Abstract
In the minds of its designers and advocates, the Space Shuttle was to be the first part of an infrastructure that would extend from low Earth orbit all the way to the Martian surface. It would be nothing more than a truck for special deliveries. A truck with such a large cargo bay that it would be capable of carrying into orbit the components for a modular space station in low orbit, satellites destined for geosynchronous orbits, modules for outposts on the Moon and Mars; in fact, everything else the American aerospace industry might want to place in space. As remarkable and innovative as it promised to be, one serious pitfall of this space truck was its lack of altitude. In fact, it was realized early on in its development that the operational ceiling would be about 300 nautical miles, while most of the payloads it was to haul would need to operate at higher altitudes, such as geostationary ones at 22,236 miles. Some payloads would be robotic probes to explore the uncharted territories of the solar system; destinations far and beyond the Shuttle’s reach.
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- 1.
The space tug resurfaced as part of NASA’s post-Shuttle planning.
- 2.
The term “spinning” refers to the common practice of spinning a spacecraft around its long axis during orbital maneuvering in order to increase directional stability. In fact, it is such an effective means of stabilizing the trajectory that it greatly reduces the need for the attitude control system to fire to keep the spacecraft on the right course. Thus the fuel saving is rather substantial.
- 3.
Strictly speaking, the IUS was to be a two-stage propulsive system. The first stage would boost out of the Shuttle’s low orbit to attain a highly elliptical “transfer orbit” and then the second stage would circularize at geosynchronous altitude. In contrast, the SSUS would make only the first of these maneuvers, and the satellite would have to circularize its orbit. Hence the SSUS is also referred to as a perigee kick motor.
- 4.
As it will explained in Chapter 6, these were the so-called payload specialists .
- 5.
During the ascent four so-called intact abort modes could be invoked based on altitude, velocity and severity of the emergency. For each abort mode the Orbiter was expected to be capable of safely landing either back at the Kennedy Space Center or at an airport in Europe or Africa. Other abort modes were possible for even more serious conditions such as loss of all three main engines. These were called contingency modes and they entailed the Shuttle trying to reach an emergency landing strip on the US East Coast or just reach a safe altitude from where the astronauts would bail out. For a contingency abort mode the chance of survival of the Orbiter and its payload were much reduced if compared to an intact abort mode.
- 6.
This is akin to placing your hands in front of your face to shield it from a nearby explosion.
- 7.
In fact, both capabilities would be added many years later following the Columbia accident.
- 8.
Hughes Aircraft Company had built the spacecraft for Satellite Business System, a private communications company which was owned by subsidiaries of Aetna Life and Casualty, COMSAT General Corporation, and IBM.
- 9.
In fact, this would be typical for any Shuttle-based IUS deployment.
- 10.
This include the deployment of the Magnum electronic signals intelligent (ELINT) satellite by STS-51C , the first Space Shuttle mission flown for the DoD .
- 11.
While a spacecraft is considered as the payload for a launcher, the payload of a spacecraft is the equipment designed to perform the desired mission. The remaining mass consists of propellant and the hardware needed to operate the spacecraft and its payload.
- 12.
The International Solar Polar Mission was later renamed Ulysses .
- 13.
At that time, no asteroid had been subjected to a close fly-by and they were entirely mysterious.
- 14.
Historically, the space industry does not apply shift working to the manufacturing of space-worthy hardware. In fact, it enhances the risks of degrading the quality of assembly arising from human factor errors, such as incomplete handovers, typically arising when maintaining production across shifts.
- 15.
Although the USAF was ideally to use only the Space Shuttle for all of its payloads, uncertainty about how well it would perform led to the agreement to retain an expendable vehicle capability until the Shuttle had proved its worth.
- 16.
The Space Interferometry Mission was canceled due to the complex and expensive technology needed to image alien words located tens or hundreds of light year away. The JWST is currently scheduled for launch in 2018 onboard an Ariane 5 launcher, marking a significant coup for the Europeans.
- 17.
Mars has such a thin and transparent atmosphere that it is very easy to observe its surface with both ground-based telescopes and orbiting probes.
- 18.
If the Centaur-G had been available, the voyage to Jupiter would have lasted just 2.5 years. On the other hand, the lengthy detour provided opportunities to study Venus using new sensors and the first close fly-bys of asteroids.
- 19.
This third stage was labeled a PAM-S.
- 20.
As will be discussed in greater detail in Chapter 12, the cost of deploying a satellite from the Shuttle was based on a formula that took into consideration the ratio of either the mass or the length of the cargo, whichever was the greater, in relation to the Shuttle’s total capacity.
- 21.
The second cord was only a backup and was not meant to be used unless the primary one had failed.
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Sivolella, D. (2017). Launch Platform. In: The Space Shuttle Program. Springer Praxis Books(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-54946-0_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-54946-0_2
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