The Untold Stories of the Space Shuttle Program: Unfulfilled Dreams and Missions that Never Flew

356 Pages·2022·24.739 MB·English

by  Davide Sivolella

Davide Sivolella
Untold Stories
The of the
SPACE SHUTTLE PROGRAM
Unfulfilled Dreams and Missions that Never Flew
The Untold Stories of the Space Shuttle Program
Unfulfilled Dreams and Missions that Never Flew
Davide Sivolella
The Untold Stories
of the Space Shuttle
Program
Unfulfilled Dreams and Missions
that Never Flew
Davide Sivolella
Hemel Hempstead,
Hertfordshire, UK
SPRINGER-PRAXIS BOOKS IN SPACE EXPLORATION
Springer Praxis Books
ISSN 2731-5401 ISSN 2731-541X (electronic)
Space Exploration
ISBN 978-3-031-19652-2 ISBN 978-3-031-19653-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19653-9
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
2022
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About the Author
Davide Sivolella is an aerospace engineer living and working in the UK in the civil
aviation industry. Currently is lives near London with his Spanish wife, Monica.
As a child, Davide developed a fascination with flying machines, especially those
travelling above the atmosphere. In fact, this passion for astronautics and space
exploration led to a bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Aerospace Engineering
from the Polytechnic of Turin (Italy). Born in July 1981, just a few months after
Columbia’s maiden flight, he developed a fondness for the Space Shuttle program.
Eventually, this resulted in Springer-Praxis publishing in August 2013 his first
book, “To Orbit and Back Again: How the Space Shuttle Flew in Space”. The
book has been praised for its content on numerous outlets ever since. As a result,
a sequel, entitled “The Space Shuttle Program: Technologies and Accomplishments”,
was released in 2017. This book is meant to complement those two previous vol-
umes to show what the Space Shuttle could have achieved and how the Space
Transportation System could have further matured.
v
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Clive Horwood of Praxis and the wider community at Springer
New York, who, for the fourth time, have entrusted their reputation to one of my
writing proposals. I am also indebted to Dr David M. Harland, who has turned my
raw manuscript into a book for the fourth time. Your help, friendship and patience
in helping me develop as a writer will always be greatly appreciated. I must also
mention my friend Giuseppe DeChiara, who provided valuable suggestions while
reading the early version of this manuscript. I also want to mention the five review-
ers who made such positive comments concerning the content of this proposal. As
usual, I thank Jim Wilkie for his eye-catching cover.
As always, my wife Monica has been incredibly patient and supportive in
allowing me to pursue this personal project of mine, despite the countless hours I
had to subtract to quality family time. Finally, I cannot forget the interest and sup-
port of family, friends, work colleagues and acquaintances, who have all played a
role in keeping me motivated.
vi
Contents
About the Author. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v
Acknowledgements. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vi
Acronyms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . x
1 A Remarkable Flying Machine. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
The Space Plane. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Space Shuttle 101. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Space Shuttle: What For?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2 Upgrading the Space Shuttle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
The Power Extension Package. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
3 Boosting the Booster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
An attempt to make the Space Shuttle safer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
The Liquid Rocket Boosters (LRB). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
Liquid Fly Back Booster: The Pre-Phase A Study. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
Liquid Fly Back Booster: The Boeing and Lockheed Martin Proposals. . . . . . . 69
4 Orbital Hopping. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
“A tale of two upper stages” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
Death Star. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
The Orbital Maneuvering Vehicle: the space tug returns. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
NEWSTAR: Nuclear Energy Waste Space Transportation And Removal. . . . . . 98
vii
viii Contents
5 Unflown On-Orbit Servicing Capabilities. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Opening the era of on-orbit satellite servicing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Payload Berthing System, Satellite Workshop, and Robotic Arms. . . . . . . . . . . 107
The Space Operation Center . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
On-Orbit Cryogenic Fluid Management Experiments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
The Orbital Spacecraft Consumable Resupply System. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
The Superfluid Helium Tanker Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
6 Factories in Space. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
The Materials Experiment Carrier. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
A pioneering initiative: the Industrial Space Facility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
Ultra-vacuum: the Wake Shield Facility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
7 The Unfulfilled Potential of the External Tank. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
The Very Large Space Telescope. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
The Large Area Gamma Ray Imaging Telescope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
Propellant Scavenging System. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
Aft Cargo Carrier. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
8 Shipyards in Orbit. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
The Large Space Systems Technology Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
Orbital Assembly and Maintenance Study. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
The Orbital Construction Demonstration Article. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
The Space Construction Automated Fabrication Experiment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
The Engineering Technology Verification Platform. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
9 Space Shuttle and Skylab: A Missed Opportunity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244
Saving Skylab: The Lost Mission of STS-3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
The Skylab Reuse Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
The Skylab Reuse Study: Shuttle Operations and Continued Growth. . . . . . . . . 255
The Solar Scientific Instruments Spacelab/Orbiter Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
Epilogue. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
10 Space Shuttle in Uniform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
The Lost Polar Mission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
The “Big Bird”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
The STS-Hexagon Study. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
Contents ix
11 Lost Science and Technology Missions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
The Research and Application Module . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
The Shuttle Payload Planning Working Group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313
The Shuttle InfraRed Telescope Facility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314
The Large Uncooled Infrared Telescope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314
The Accessible Focal Plane Telescope. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317
The Plasma Physics and Environmental Perturbation Laboratory. . . . . . . . . . . . 319
The Communication and Navigation Research Laboratory. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321
Orbital Research Centrifuge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323
12 Epilogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 342
Acronyms
ACC Aft Cargo Carrier
ACS Attitude Control System
ADA Array Deployment Assembly
AGM Artificial-G Module
AM Airlock Module
AOA Abort Once Around
ASE Airborne Support Equipment
ATM Apollo Telescope Mount
ATO Abort To Orbit
CFES Continuous Flow Electrophoresis System
CFM Cryogenic Fluid Management
CFME Cryogenic Fluid Management Experiment
CFMF Cryogenic Fluid Management Facility
CMG Control Moment Gyros
CNRL Communication and Navigation Research Laboratory
DA Docking Adapter
DOD Department of Defence
EOS Electrophoresis Operations in Space
ET External Tank
ETVP Engineering Technology Verification Platform
EVA Extra Vehicular Activity
FBPF Flyback Booster Processing Facility
FCSF Flight Crew System Facility
FWC Filament Wound Case
FSS Flight Support System
GEO Geosynchronous Earth Orbit
GRO Gamma Ray Observatory
x