On 12/19/12 3:05 AM, eles wrote:
Consider the US space shuttle design. It's probably the most
wrong-headed engineering design ever, and it persisted because too
many billions of dollars and careers were invested into it. Nobody
could admit that it was an extremely inefficient and rather crazy design.
Hey, this is really OT, but I'm interested in. Why do you consider it is
such a bad design? Because the shuttle is intended to be reentrant and
this is costly? Some other issue?
Is about the design or about the entire idea?
Thanks for answering and I promise to not further hijack this thread.
I had the same question, and Google found me a 2003 article
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/oped-03l.html
which in the wake of Columbia is largely about safety but also about
efficiency. Interestingly the article claims that the shuttle flaws were
largely the result of a) the desire to carry large payloads along with
astronauts (as Walter mentions) and b) the choice of fuel, which led to
several other expensive and dangerous design choices.
