debris falling down and hitting the shuttle's thermal tiles during liftoff would not occur, since the shuttle would be above all the launch debris.

-If the boosters that exploded during the Challenger launch had been designed differently, perhaps as one giant unit instead of different parts that were assembled later, the Challenger disaster might have been avoided. (I believe Buran used this alternate concept.)

So, with a few changes (a smaller shuttle that launched from the top of a stack that used alternate boosters), the shuttle could have been a safer and cheaper launch platform.

That aside, it has a good safety record, but the complexity and layout of the shuttle led to very high operating costs. Plus, if it had used disposable engines that were swapped out after the mission was over (like Buran), it might have been cheaper to refit after the mission. There are probably other ways in which the reusability could have been cheaper.

In short, the shuttle is impressive, but maybe would have benefited from a few iterations beforehand, to lay down exactly what the space program needed, and iron out flawed concepts beforehand.