The Space Shuttle: What Went Wrong?

The Space Shuttle was supposed to usher in a new age of cheap, easy, reliable access to space.

Instead, it ushered in 30 years flying a single design that was expensive and hazardous.

What went wrong? Why didn't the shuttle live up to its initial billing? And why was NASA okay with it for 30 years?

[alvianchoiriapriliansyah]

Recent Gerstenmaier interview painted a clearer picture of Shuttle condition, making it clear that NASA is de facto not interested in actually making Shuttle a high cadence

Interview:
SpaceX also removed requirements to perform static engine firings after a turbine wheel is changed out. Instead, the company added some accelerometers on the engine to verify that the turbine wheel is operating properly. In case of any problem, the instrument can trigger an automated abort up to the last half-second before launch. “We use the actual launch countdown to effectively replace a portion of the static firing, ” Gerstenmaier says.

The inability to drop requirements was a primary reason why NASA’s space shuttles were never able to come close to projected flight rates, notes Gerstenamier, a former NASA associate administrator who oversaw the space shuttle, International Space Station and other human space-flight programs.

During the space shuttle program’s peak years of 1992-97, NASA flew seven or eight missions per calendar year. In 1984, it flew nine times.

“We got forced to be conservative for a variety of reasons, and we could never remove requirements, ” Gerstenmaier says. “I attempted to remove requirements, and I was unable to, or it would take me 10 years.”

For example, early in the shuttle program, NASA needed to pull the shuttle main engines after every flight for inspection. But after several flights, the inspections were not revealing any issues. “They weren’t adding any value, and I wanted to stop the inspections, ” Gerstenmaier says. “But we had gotten so good at pulling engines, the program said, ‘Why don’t we just pull engines and go look because we can?’

“At the end, we were tearing apart all these shuttle engines for inspection and we ended up operating at the low end of the reliability curve, ” he says. “We actually wore out components during testing and put more life on them than we did in actual flight.

“If you’ve got hardware that is ready to go fly, you’re better off not tearing it apart to inspect. To understand if it has a problem, you use the reliability of the hardware to drive you and you only inspect when you start getting out to that later life period, ” he adds. “We weren’t allowed to do that in shuttle.

“At SpaceX, we see the benefit of removing a requirement, and then if we remove too much, we can add it back in—no harm, no foul, ” Gerstenmaier notes.

[zendoargos]

The US Military, specifically the Air Force had a big influence on the Shuttle program. Despite NASA being a "civilian" agency the Air Force joined the program for the Shuttle with significant requirements for mission capabilities and spacecraft characteristics. There are early shuttle missions (pre-Challenger) that are still classified today because of the military payloads that they carried.

The shuttle program was like any other government project. One group said "I have a bad barely serviceable idea" and another group jumped to their feet and yelled "I CAN MAKE IT WORSE!!!". That was shuttle.

[StofffeGbg]

Wow, I cannot imagine the amount of work required to produce this! Very informative and interesting. Stunning summary of the (non)progress of the shuttle-program from start to finish. You deserve a bigger audience.

[TinHatRanch]

Very enlightening video. It explains the entire purpose of the federal government. It also completely explains why Artemis will NEVER fly. It was never intended to.

[alrightydave]

Wow, I’m lost for words

That was your most interesting and well made video to date

You really re-opened the inner space geek within me thinking about post Apollo, shuttle and SLS

You really are climbing up to one of my favorite youtubers, the fact you have so few subscribers is insane, there are a few others like you but not many with so few subs

[noahdoyle]

Okay, I'll admit that the question 'why are we sending up people on cargo flights?' didnt occur to me until you mentioned it...and it's obvious.

[nonamespore]

In regards to the point about Russia needing to send NASA astronauts to the ISS, even when the shuttle program was active keeping astronauts on the ISS had to be done by Soyuz and required replacing an astronaut launched on Soyuz with one launched on the shuttle. Which meant that even during the shuttle program NASA either had to pay for seats on Soyuz or cut massively short the time some Russian astronauts would stay on the ISS. That problem had persisted from the station's beginning in a more convoluted form and was only solved with SpX Crew 1.

[evilsheep]

When you mention that NASA did an analysis of how best to build SLS and whether to do something Shuttle derived or Saturn derived you should mention your other video on the topic and link in the description so that people know its out there.

[olivergrumitt]

The Shuttle should have been abandoned when it became clear it was going to be nowhere near as cheap, reliable, safe and routine to operate as had been promised, and this was already clear by the time of the Challenger tragedy.
Both disasters were avoidable, Challenger in particular, and these disasters should never have been given the chance to occur in the first place by stopping Shuttle flights by 1985.

[zbrewski]

Wow! Thank you! This was a fantastic, and informative video. Please continue the great work!

[DuffyWayne]

great video. I think what the Shuttle and ISS did for us in developing experience working and keeping astronauts alive in LEO has been vital to what I hope will be future manned flights beyond LEO. I also think keeping Apollo CSM and Saturn IB with Saturn V and additional Skylabs would have been cheaper, faster and most importantly safer. However, I think the public would have lost interest and NASA would havd been eliminated as a manned space program without the shuttle. The public needed the lie that it was investing in something more advanced that promised to make space flight routine and cheap. It also needed the prestige of something that looked so much more advanced than the Soyuz to instill pride in a NASA manned space flight program without moon/mars landings.

[ViperPilot]

Despite the Shuttles flaws, I really do miss it. I remember growing up I wanted to be the Commander for a mission. Even built a replica in KSP, still ironing out some kinks though. Mainly the landing part of the mission.

[InsouciantSoul]

Love these longer videos giving intelligent insight to the space industry. Thanks!

[cturdo]

I can't tell from the graphic, but McDonnell Douglas Astronautics in St. Louis/St. Charles, MO also contributed to the OMS pods and later flew EOS experiments with their own astronaut, Charles Walker. SS was as much a jobs program as a space program.

[mrroboto]

Thank you for the excellent analysis of the political factors that influenced the Shuttle design and caused it to not meet its stated goals.

[LeonelEBD]

I kinda like your style, feels like a class.

[musicaldev]

I think that most of your videos will also work well as podcasts (giving you more popularity with the same effort)

[leakycheese]

Interesting video about STS, thanks.

I was wondering why you didn’t cover the evolution of the system final configuration? In particular, the budgetary pressures that forced NASA to build a design to carry USAF payloads. Also looking into how the military crossover was linked into flying high latitude missions launched from Vandenburg and the high crossrange capability this required; this in turn leading to the delta wing orbiter design, a decision that increased the risk around the thermal protection system for reentry.

You could also compare and contrast some of the early STS concepts to the Starship-Superheavy stack, while there are a lot of differences, there are also many fundamental similarities.

[therichieboy]

Fascinating and highly detailed. Excellent content.

[emman.]

The main problem is that NASA and the contractors' demands and promises didn't really pan out. Ex. Rapid Reuse and low price.