The Space Shuttle

[startrekmaniac]

What is the purpose for the shuttle? I know that now it is being used to build the ISS. Before what was its primary mission?

 

[Woo482]

military usage

 

[Urwumpe]

Just like today - a reusable spacecraft to fly payloads into space and install them on space stations, but also it should deploy and retrieve satellites.

 

[ryan]

and to have a look at Medical stuff in space, via the Spacehab.

 

[startrekmaniac]

So they were not useing it to study the earth? Or any part of the solar system?

 

[DaveS]

So they were not useing it to study the earth? Or any part of the solar system?

That they did. ASTRO, SIR, SRTM. Was also used to launch HST, CGRT, AXAF, Galileo, Magellan, Ulysses.

 

[Donamy]

Yea they did !! they launched many satellites and probes to do that. Have you been under a rock ?

 

[startrekmaniac]

No I mean with the shuttle itself.

 

[DaveS]

No I mean with the shuttle itself.

SIR and ASTRO were payload bay mounted telescopes(ASTRO) and radars(SIR).

Edit:
And it's orbiter, not shuttle. The Space Shuttle is whole launch assembly(SRBs, ET and orbiter). The orbiter is the spacecraft itself minus the ET and SRBs.

 

[Andy44]

It's a general purpose partially-reusable vehicle. It didn't have just one specific mission, although it was envisioned to service a space station, which Congress wouldn't pay for until the ISS came around.

 

[ryan]

SIR and ASTRO were payload bay mounted telescopes(ASTRO) and radars(SIR).

Edit:
And it's orbiter, not shuttle. The Space Shuttle is whole launch assembly(SRBs, ET and orbiter). The orbiter is the spacecraft itself minus the ET and SRBs.

When i was very young my sister told me that the Solid Rocket Boosters are the '' Can you get them please?'' meaning they go out and find them again. ''The external tank is the bye-bye'' meaning the burn up '' and the orbiter is the fun part'' took me 5 years to find out what it really ment.

 

[startrekmaniac]

Where the majority of the satellites in the 80's and 90's deployed by the shuttle? Or were they launched by there own rockets like today?

 

[Donamy]

Which countries ? military or commercial ?

 

[Urwumpe]

Where the majority of the satellites in the 80's and 90's deployed by the shuttle? Or were they launched by there own rockets like today?

More like today, only during the early 1980s, the Shuttle hauled a lot of civilian satellites in it's weight class. After Challenger, the Shuttle only lifted those satellite, it already had in it's manifest and did not use the badly needed Centaur-G stage for upgrading it's bad interplanetary/GTO performance.

The maximum commercial payload of the Shuttle towards GSO was 2.8 tons at that time, limited by the available upper stages - the Shuttle was meant to transport Delta 2 and Atlas payloads to GSO, while being actually optimized as LEO truck.

The biggest problem for the Shuttle then was also something else... the Ariane not only became operational, when the Atlas and Delta 2 starts where already declining, the Ariane also increased in performance well past the Delta 2 it was meant to rival. The Shuttle was suddenly not large enough for modern satellites in the early 1990s.

After Challenger, the Ariane 4 had 66% market share for some years, if I remember correctly.

 

[DaveS]

The reason wasn't competition, it was that commercial satellites were forbidden by law to ride on the shuttle. The same remains true to this day, NASA can't launch commercial satellite payloads.

 

[Urwumpe]

The reason wasn't competition, it was that commercial satellites were forbidden by law to ride on the shuttle. The same remains true to this day, NASA can't launch commercial satellite payloads.

Well, even if they would have allowed commercial payloads, there had been only very few satellites left which fitted into the payload bay. The satellites had become too heavy even for the Ariane 4 at the end of it's lifetime.

 

[Moonwalker]

Edit:
And it's orbiter, not shuttle. The Space Shuttle is whole launch assembly(SRBs, ET and orbiter). The orbiter is the spacecraft itself minus the ET and SRBs.

The whole launch assembly is called Space Shuttle System or officially Space Transportation System. Shuttle or Space Shuttle is a valid term when talking about the orbiter, like NASA persons and NASA sources call the orbiter itself Shuttle, Space Shuttle or Space Shuttle Orbiter as well.