/sci/ - Science & Math

>>12065276
it was a good idea before NASA chickened out and made a bad shuttle instead of a good shuttle

>>11627794
>manned flight was thus a very popular way to justify the budget.
Defence has never needed justification in terms of civilian space programs. In the case of guidance, even the SM-65 Atlas (entered service in 1959) had a CEP in the <10 km range. (Especially the US) manned space program didn't hit a meaningful tempo until years after the inertial guidance dev work was done.
>if you can put something in orbit, you can carry bigger nuke on a suborbital strike. Size does matter.
MRV/MIRV/MARV are better than a single larger yield device. The CEP of crewed vehicles is atrocious by ICBM standards.
>Again, the space race WAS about the weapons and military use first
The space race started from repurposed ICBMs, then diverged as the requirements for keeping humans alive and sending payloads to arbitrary orbits differ from those for being able to send a package to a specific location on the ground at a moment's notice (See ICBMs being mainly solid fueled vs. the liquid fueling of orbital rockets). Gemini used repurposed Titan IIs, but existed solely as a stepping stone to Apollo.
>how the 'Space shuttle' was made larger for the Air Force, ended up using the F1
But it didn't.
From that very book,
>While still evaluating two-stage Shuttle designs, NASA engineers had found that the existing F-1 and J-2 engines, both of which were by then out of production, were inadequate to meet the safety and weight requirements of the Shuttle without significant redesign.
>NASA favored an engine having higher specific impulse than either of these, which would require the use of only three, rather than four, engines in the orbiter.
>The agency decided to build a completely new engine; in July 1971, it awarded the development contract to Rocketdyne for its staged combustion design, which became known as the Space Shuttle Main Engine.

>>11627794
>manned flight was thus a very popular way to justify the budget
Defence is its own justification; just compare defence budgets to space budgets.
> if you can put something in orbit, you can carry bigger nuke on a suborbital strike. Size does matter.
Except MRVs, MIRVs and MARVs are better than a single larger warhead. And again, the civie rockets were derivatives of ICBMs on both sides of the iron curtain. Getting into and around orbit is not related to coming down accurately on a designated target. CEP of manned reentry is atrocious compared to what ICBMs need.
>The Saturn family was the one not built for military purpose.
Gemini (ICBM derived) had no purpose other than to lead to Apollo.
Militaries of course had tremendous interest in space, and cooperated heavily with civilian programmes, but civilian programmes were not just a high-publicity covert military R&D tool.
Literally from that book
>While still evaluating two-stage Shuttle designs, NASA engineers had found that the
existing F-1 and J-2 engines, both of which were by then out of production, were inadequate to meet the safety and weight requirements of the Shuttle without significant redesign. NASA favored an engine having higher specific impulse than either of these, which would require the use of only three, rather than four, engines in the orbiter. The agency decided to build a completely new engine; in July 1971, it awarded the development contract to Rocketdyne for its staged combustion design, which became known as the Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME).2
There were shuttle proposals that would use the F-1, but not the final version.
>>11627800
Have fun.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_Orbital_Bombardment_System