Talk:Space Transportation System

Confusing and meaningless sentence

"As the Space Race wound down and the Vietnam War began to take precedence in the minds of U.S. citizens,...."

what is this supposed to mean ? What time did the author of this have in mind ? It makes no sense.

"As the Space Race wound down...." implies the end of the Apollo program, around 1972. "The Vietnam War began to take precedence in the minds of US Citizens.." , what, around 1965 ? It is spurious to suggest that the rise in importance of the Vietnam War as an issue coincided with the winding down of the space race, it preceded it by about 7 years.Eregli bob (talk) 09:04, 15 May 2010 (UTC).

Article is inaccurate

This article is not supported by the references. In addition, straight from the horse's mouth, which would be NASA's Kennedy space center, the Space Trasnportation System (STS) is as follows:

"NASA coordinates and manages the Space Transportation System (NASA's name for the overall Shuttle program), including intergovernmental agency requirements and international and joint projects. NASA also oversees the launch and space flight requirements for civilian and commercial use.."

There is nothing about the international space station that is part of this program. That is apparently another program. Nor is there anything about how the "Space Race wound down and the Vietnam War began to take precedence in the minds of U.S. citizens"... that part of the article reads like an usubstantiated essay.

The reference discusses the space shuttle system, comprised of four elements, which makes up at least part of the STS. Then Space shuttle requirements are discussed, then background and status, etc., etc. Some hunting around through these links gets in to some fine detail, but it is still all about the shuttle. This is all related to the Space shuttle, and unfortunately it is probably indistinguishable from the articles entitled "Space Shuttle" and Space Shuttle program".

I apologize but based on this, I am making this page a redirect to the page entitled "Space Shuttle program"----Steve Quinn (formerly Ti-30X) (talk) 03:07, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

No, you are quite mistaken; the article was not inaccurate. The program as presented was quite real (though in the planning stage only) for a brief time, and the article is basically valid, just poorly sourced and written (e.g., the "Viet Nam" stuff).

It needs to be expanded a bit and better sourced (I have a couple of online references). There are also some articles which link to it in this context of a complete system of vehicles (e.g. Nuclear Thermal Rocket).

The fact is, that the Space Shuttle was the only part of the system that survived the political "post-partum depression" after the Apollo 11 landing, and so NASA kept the name to designate that. The NASA science website you link above is not a reliable source for NASA history and tells only this small part of the story (i.e., "STS" = Space Shuttle).

But the Shuttle as implemented sadly fell far short of the completely reusable system STS was intended to be, to support the space station, permanent lunar exploration, and a manned Mars landing (a range of three plans presented by Vice President Spiro Agnew targeted this as early as 1986 and as late as 2000.)

Sources:

• NASA Report, Technical Study for the Use of the Saturn 5, INT-21 and Other Saturn 5 Derivatives to Determine an Optimum Fourth Stage (space tug). Volume 1: Technical Volume, Book 1, Web Address when accessed: http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19810065609_1981065609.pdf
• Wade, Mark. "Space Tug". Encyclopedia Astronautica. http://www.astronautix.com/craft/spacetug.htm. Retrieved June 15, 2011.

I plan to revert the redirect, and fix the original article. JustinTime55 (talk) 18:24, 15 June 2011 (UTC)