Generalization (not specialization) was it’s strong point as well as it’s weakness. The reason why it was a design boondoggle was because it had to meet the requirements of many masters. People forget it has a number of DoD missions in addition to the more publicly known NASA missions.
There were plenty of joint NASA/DoD missions that were performed using the Shuttle. Why do you think NASA, an agency built upon freely sharing scientific information, occasionally had classified payloads aboard the Shuttle?
"Between 1982 and 1992, NASA launched 11 shuttle flights with classified payloads, honoring a deal that dated to 1969, when the National Reconnaissance Office—an organization so secret its name could not be published at the time—requested certain changes to the design of NASA’s new space transportation system."[1]
NASA has a long history of working with the military. The first astronauts were all military test pilots (Armstrong gave up his military commission so NASA wouldn’t appear overtly militarized).
They did some classified launches, but none that drew on the extreme specs they had demanded in exchange for helping to fund it.
It was an embarrassment.
Literally no STS launches did. And they were so expensive, it would have been cheaper to build more Hubbles and launch them the regular way than to have done the repair missions.
The Space Shuttle was a disaster for US space presence. US ended up depending on Soyuz!
Now, the X-37 is proving another embarrassment. They can't find enough work for it, so leave it parked in orbit most of the time, pretending to be "on a mission".
Do you mean no STS launches were DoD payloads or do you mean no STS launches required DoD specs? I'm not saying the "cost effectiveness" promise of the Shuttle was met, but there appears to be evidence that neither of the above claims are accurate. For example, STS-38 was a classified DoD payload [1] and there are book chapters dedicated to fact that DoD specs drove the shuttle design [2]. The gist from [3] is
"the support and budget for space decreased, increasing the need for NASA to work closely with the DOD. Their partnership prompted many compromises that were made on the vehicle’s uses and design, which resulted in a broad set of requirements"
Those compromises were largely to accommodate the DoD payload and range requirements. Whether or not they were ultimately necessary we can't know because much of that is classified and unverifiable. But they still drove the design and eroded the cost benefits that NASA wanted.
I'll be more direct: Can you substantiate your claim that the DoD missions did not need those specs? You haven't provided anything other than an opinion at this point.
Because to a laymen, that's an unverifiable claim since those details appear to be classified. Meaning that opinion doesn't amount to much. It's plausible, but I'd need a little more than your opinion to believe it.
I have, of course, no opinion: this is purely a matter of fact. I merely echo complaints by NASA insiders.
I may speculate that their requirements were such as to be able to loft the NSA equivalent of Hubble into a polar orbit, but that by the time STS was flying, they had retired that design and were using rather smaller birds.
In other words, you can't substantiate it. It is therefore not "purely a matter of fact" any more than someone else saying "I heard a guy who heard a NASA guy say those requirements were necessary." At least the latter instance can point to requirements that at least show an intent to do so, your claim is on shakier ground.
It is a matter of fact in that either there were zero missions of such a nature, or there were one or more. I.e., you can refute it by identifying even just one such mission. Posting a list of random DoD missions is not a substitute for that.
People employed at NASA for decades, in a position to know and report even facts not published, that they have had no reason to lie about, say it is true. No one has come forward to say not.
That’s my point. Note I said it was unverifiable. Only one of us is pretending it’s a verifiable fact. I also know manny people who work at NASA, going back from the 1970s to present day. Some were astronauts. Many worked on the shuttle program directly. We seem to have very different ideas about what constitutes a “fact”.
But again, none of that matters unless you can verify your claim. We can just leave it as a known unknown and stop pretending it’s anything different.
The issue I'm pointing to is the veracity of your claim that they did not. You stated it with certitude that, by the very nature of it being classified, you likely do not have. So either you're out over your skis regarding your certainty or the person you talked to willfully disclosed classified information.
It's no different than if somebody on here said with certainty that there was a second gunman on the grassy knoll. Because, you know, they have a source at the CIA who said so. But we can't verify it because they classified the information. But trust them. They know a guy.
Of course in both cases there is truth that supersedes opinion. Whether or not anyone should believe one claim over another is a different story. Just because you say something with conviction doesn't make it true and just because you "know a guy" doesn't make it credible.
You may credulate it or not by whatever criteria you like.
The fact remains that STS was massively expensive, and unnecessarily, and it ate up budget that could have been used for much better things, and probably would have.
Skylab really did fall out of the sky. The US really was for years dependent upon Russia to launch its astronauts. We really did get only just the one Hubble.
