Have Space Shuttle Capabilities Been Hidden From Us?
Space Shuttle Sometimes the most obvious things elude detection, at least this was the case with me. My son brought up an interesting idea the other day, one that I should have thought about a long time ago. That idea had to do with the space shuttle. We have been constantly brainwashed to believe that the farthest that the space shuttle could travel was about to the space station and back. We were told that the reason for this is that it can not hold enough fuel. Here is the question that my son asked me, “Dad why can't the space shuttle go to the moon?” I replied,”It doesn't carry enough fuel.” Then he hit me with a gem and said, “but if you put a fuel tank into the empty cargo bay it should have enough fuel”. Wow I thought, why hadn't I thought of that, it was so obvious? NASA has an interesting Frequent Asked Questions page and one of the questions is: Q. “Can the Space Shuttle fly to the Moon?” A. “No, the Shuttle is designed to travel to low-Earth orbit (within a few hundred miles of the Earth's surface). It does not carry enough propellant to leave Earth orbit and travel to the Moon. The Shuttle also is not designed to land on the Moon since it lands like an airplane and the Moon has no atmosphere. The Shuttle could be used to carry pieces of Moon or Mars vehicles to low-Earth orbit, where they could be assembled prior to beginning their mission.” I want you to notice that nowhere in the answer by NASA does it say that it is not capable of flying to the moon, only that it was designed for low earth orbit, could not land on the moon and doesn't carry enough propellant. The Eagle, the command module for Apollo 11, the flight that landed on the moon, was not capable of landing on the moon either and it released a lander. This begs the question, what if it flew to the moon with the shuttle carrying the extra fuel in its cargo bay in a tank and taking along a lander? I am not an engineer, but it seems to me that the shuttle has demonstrated that it can fly in space, so what would stop it from orbiting the moon if it had enough fuel? The hardest part of those flights are taking off and landing.
Space Shuttle We know that the Soviets had a plan to build their version of the space shuttle, but ran out of funds. In 2006 the Russians announced that they were designing a space shuttle known as the Clipper that would not only be able to be launched into space and fly to the moon and back. Could this be a tip that our own space shuttle has been capable of this all these years and we were not aware of this fact? If that is the case, should we assume that shuttle flights were made into lunar orbit for purposes unknown? It is an intriguing thought isn't it? It is probably one that not many people have thought of. The Russian shuttle is going to be built by the Russian company Energia. Hold on to you hats folks, this might sound strange to you, but a former CEO of a rocket launch firm is proposing that we send the space shuttle to Mars. Yes you heard me correctly. He even proposes that we parachute them on to the Mars surface. This is a man that was the former CEO of UP Aerospace, not some guy off of the street. How could he ever propose this if the shuttles were not capable of deep space flight? Does he know something that we don't? Eric Knight calls his plan, “Mars on a Shoestring”. He went on to say, “instead of mothballing NASA's aging shuttle fleet in 2010, two of the orbiters could be launched with SpaceHab's Research Double Modules in their respective cargo bays for living space. The two shuttles would be connected in orbit - cargo bay to cargo bay - by a truss outfitted with a central rocket engine to provide the thrust necessary to leave Earth orbit. An inflatable connecting corridor between the two shuttle airlocks would provide astronaut access between the linked spacecraft.” Are you ready for this one? It is now being said that it would not be that hard to fit the space shuttle with an advanced electronic engine. The engine is called the Advanced Electric Propulsion Linear Electron Beam Particle Accelerator (LINAC) for light speed electron particle propulsion. The Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect and Birkeland currents is a unique concept. Wow we would be sticking an Ion type engine on the shuttle and that would enable it to get to Mars in just 72 days. Suddenly the obsolete shuttle would be capable of becoming one of our most advanced spacecraft. This has to make one wonder if we have already done this? Maybe we have more shuttles than we know about and they are fitted out this way. Could these be the ships that are said to be secretly moored in space by the US Air Force or US Navy? Its funny, we have been staring at the shuttle for decades and yet, most of us may have been blind to its real capabilities. Refined versions may have been built for the military while there were restrained versions made for civilian use.
Space Shuttle It is also being said that if a nuclear powered VASIMR engine, which was tested aboard the ISS (International Space Station), was put into a space shuttle the trip to Mars could be cut to 39 days. When the ability to put a nuclear powered reactor into a vehicle is checked, we are told that this capability is way off, and yet how many satellites have had tiny nuclear powered reactors on board? Remember the old Soviet satellite that crashed into the woods in Canada that had one? NASA has memorialized the crews of both the shuttles Challenger and Columbia by naming sites on Mars after them. Why Mars? Could it be that we have had shuttle flights go there already? I admit it might be a far stretch, but it does seem strange. I would have thought that naming parks on earth after them or even NASA buildings, or schools, would seem more normal. Back to the space worthiness of the space shuttles. There really doesn't seem to be any REAL reasons why the space shuttle can not be used to fly further out into space. It just seems like a smoke screen when we are told this. It could be that there are versions of the space shuttle that are far more advanced than the ones we see. We know that planes are constantly being updated, why not shuttles? |
