The Space Shuttle: What Went Wrong? 

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.

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.

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.

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.

Great video as always!

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Fascinating and highly detailed. Excellent content.

Top notch, cheers Eric!

I kinda like your style, feels like a class.

They should have just keeped Saturn 1B and Appollo. Evolve that architecture and ignore anything 'Shuttle' like. Saturn 1B could be reusable potentially.

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

Interestingly the Soviet Buran was designed to be optionally manned. In fact to only orbital test flight was unmanned.

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

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.

I had forgotten all about Dyna-Soar 😐 a shame they never revisited it. Though as you mention there's no incentive for it in the post-apollo period.

Great video! I think I already knew the majority of the things talked about; all those different factors and incentives involved in Shuttle and its follow-on projects that none of the people or organizations involved will ever directly own up to, yet which ultimately really are what’s driving things when you peek behind the curtain. But despite knowing a lot of that stuff already, there’s still something about a direct presentation that just lays all of it out at once cohesively that’s really satisfying in an “all the pieces fit nicely together” way. The bit about when an organization is working some way that seems to make no sense, it probably means their incentives aren’t what you think they are, is very apt. I also loved the part where you specifically called out that neither SLS Block 1, nor even SLS Block 1B, actually meet the explicit Congressional requirements for what SLS is supposed to be capable of! I’ve noticed this before myself and it’s just so jarring and idiotic. The fact that only SLS *Block 2* (which is about 1.5-2.0 not-gonna-happen’s away from where we are now) actually meets the 130t requirement is something I wish more people would talk about or just generally kinda realize. NASA sure doesn’t talk up that particular point! I think this goes back to one of your other videos, but the investigation NASA did into the possible rocket architectures they might use, and their conclusion that the Shuttle-derived hydrolox-and-SRB vehicle using an “iterative” approach would make it very easy to gradually build up to the required capability level just looks so dumb in retrospect. SLS Block 2 is so far off in the unfunded future that it’s nowhere to be seen in the Artemis planning at all, and only exists in “late 2020s” never-land. (Oh and also in glossy Boeing promotional materials showing off all the various cool payloads it could hypothetically lift if (a) it existed and (b) the payload builders all had $2B+ to spare just for launch services. Man that stuff was hilarious to read…)

I appreciate the visuals but clicking through this slideshow presentation has slowed the pace of the video to it's detriment. Good info, poor pacing. That is my constructive feedback 😉

Make videos about the Soviet space program!

My understanding is NASA HQ didn’t even want to reuse shuttle for what became constellation but there was a political mandate to keep the shuttle related jobs at centers and industry. So NASA had to design a follow on with the existing capabilities.

I don’t think you’ve done anything looking at Big Gemini and all the other Gemini related developments that didn’t happen. I would be keenly interested in that.

👍👍

The most important requirement was that it not land in the ocean because the Navy really wanted to get out the capsule recovery business.

Sadly this is happening for the SLS program too, why does space flight always struggle unless there is impending doom of nuclear war?

How does one go from “Salaried-IC-40yrOld” to “whatever socioeconomic class where it’s kind of normal to have a lawyer on-hand and affordable?” I mean, where do those kinds of jobs begin? The only future I see are salaried manager roles and constant desperation. Did I waste my time getting a 4-year degree? Feels like getting an “important” boss that can help your career is luck-of-the-draw or “need to already be in their rich circlejerk socioeconomic class”.

NASA was not only created for the moon landing and has equipped and carried out many other scientific missions. Some things could have gone differently, but that applies to pretty much every area.

3 years late seems pretty damn good now days

Welp, At least it looks cool

The manned “space truck” concept was ridiculous. Seven people go for a ride so one person can use the manipulator arm and press a button to release the satellite. The shuttle in the 1970s should have been a school bus sized people mover like the Sierra Dream Chaser - nothing more. Hardware would go up on expendable launch vehicles.

Congress: "We want something shuttle derived." Also Congress: *cancels Constellation and creates SLS which doesn't have a clear mission* Government logic and one of the many MANY reasons that, despite possessing a PolySci degree, I will never go into Politics!!

The death of the two crews really hammers the point home

Some shortcuts, approximations and mistakes in this analysis according to me. I agree about the congress shuttle, and the senate launch system, but saying nasa was ok with it is far from what really happened. They had to do with shrinking budgets, and were totally submitted to the congress and its interests, they failed to achieve fast reusability not because they were happy with that, but because they had n9 other choice: this was insanely hard to achieve, even if they have had infinite budget and no restrictions from politics, which was obviously not the case... Another mistake I noted: the augustine commission ended constellation when the space shuttle was already cancelled and had only a few flight left, and ares V was a much more capable and newer vehicle than the SLS, It had indeed big shuttle derived SRBs but the other parts of the rocket were new, or evolved versions of others engines/vehicles. The core stage was not a shuttle external tank with rs25, it was meant to have new big engines derived from the F1, and the 2nd stage was more inspired by the Saturn V 2nd stage with new versions of the J2 engine. Not exactly what you said.

So, how would you fix this insanity?

I believe your criticisms apply to the modern space program generally speaking and less so specifically to the shuttle. The bureaucracy and financial incentives inherent in a government operation are certainly problematic. Letting the private sector take over low orbit operations has certainly spurred a lot of innovation. My question to you - would the shuttle still be flying if the Columbia accident not occurred ??

Would you agree that NASA didn't invent STS to satisfy these incentives but rather selected the STS as the thing to pursue? In other words, someone thought it was a good idea and proposed it to management rather than management saying 'design us a program to submit to congress that is big and expensive, etc'. Secondly, how does the whole 'STS can carry military cargo too' fit in? I guess it's just a way for NASA to have more budget going to themselves rather than other entities.

I hope SpaceX learned Shuttle's lesson.

It's almost like the Republic has been dead for decades. Ask a Roman where he lived in 100 AD, and he would've said, "Why, the Roman Republic, of course." It's all a façade.

Having SEGMENTED solid boosters was a ridiculous politically motivated 'design' decision... and still is.

SpaceX may have had some good years up to now but going to the Moon or to Mars is not really interesting for a company unless they receive tax money to develop it. It is then just a matter of time for them to suffer the same issues as NASA. The Falcon 9 launching satellites for commercial customers is another story end there the cost-effectiveness is more important then creating jobs.

Wow! Your take was awesome but that smacking and Tis-Tising was absolutely disgusting in my ear..