17 May
2010
17 May
'10
10:04 a.m.
Al writes:
I've always wanted to give Burt Rutan a run at a
Space Shuttle
replacement. I bet he'd do something really nice.
His White Knight/Spaceship One combo seems pretty
innovative. But,
that's not intended to be a Shuttle replacement.
I actually hope he doesn't do "a Space Shuttle replacement".
The Space Shuttle is a classic example of scope creep. It had to do everything. In the end
it did do most all of everything, and it did it each of them pretty well, but it was much
more complicated than needed for any one task, and schedules and budgets were blown out of
the water. But excepting schedules and budgets... it did surprisingly well.
What Burt Rutan could do, is a family of replacements, each of which does one of the
shuttle's tasks well. Some stages/assemblies/technologies would probably end up being
shared and that's great.
Tim.