An oldie-but-goodie.

http://tinyurl.com/a3sfz

(The poster’s name seems somehow familiar…)

David Davenport: “That is interesting. Wonder how well it would have worked?”

I wonder how well it might work today!

— Donald

David Davenport: “That is interesting. Wonder how well it would have worked?”

I wonder how well it might work today!

— Donald

David Davenport: “That is interesting. Wonder how well it would have worked?”

I wonder how well it might work today!

— Donald

The Air Force Space Shuttle Program: A Brief History

E. J. Tomei

The Air Force had high hopes for its West Coast shuttle complex. But despite years of preparation, this state-of-the-art facility never saw a shuttle launch.

On January 1, 1986, the maiden flight of the Air Force space shuttle program was just six months away. This flight, mission 62-A, would mark the beginning of the Air Force’s shuttle launch service from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The crew—which included Edward “Pete” Aldridge Jr., then Secretary of the Air Force—was completing preflight training at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

…

Partly because of the location, and partly because of the different nature of Air Force missions, the new facilities at Vandenberg required capabilities that the NASA complex at Kennedy did not provide. For example, SLC-6 had a 4000-ton moveable wind screen standing 70 meters tall to shelter the orbiter during mating with the external tank. Sound suppression was enhanced through a 3-meter-diameter underground water system flowing nearly 3.8 million liters per minute. This water system absorbed the launch acoustics generated by the rocket thrust and prevented its reflection into the flight systems and payloads. A water-treatment facility reclaimed nearly 1.9 million liters of this sound-suppression water, which was contaminated with exhaust products from the solid motors after each launch. A unique hot-gas heating system powered by a pair of turbofan engines was used to prevent ice formation on the external tank. The payload processing facility (which was designed to handle three 4.5 X 18-meter satellites simultaneously) was equipped with state-of-the-art electromagnetic shielding. A 15-megawatt power plant provided dedicated power for all these facilities. The whole complex employed a seismic design capable of withstanding a severe earthquake.

…

With construction nearly complete, the Aerospace program office was transferred to Vandenberg in early 1982 to support formation of a site-activation task force. Operational verification testing began in 1984, and a joint NASA/Air Force operations team was formed, with Aerospace in the lead technical support role for the government. Facility verification tests using the orbiter Enterprise (an unpowered experimental model that was deployed from a jumbo jet, not launched from a launchpad) were completed in March 1985. All systems were go for an auspicious first launch in the summer of 1986.
All Systems Stop

That first launch never happened. On January 28, 1986, the Challenger accident resulted in the death of seven astronauts and the demise of the Air Force’s space shuttle plans. The White House rescinded its 1982 mandate requiring all government payloads to fly on the space shuttle and instructed the Air Force to restart the expendable launch vehicle production lines. The space shuttle facilities at Vandenberg were once again abandoned, partly because the investigation into the Challenger failure resulted in design changes that rendered the shuttle incapable of lifting the satellites planned for polar flights out of Vandenberg. The Aerospace space shuttle program office was disbanded, and its personnel were reassigned to the new expendable launch vehicle programs and advanced launch studies. The primary payload flew on a later space shuttle mission out of Cape Canaveral; however, the second payload, Teal Ruby, never flew in space. The remaining DOD shuttle payloads planned for Vandenberg were placed on the manifest for the older Titan 34D and the new Titan IV launch systems. No human spaceflight has yet taken place in polar orbit.

Further Reading

1. P. L. Portanova, “DoD Space Shuttle Operations at Vandenberg Air Force Base Launch and Landing Site,” Proceedings of the AF-SD/Industry/NASA Conference on Mission Assurance, June 1983.

http://www.aero.org/publications/crosslink/winter2003/05.html

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“… A unique hot-gas heating system powered by a pair of turbofan engines was used to prevent ice formation on the external tank. … ”

That is interesting. Wonder how well it would have worked?

I suspect it was just a convenient pretext for what they wanted to do anyway.

If ISS and shuttle money were diverted to private industry and the access auctioned to the highest bidder, we would get in one year more than 20 years worth of space access. What are we getting from NASA that is worth more than that?

World launch revenue is $2.8 billion according to satellite industry association. $8 billion from US subsidy would more than double worldwide demand. $16 billion from US would more than quintuple it. At $2,000/lb, $16 billion, tens of thousands of people could fly to orbit in a government lottery. At $100,000 a head, over a hundred and fifty thousand could take a suborbital flight. What are we getting that is worth more than that? Open up the highway to space. Make space an international park. Anything. Just do something.

My uunderstanding is that the Challenger disaster motivated the USAF to back out of doing polar Shuttle launches from Vandenberg. If Challenger hadn’t failed, there would have been Air Force Shuttle launches.

[ Didn’t Griffin explicitly dismiss the idea that ISS was a good place to test hardware for VSE? …]

The hardware that really needs testing is new launch system hardware. It’s no good trying to build a big space station with the obsolete Shuttle system.

Plus, the ISS’s 51.6 degree inclination angle puts the Space Station out of plane with minimum energy launches from Cape Kennedy as well as the Moon or Mars. Why 51.6 degrees? So the Rooskies could launch from Baikonur.