blastr42

Dr Hoffman, I watched your MIT Space Shuttle class (twice) and am very interested in space history (propulsion engineer!). Listening to you, Aaron Cohen and others, I've always wanted to ask this question: The Shuttle was a marvel that achieved all of its "technical" requirements, but failed to meet its flight rate and ease-of-reusability goals. At what point during the development of the system did the engineering team realize the shuttle wouldn't "work" in the sense of flight rate/reusability? What was the reaction of the program management? Was a decision ever conscientiously made to simply get the current design flying and try better the next time around?

Ok. I’ll guess I’ll just have to wait. :(

Chaikin's work is fabulous, and we certainly know the result of the Shuttle couldn't live up to all its clams (launch a KH-8 class spy satellite in ONE orbit and use that cross range capability to return to the launch site? NOT GONNA HAPPEN!). I've never heard the inside story though. Guys like Aaron Cohen and Dale Myers talk about how they were on budget and how their schedule slips weren't too bad, but they never say "we actually thought we could do it, but then the test results from X, Y and Z started coming and we pretty quickly realized it just wasn't going to happen." What were those days like? Did they communicate that outside the team? To the USAF? Was everyone so siloed that they just never realized that their subsystem flaws would add up to a system that couldn't achieve its design goals?