Technosaurs part 6. by ljdean
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Description
The last of my technosaur series takes us to the space shuttle. A system originally designed to fly missions to low orbit twice weekly. The shuttle fell well below that optimistic 1973 traffic model and managed only 9 flights on its record year 1985. In short, the shuttle was a spectacular technical success but an equally spectacular economic failure. A public too conditioned to technical success on Americas part, was not accustomed to NASA failing to deliver the shuttle as a viable economic airliner like system. And so the shuttle bore much criticism as did NASA. The shuttle could be seen now as the DC-2 of the space age. It's now up to the private sector to build the DC-3 of the space age. Space "X" is taking the lead in that area. Two nations began the human space flight era in 1961. Half a century later, only one othe nation (China) has joined the U.S. and Russia...and one private company (Scaled Composites). Point being, human space flight has proven much more difficult and expensive than imagined in the 1960s. The July 1976 National Geographic highlighted the leftover post Apollo 1960s optimism when it featured a section on giant space colonies in orbit just 12 years from now.
I built these 3D models of LC-39 facilities and the shuttle and associated tank and boosters. If I recall right, the shuttle external fuel tank was my very first 3D model. I built it in early 1993. Rockets being basically just cylinders and cones made them an obvious choice for me to learn how to do 3D. I used an Amiga 2000/Video Toaster back then. 3D users at that time complained the toaster was a glorified dongle for Lightwave. I learned to use both products although I'm no great artist. I'd say I'm proficient. The cars are various web finds. I'd like to have built more cars but there are enough available to buy or sometimes find for free, so it was never really necessary to build them unless they didn't exist anywhere else.
On to something else as in another subject for my next few uploads to the gallery. Hope everyone liked these pics despite my dry, somewhat technical descriptions.
Comments (4)
Greywolf44
As a tech geek, I found the info and images refreshing. Thanks.
ljdean
Thank you, for some folks the tech stuff can be a bit much.
Cyve
Fantastic creation !!!
ljdean
Thanks, I appreciate it!
62guy
Nicely done - could use more detail for the Crawler-Transporter (a car is hiding a crawler track). A technical marvel in their own right, they have been in use for many years, been upgraded, etc. The spectacular O-ring failure could have been prevented by not having them - that is, by making the solid fueled boosters disposable. As for solid fueled boosters not being "man rated", this was a bogus issue - the result of using German scientists "picked up" at the end of WWII. The allies used solid fueled JATO units while the Germans used their cantankerous liquid fueled Walter HWK's. Every retro rocket ever used on the U.S. manned space program was solid fueled. There are also hybrid solid/liquid (solid fuel liquid oxidizer) fueled motors that can be throttled. Finally, while solid fuel rockets may be less "efficient" from a technical viewpoint, they are much simpler and cheaper.
ljdean
Actually, the crawler is not in this image. The Mobile Launch Platform (MLP) is sitting on 6 pedestals, 2 of which can be seen to the right of the woman in purple. Once the shuttle or Saturn-V was rolled to the pad, the crawler could fall back to an area on the crawlerway where it parks in case of a roll back. Your right in that the crawlers (2 were built) have been in use for many years. The first operational rollout was in 1966. As for disposable SRBs, the larger ones still required "O" rings because they are segmented. The Titan-III SRBs were the most powerful in existence before the shuttles SRBs went into service. They too were segmented. A one piece booster was considered but that would have been too heavy for the cranes in the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB). The SRBs worked fine once the post Challenger fixes were implemented. Your right, the man rating issue may well have been simply NASA being overly cautious but JATOs and retro boosters were relatively small compared to large rocket boosters like the shuttle SRBs. The technical issue of Initial Specific Impulse (ISP) required liquid boosters because every bit of weight savings counted on Apollo so the most powerful boosters had to be used. ISP for SRBs (Powdered aluminum and ammonium perchlorate) and LH2/LOX liquids are approx. 300 and 400 respectively. The reason SRBs were selected for the Nixon Admin. compromise shuttle design was that they are cheaper to develop but more expensive to operate while liquids are the other way around. This was in accordance with both NASA and militarycontractor arrangements of the old days. Today it could be different. The much less expensive (So far) Space "X" Falcon rockets for example. Space "X" still went with a liquid booster primarily because of the technical ISP issue. A million lb thrust booster with 400 ISP is more powerful than a million lb thrust booster with 300 ISP.
giulband
Good work !
ljdean
Thanks, glad you liked it.