Yes, and even if you could make it go further, by not dropping the EFT and refueling it in orbit somehow, it would still be a stupid fucking idea to push around all that useless wing and heat tile mass in space.
That's why the original plan for the STS before Nixon cut it to the bone was for the shuttle to dock at a low earth orbit station where crew and supplies would transfer to a completely different vehicle, a nuclear engine wingless lightweight vehicle never intended to enter an atmosphere, which would take them to a station in lunar orbit, where they would transfer again to a dedicated lander vehicle.
Also, the Shuttle was supposed to have smaller wings, a fully reusable EFT, and no solid boosters. The recognizable Shuttle profile we see in For All Mankind was directly a consequence of the cuts to the Shuttle program because NASA had to go to the DoD for funding to complete the project at all, and the Air Force demanded enough wing area to glide back to US territory after a single polar orbit in order to snatch Soviet satellites out of space, as well as a much larger cargo space than NASA had originally designed for.
And the SRBs were a grift giveaway to one Congressman who had the SRB manufacturer in his district. They should never have been part of a human-rated launch system.
So seeing the familiar Shuttle design in the For All Mankind timeline is already incoherent, but seeing that familiar design in lunar orbit is completely ridiculous.
Dream Chaser is what the shuttle should have been all along, and if our government hadn't gutted its own ability to do things in the 1970s and 80s we could have replaced the Shuttle in the 90s or 00s with something like it.
Why is movie/tv SF always inventing alternative climate crises instead of just using the real one? Mysterious water shortage in this, mysterious crop failure in Interstellar. It's weird, there's a perfectly dramatic actual climate crisis if they want a climate crisis.
Also weird that they invented a whole different space agency for the RoK, SAA instead of KARI.
No dropped boosters to get to orbit, the whole stack is still together in lunar orbit, burning prograde for some reason. Then they disconnect the shuttle module from the stack while the stack engines are still burning and the shuttle, with engines off, suddenly falls towards the moon where they land with no engines doing pull up on the stick airplane style. The shuttle depressurizes and the depressurization keeps blowing wind from nowhere on and on for like a full minute.
Okay, so the vehicle looks like a Bezos cock rocket with three of the boosters from an R7 and a Space Shuttle strapped to the sides of it. The shuttle is loaded with crew horizontally on the launchpad then pulled up and integrated onto the stack moments before ignition. The cabin of the shuttle is laid out like an airplane with two rows of seats and an aisle down the middle. When the engines ignite, the ones on the main rocket and the boosters light up but not the ones on the shuttle, which actually never light up between launch and crash landing on the moon. It takes them a few seconds of going straight up to get to orbit with the boosters and everything still attached. Then the captain is shown floating weightlessly down the cabin aisle while the engines are still burning, which they do continuously until they reach lunar orbit. The struts connecting the shuttle to the stack start to fail as they burn prograde to "enter a landing orbit" so they disconnect them. This causes the shuttle to start falling quickly directly down toward the lunar surface and they try to start the shuttle's engines but it won't start so the pilot uses the RCS to come in for a nose first plane style landing because their vector somehow rotated 90 degrees again and they're speeding horizontally across the surface as they fall. They finally skid to a stop with the shuttle upside down balanced halfway over the side of a huge cliff that looks like it was formed by erosion.
Yeah I stopped watching when I saw a shuttle in lunar orbit. Just wrong and ignorant of history, physics, and engineering all at once.
The Space Shuttle could barely make it to the ISS.
Yes, and even if you could make it go further, by not dropping the EFT and refueling it in orbit somehow, it would still be a stupid fucking idea to push around all that useless wing and heat tile mass in space.
That's why the original plan for the STS before Nixon cut it to the bone was for the shuttle to dock at a low earth orbit station where crew and supplies would transfer to a completely different vehicle, a nuclear engine wingless lightweight vehicle never intended to enter an atmosphere, which would take them to a station in lunar orbit, where they would transfer again to a dedicated lander vehicle.
Also, the Shuttle was supposed to have smaller wings, a fully reusable EFT, and no solid boosters. The recognizable Shuttle profile we see in For All Mankind was directly a consequence of the cuts to the Shuttle program because NASA had to go to the DoD for funding to complete the project at all, and the Air Force demanded enough wing area to glide back to US territory after a single polar orbit in order to snatch Soviet satellites out of space, as well as a much larger cargo space than NASA had originally designed for.
And the SRBs were a grift giveaway to one Congressman who had the SRB manufacturer in his district. They should never have been part of a human-rated launch system.
So seeing the familiar Shuttle design in the For All Mankind timeline is already incoherent, but seeing that familiar design in lunar orbit is completely ridiculous.
Dream Chaser is what the shuttle should have been all along, and if our government hadn't gutted its own ability to do things in the 1970s and 80s we could have replaced the Shuttle in the 90s or 00s with something like it.
The North American DC-3 is what the shuttle should have been all along. Fully reusable, no solid boosters, reasonable size wings.
And most importantly, intended to be only one part of a larger space infrastructure so it's not a bus to nowhere.
Yeah that's the most realistic one, although I want to live in the universe where we got the VentureStar.
Earth SSTOs are bazinga bullshit tbh. Even skyhooks are more plausible.
Nonsense! You just need a large enough fuel tank!
That VentureStar engine has a lower Isp than the SSME
What's an EFT?
External fuel tank, the big red bottle of rocket fuel the shuttle is strapped to
If for some reason you want truly unhinged orbital/lunar physics watch the first episode of The Silent Sea lmao
Why is movie/tv SF always inventing alternative climate crises instead of just using the real one? Mysterious water shortage in this, mysterious crop failure in Interstellar. It's weird, there's a perfectly dramatic actual climate crisis if they want a climate crisis.
Also weird that they invented a whole different space agency for the RoK, SAA instead of KARI.
No dropped boosters to get to orbit, the whole stack is still together in lunar orbit, burning prograde for some reason. Then they disconnect the shuttle module from the stack while the stack engines are still burning and the shuttle, with engines off, suddenly falls towards the moon where they land with no engines doing pull up on the stick airplane style. The shuttle depressurizes and the depressurization keeps blowing wind from nowhere on and on for like a full minute.
I am begging SF writers to play KSP.
as someone who played KSP RSS heavy modded for years just reading your summary made my brain bleed.
i had that show on my "list" of shit to check out one day except i wasn't sure how shit it did the politics but yeah not anymore
Okay, so the vehicle looks like a Bezos cock rocket with three of the boosters from an R7 and a Space Shuttle strapped to the sides of it. The shuttle is loaded with crew horizontally on the launchpad then pulled up and integrated onto the stack moments before ignition. The cabin of the shuttle is laid out like an airplane with two rows of seats and an aisle down the middle. When the engines ignite, the ones on the main rocket and the boosters light up but not the ones on the shuttle, which actually never light up between launch and crash landing on the moon. It takes them a few seconds of going straight up to get to orbit with the boosters and everything still attached. Then the captain is shown floating weightlessly down the cabin aisle while the engines are still burning, which they do continuously until they reach lunar orbit. The struts connecting the shuttle to the stack start to fail as they burn prograde to "enter a landing orbit" so they disconnect them. This causes the shuttle to start falling quickly directly down toward the lunar surface and they try to start the shuttle's engines but it won't start so the pilot uses the RCS to come in for a nose first plane style landing because their vector somehow rotated 90 degrees again and they're speeding horizontally across the surface as they fall. They finally skid to a stop with the shuttle upside down balanced halfway over the side of a huge cliff that looks like it was formed by erosion.
sorry for the late reply but yeah that's almost as bad as (everything space related) in the movie Armeggedon.
also the space shuttle just sucks in general i want nuclear thermal propelled space tugs with big gold foil cryotanks filled with LH2
i'm an efficient space tug paired with propellant depot supremacist ever since i read Living off the Land in Space and saw how well it worked in KSP
I'm already an efficient nuclear space tug supremacist and a shuttle hater and that book sounds interesting.
Reminds me of someone lauding blade runner 2049 for not “being political” because snow.
Famously apolitical setting Blade Runner