Abstract
The Space Shuttle design was heavily influenced by the requirement of the USAF for orbiting large spy satelllites and conducting “black ops” missions. Such flights would be flown out of Vandenberg Air Force Base, where a new launch complex was built before the plan was cancelled following the Challenger accident. This chapter tells how the USAF and the intelligence organizations planned to use the Space Shuttle, what was achieved and what was lost, such as the polar mission of STS-61A.
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Notes
- 1.
According to the laws of spaceflight mechanics, the lowest orbital inclination that a rocket can achieve is equal to the latitude of the launching site. In the case of the Kennedy Space Center, this means that a payload can be delivery in any orbit ranging from 28.5 degrees (the latitude of the KSC) and 90 degrees (polar orbit). If necessary, the payload can be subsequently maneuvered into a lower inclination orbit but at a high fuel cost making it more convenient launching from a site at a lower latitude. For this reason, the closer to the equator the launching site is, the wider the selection of orbital inclinations accessible.
- 2.
The terms, coined by rocket tychoon Elon Musk, has now become the technical terms for the somewhat less elegant “rocket explosion”.
- 3.
This does not meant that launches over solid ground cannot occur. In fact, Russian and Chinese rockets fly over large areas scarcely populated since they do not have a launch facility close to the ocean.
- 4.
The Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) was a 1960s Air Force program with the ostensible assignment to orbit military personnel to conduct scientific experiments to determine the “military usefulness” of humans into space and the techniques and procedures for doing so if the need ever arose.
- 5.
Flame trenches are always dug underneath a rocket launch pad for an easy discharge out of the launch pad area of the rocket engines’ exhaust at lift off. In this way the exhausts do not linger on the launch pad base or bounce back to the ascending rocket which could flood the rocket engines and lead to an expeditious destruction of the rocket.
- 6.
The Space Shuttle launch pads were composed of a fixed and rotating service structure that closed around the stack while awaiting at the launch pad. However the rotating structure provided only limited weather shielding, as its main purpose was to allow loading of the payload into the vertically oriented payload bay.
- 7.
This is the radius measure from the Earth’s rotational axis, not from the planet’s center.
- 8.
The payload bay doors were not primary structure as they only acted as aerodynamic fairing and were not designed to withstand flight loads exchanged by the surrounding fuselage. The SRB case was instead the primary structure of the booster itself.
- 9.
Membrane stiffness is the difficulty of bending a laminate of composite material when a compressive force on the laminate plane is applied at two opposite side. As an experiment, hold with your two hands a sheet of paper and bring the two opposite sides close. Try the same experiment with a sheet of cardboard. A greater force is required for bending cardboard than with the sheet of paper. The membrane stiffness of the paper is substantially inexistent while for the cardboard is considerably greater. Changing the number of layers, their thickness and orientation, the membrane stiffness can be radically altered.
- 10.
For instance, as during the first mission to the Skylab space station where firing of the reaction control system of the Apollo spacecraft proved sufficient to destabilize the massive outpost.
REFERENCES
NRO (2011a) Hexagon American’s Eyes in Space. Available at: https://www.nro.gov/Portals/65/documents/history/csnr/gambhex/Docs/Hex_fact_sheet.pdf
NRO (2011b) The Hexagon Story. Available at: https://www.nro.gov/History-and-Studies/Center-for-the-Study-of-National-Reconnaissance/The-GAMBIT-and-HEXAGON-Programs/
NRO (1973) Final Report for Design Study For Hexagon Reconnaissance System Using STS. Available at: https://www.nro.gov/Portals/65/documents/foia/declass/FOIA%20for%20All%20-%20Releases/F-2017-00070r.pdf
Sivolella (2017) The Space Shuttle Program: Technologies and Accomplishments. Springer International Publishing; ISBN 978-3319549446; Paperback: 372 pages.
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Sivolella, D. (2022). Space Shuttle in Uniform. In: The Untold Stories of the Space Shuttle Program. Springer Praxis Books(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19653-9_10
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