Talk:Space Transportation System

Confusing and meaningless sentence
"As the Space Race wound down and the Vietnam War began to take precedence in the minds of U.S. citizens,...."

what is this supposed to mean ? What time did the author of this have in mind ? It makes no sense.

"As the Space Race wound down...." implies the end of the Apollo program, around 1972. "The Vietnam War began to take precedence in the minds of US Citizens.." , what,  around 1965 ? It is spurious to suggest that the rise in importance of the Vietnam War as an issue coincided with the winding down of the space race,  it preceded it by about 7 years.Eregli bob (talk) 09:04, 15 May 2010 (UTC).

Article is inaccurate
This article is not supported by the references. In addition, straight from the horse's mouth, which would be NASA's Kennedy space center, the Space Trasnportation System (STS) is as follows:


 * "NASA coordinates and manages the Space Transportation System (NASA's name for the overall Shuttle program), including intergovernmental agency requirements and international and joint projects. NASA also oversees the launch and space flight requirements for civilian and commercial use.."

There is nothing about the international space station that is part of this program. That is apparently another program. Nor is there anything about how the "Space Race wound down and the Vietnam War began to take precedence in the minds of U.S. citizens"... that part of the article reads like an usubstantiated essay.

The reference discusses the space shuttle system, comprised of four elements, which makes up at least part of the STS. Then Space shuttle requirements are discussed, then background and status, etc., etc. Some hunting around through these links gets in to some fine detail, but it is still all about the shuttle. This is all related to the Space shuttle, and unfortunately it is probably indistinguishable from the articles entitled "Space Shuttle" and Space Shuttle program".

I apologize but based on this, I am making this page a redirect to the page entitled "Space Shuttle program"Steve Quinn (formerly Ti-30X) (talk) 03:07, 7 June 2010 (UTC)


 * No, you are quite mistaken; the article was not inaccurate. The program as presented was quite real (though in the planning stage only) for a brief time, and the article is basically valid, just poorly sourced and written (e.g., the "Viet Nam" stuff).
 * It needs to be expanded a bit and better sourced (I have a couple of online references). There are also some articles which link to it in this context of a complete system of vehicles (e.g. Nuclear Thermal Rocket).
 * The fact is, that the Space Shuttle was the only part of the system that survived the political "post-partum depression" after the Apollo 11 landing, and so NASA kept the name to designate that. The NASA science website you link above is not a reliable source for NASA history and tells only this small part of the story (i.e., "STS" = Space Shuttle).
 * But the Shuttle as implemented sadly fell far short of the completely reusable system STS was intended to be, to support the space station, permanent lunar exploration, and a manned Mars landing (a range of three plans presented by Vice President Spiro Agnew targeted this as early as 1986 and as late as 2000.)


 * Sources:
 * NASA Report, Technical Study for the Use of the Saturn 5, INT-21 and Other Saturn 5 Derivatives to Determine an Optimum Fourth Stage (space tug). Volume 1: Technical Volume, Book 1, Web Address when accessed: http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19810065609_1981065609.pdf
 * Wade, Mark. "Space Tug". Encyclopedia Astronautica. http://www.astronautix.com/craft/spacetug.htm. Retrieved June 15, 2011.


 * I plan to revert the redirect, and fix the original article. JustinTime55 (talk) 18:24, 15 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I really like the introduction for this "new" article. It seems to be factual rather than the former ruminations of this article. Also, this article certainly has potential. I checked the first reference in the article, pages 176 to 180, . So far I got a very brief overview, and am not quite clear about the STS program during the Nixon administration. However, it appears there was something called STS. I will check the source above, and look around some more. Hopefully you will have enough information available for an article. I am glad that you stepped into this situation, and I hope it works out. Steve Quinn (talk) 02:24, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Project Horizon does not belong here
Project Horizon had absolutely nothing to do with the 1970's planned Space Transportation System, so these paragraphs are totally out of scope of this article:


 * Prior to the Apollo Program, Project Horizon was to establish a manned military presence on the moon for the US Army. The launch vehicle chosen for this was named the SLS, for Space Launching System, detailed in 1961.  Being military, it had wondrously inventive names for the stages, like A, B, and C, with A being the smallest, light weight version.  Like the 1981 and later US Space Shuttle, it featured strap-on solid rocket boosters, 2 for the smaller launch vehicles, 4 for the larger.


 * Initially a large, heavy winged re-entry vehicle was to be boosted to the moon, following the launch of 9 massive, pre-assembled modules to the lunar surface, in addition to cranes, bulldozers, and a weapons cache. The crew of 4 from the shuttle would land, check out the first batch of equipment, then begin digging holes for the modules to be lowered into.  The holes would then be covered over, to provide radiation and micrometeorite protection.


 * The construction crew would live in a lunar Shelter, designed by a competition held among University of Cincinnati, Ohio students. Both architecture and industrial design students participated, in 4 man teams. (No evidence of female students has yet been found.)  The largest Shelter design featured a 1043 sq. ft., 8 to 13 ft. high balloon-like device.  It featured inner and outer inflatable fabrics, with a layer of inactive foam between.


 * Upon landing, the Shelter was lowered into a large, circular hole. The outer shell was removed (presumably part of the original vehicle, an SLS Stage A) and could be used as drive-through garages or meteorite event shelters, for those performing surface EVA's who were unable to come inside fast enough.  Entry was at the top, where an elevator mated into or onto an airlock, at surface level.  Once the exterior plates were removed, an activation agent/inflation gas was introduced to the space between the inner and outer inflatable fabrics.  This caused the foam to expand and rigidize, without requiring additional supports.  Once inflation and rigidization were completed, the habitat portion was covered over with lunar regolith for radiation and micrometeorite protection.


 * The interesting point of this design, from 1963, is the fact that it remained classified for many years. Even so, several similar designs emerged in industry, at NASA and at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.  No connection between the students and any other source of similar designs have been found, as yet.


 * Space suits, an orbital space station (ostensibly for fueling and refueling of the lunar landing stages), and the 12-man Lunar Outpost were also features of Project Horizon. According to the US Government and US Army, none of which every occurred.  The creation of NASA during the Eisenhower administration was supposed to put and end to such efforts.  Which had next to no effect on the US Air Force or US Navy, continuing to pursue their own, unmanned, rocket launch efforts.

Note Project Horizon has its own article; if there is anything new in the above, it belongs there. JustinTime55 (talk) 15:48, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

STS is not "obscure", and this topic is not a coatrack
Hello, and thank you for your contributions to Wikipedia. I noticed that you recently added commentary to an article, Space Transportation System. While Wikipedia welcomes editors' opinions on an article and how it could be changed, these comments are more appropriate for the article's accompanying talk page. If you post your comments there, other editors working on the same article will notice and respond to them, and your comments will not disrupt the flow of the article. However, keep in mind that even on the talk page of an article, you should limit your discussion to improving the article. Article talk pages are not the place to discuss opinions of the subject of articles, nor are such pages a forum. Fotaun, using the Voyager program (Mars) as an example of obscurity amounts to talking in the article, and should have been made as an argument here.

The science.nasa.ksc.gov page defining Space Transportation System as meaning the shuttle proves nothing; this was essentially a political trick which NASA used to try to sell the shuttle to Congress, and this is verified in a book in the NASA historical collection which I have to get around to digging up. The article is still in stub status, and verifications are pending. All your edit did was to encourage someone else to add the defunct Project Horizon, which had nothing at all to do with the 1970's STS.

Just because you weren't around to know something, and can't quickly find it on the web, doesn't mean it isn't verifiably true. Wikipedia isn't in the business of rewriting history. JustinTime55 (talk) 21:22, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Difference between a shuttle and a ferry
The term shuttle denotes a vehicle which makes repeated, regular trips between two points, such as the Earth's surface and orbit. A ferry is a vehicle which travels back and forth between two points (e.g. Earth and Moon, Earth and another planet, etc.) repeatedly, without necessarily describing the frequency. The nuclear vehicle meant for lunar or interplanetary travel is probably best referred to as a ferry rather than a shuttle. JustinTime55 (talk) 14:36, 31 May 2022 (UTC)