The space shuttle is the most basic expression of making it to space by the minimal that makes it.
by Henryk Szubinski
If youre going to have the most basic "compact all in one veichle that can run missions together with servicing" the SPACE SHUTTLE was the ONE and ONLY design that put more money into it's design look than it would ever take to build it. from Wikipdia
date 2017 sep 08
The Space Shuttle was a partially reusable low Earth orbital spacecraft system operated by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), as part of the Space Shuttle program. Its official program name was Space Transportation System (STS), taken from a 1969 plan for a system of reusable spacecraft of which it was the only item funded for development.[10] The first of four orbital test flights occurred in 1981, leading to operational flights beginning in 1982. Five complete Shuttle systems were built and used on a total of 135 missions from 1981 to 2011, launched from the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. Operational missions launched numerous satellites, interplanetary probes, and the Hubble Space Telescope (HST); conducted science experiments in orbit; and participated in construction and servicing of the International Space Station. The Shuttle fleet's total mission time was 1322 days, 19 hours, 21 minutes and 23 seconds.[11]
Shuttle components included the Orbiter Vehicle (OV), a pair of recoverable solid rocket boosters (SRBs), and the expendable external tank (ET) containing liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. The Shuttle was launched vertically, like a conventional rocket, with the two SRBs operating in parallel with the OV's three main engines, which were fueled from the ET. The SRBs were jettisoned before the vehicle reached orbit, and the ET was jettisoned just before orbit insertion, which used the orbiter's two Orbital Maneuvering System (OMS) engines. At the conclusion of the mission, the orbiter fired its OMS to de-orbit and re-enter the atmosphere. The orbiter then glided as a spaceplane to a runway landing, usually to the Shuttle Landing Facility at Kennedy Space Center, Florida or Rogers Dry Lake in Edwards Air Force Base, California. After landing at Edwards, the orbiter was flown back to the KSC on the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, a specially modified version of the Boeing 747.
The design of the space shuttle when it was first conceived of as the MOST COMPACT ,MOST RELIABLE and most REUSABLE spaceship that anyone could ever build. The wings were cut at their mid length, the tips of the wings were sliced at angles to the main body, the nose was made as flat as possible for reentry into Earth ,the ceramic tiles at the under surface were made to be used many times over.The pilots space was as crammed as possible with the ways in and out through the DOORS as could be. Most people never thought that the space shuttle had any possible usage. Even the designers themselves who sat and sketched were either "not good enough" to design what NASA wanted. They needed the best designers, not of the accurate mathematical type but of those artists that could present something that looked futuristic while also being something that could be adapted from the BOEING types of airplanes and to have the dynamic shape of the sleek look that had the airfoil look that was between thin and thick. Basically the spaceship that could make it through thick and thin as the look that was adopted.
There were even designs underway for the space shuttle cargo bay to have seats placed in it, making it vacuum sealed and ready for space tourists to go into space at a low cost. There were about 100 seats with each costing about 100 000 dollars.The sides of the shuttle had pay load windows for the passanger to look through so the progression of ASTRONAUT STATUS was first presented by the progression of workers status from the tail and up to the engineers at the front . The books about it that came out in the 80's were basically the ART of the highest possible design specifics. To have the book would be like having the DESIGNS of every possible type of "very easy to build spaceships" Because it's designs were'nt only the one we see today, the previous designs that did'nt make it, were not wrong, there were easier and more sleek designs but just as the best has to have a mid section basic , the interval of it had many designs and they opted for the MID inside the MID as the best design because of the ROOT RATIO of the future of DESIGN and it's survival.So when the space shuttle was being designed they already had the computer design program needed and opted for something that was part superior artistic and part computerized. The artistic was melded into the computerized and new computer design programs developed from the design itself that are the precursor to today's design programs.I place the space shuttle in the 5t category as it was made to resemble the biological look of something that was alive though it was made artificially,Most of the paint was biological, the ceramic tiles were carbon based and the look of it was of some omnious being from another planet.