China plan small space shutter within 3 year.

Lets put it another way. You have 118 flights and 12 deaths with the 12 deaths occurring in the last 10 years or so. The Russians have 97 flights with four deaths. The Soyuz failures were back in 1967 and 1971, and not one apparently ever since.

That's not a good casualty to flight ratio for the Shuttle vs. the Soyuz.

The problem I have with the Shuttle is that it sucked funds that could have been used somewhere else. Since the Space Shuttle, NASA has apparently unlearned all the skills and capability to take a man to the moon. Now today, returning an astronaut back to the moon seems as daunting as ever, and we know keep wondering how we did it in the first place. And we all go back to the moon, it won' be with the Space Shuttle but back again with modular disposable space craft like we had with the Apollo program. The technical barriers can be overcome once again, but now we have a new barrier, a political one set by the Space Shuttle itself. If we need to go back to the Moon and eventually to Mars, we need to go back to disposable, dockable modular spacecraft and we have not had those since Apollo.

Lets put it another way. You have 118 flights and 12 deaths with the 12 deaths occurring in the last 10 years or so. The Russians have 97 flights with four deaths. The Soyuz failures were back in 1967 and 1971, and not one apparently ever since.

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Those Space shuttle tradgies were most unfortunate.

Actually that's 97 total missions for Russia since 1961. I don't think the Soyuz can do what the Space Shuttle can do.

It has been long rumored that many more cosmonauts have been killed back in the days of the USSR. I once saw a program on cable Tv . I forget which network. That claimed that 37 Cosmonauts disappeared. It was unproven on the program I saw how the deaths occuried. There was some speculation that there was some sort of disaster at a launch area where many cosmonauts were attending a launch. Or simply there was an unfortunate series of space disaster generall occuring at launch. This was just speculation based on some unsubstainated facts. Personally I did not feel this program had more than 10% of truth.

When I was a child back in the 6os I remember the Soviets never announced that they had men in space until well afer the launch had occuried.

I know that the USSR space program was going full bore until March 1965 with Voskod 2. Then suddenly it stopped for more than two years.(Soyuz 1. April 67).Why no missions? ..What happened? Who knows ? For those were the Cold war days of the then super secrective USSR.

The "Space Race" back then really held my intrest. I often have wondered why the Russians never attempted a manned moon landing.

Any ideas???

Russians have tried to land on the moon, but they launch detection satellite, crashed into the moon.
Russian already created space shuttle, but not fired, I think, because they do not have the money, but now, if they have money, it will not launch the space shuttle.
In fact, a few years ago President Bush announced his new space program, including the return to the moon, and the development of new spaceship to replace the aging space shuttle, not a new generation of spacecraft. Developed as a new generation of spacecraft, take a very long time, and can not imagine the investment, President Bush could not have made such a announcement.
Space flight, there will certainly be accidents, it is no guarantee that.However, people do as much as possible beforehand to be the best,to prevent the occurrence of accidents. US space shuttle had been suspended launch for serial years, that period of time, the US astronauts had to take Soyuz to the space Station.
Now the US has re-use of these aging space shuttles, each flight is always occur some problems. this practice, at least violation of the most basic safety standards

The Soviets built a massive moonshot rocket, the N-1. It exploded on every one of its four trials, so they scrapped it and essentially gave up their moon program. Then the Soviet Space program began having cash issues and all hopes of a moon mission died.

The space shuttle is probably currently reaching the limits of it's usefull service life. But I think it did a great job in space exploration. It has a big payload and much internal volume, something no other space capsule can offer. It was a laboratory in space in some way.
Things like maintaining Hubble or performing certain experiments were a great deal. I think the program was a success.
Now that we'll have a persistant and bigger laboratory in space with the ISS, needs will change. For leaving earth's orbits or bringing heavy loads into them, a conventional rocket may be more economic. But I also believe that for ferry flights (people and logistics) a new, lighter shuttle that can also take off conventionally (plane-like) would be the best option.

The space shuttle program would have been much better off if a better solution was found in the implementation of the shuttle's heat shield and, probably, that of the use of a reusable booster rocket. Using thermal tiles are obviously not the best solution for the thermal shield; the use of segmented solid fuel booster may not be the best option too. Until progress is made in these area as well as other critical ones, the space shuttle's future would most likely be uncertain. For US or China, any future space shuttle program would take on a much different form from that of NASA currently; be that in size, launching, engineering solutions or the shuttle's applications.

Quickie said:

The space shuttle program would have been much better off if a better solution was found in the implementation of the shuttle's heat shield and, probably, that of the use of a reusable booster rocket. Using thermal tiles are obviously not the best solution for the thermal shield; the use of segmented solid fuel booster may not be the best option too. Until progress is made in these area as well as other critical ones, the space shuttle's future would most likely be uncertain. For US or China, any future space shuttle program would take on a much different form from that of NASA currently; be that in size, launching, engineering solutions or the shuttle's applications.

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To be fair to the Shuttle, the vehicle in service today is nothing like the one that NASA originally proposed in the early 70's. It's configuration is a result of political wrangling and budget cuts during the Nixon years, the loss of Challenger in particular can be directly attributed to the decision to use solid rocket boosters to save money on development costs. Once the boosters ignite on lift off, they can't be turned off or jettisoned until they are expended, even nearly 22 years after Challenger, there's no way for the crew to escape if a problem with an SRB occurs.

It's quite ironic that after 35 years developing and flying the Shuttle, NASA's next manned spacecraft Orion, is practically Apollo on steroids. Spaceplane's like the Shuttle seem to be out of favour at the moment, one day I'm sure there will be other craft like the Shuttle but not for a long time. Personally I think that China will concentrate on developing Shenzhou for the next decade, then they might develop some sort of spaceplane to replace it. I doubt that they could have one ready in 3 years, but you never know! That's the fun of China watching!

the Russian space shuttle also kinda was destroyed by a snow storm
three years seems an quick time line more like a decade.

Neutral Zone said:

To be fair to the Shuttle, the vehicle in service today is nothing like the one that NASA originally proposed in the early 70's. It's configuration is a result of political wrangling and budget cuts during the Nixon years, the loss of Challenger in particular can be directly attributed to the decision to use solid rocket boosters to save money on development costs. Once the boosters ignite on lift off, they can't be turned off or jettisoned until they are expended, even nearly 22 years after Challenger, there's no way for the crew to escape if a problem with an SRB occurs.

It's quite ironic that after 35 years developing and flying the Shuttle, NASA's next manned spacecraft Orion, is practically Apollo on steroids. Spaceplane's like the Shuttle seem to be out of favour at the moment, one day I'm sure there will be other craft like the Shuttle but not for a long time. Personally I think that China will concentrate on developing Shenzhou for the next decade, then they might develop some sort of spaceplane to replace it. I doubt that they could have one ready in 3 years, but you never know! That's the fun of China watching!

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I think the main problem is the heat shield. Without a better, and safer, answer to the problem, I don't see a spaceplane flying in the near future.

The Soviets built a massive moonshot rocket, the N-1. It exploded on every one of its four trials, so they scrapped it and essentially gave up their moon program. Then the Soviet Space program began having cash issues and all hopes of a moon mission died.

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they were far closer than that. the proton rocket (still use today) could lanuch people around the moon with a 2 launch option. the apollo lanuch merely days before the russian were ready, the russian saw being 2nd is worst then not running decide to cancel the launch and go home.

they now offer you a chance to fly around the moon, using the same technology available to them 50 years ago... if you are willing to pay for it, you could be there before NASA!

why the US is still using it

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because it screw up.