They're glorified fireworks chosen for political reasons, and they destroyed one vehicle and killed seven astronauts. And a solid that's 10% more fuel efficient still isn't very impressive. Liquid rocket boosters such as those used by Energia would have had far better performance, and could have served as the first stage of smaller launchers, as the Zenits (the launcher with the current lowest cost per kg to orbit) did.bunnyboy wrote:I heard once that most succesfully designed part of the shuttle were the boostrockets on its side.
They were about 10% more fuel efficient than calculated.
Phobos and Deimos are more interesting to me. They're easier to get to and from than the moon in terms of delta-v, due to their position in the gravity well of Mars. You can even use Mars for an aerobraking assist to reach them. And their own gravity wells are tiny, so you're not stuck when you get there. They appear to most likely be captured main-belt asteroids, so they may have sizable amounts of volatile resources, and you can get solar power in their vicinity without the planet turning you away from the sun half the time and covering your solar panels with dust.LegioCI wrote:I've been waiting for them to can the Shuttle program for years so NASA could get away from wasting time in LEO and start getting their asses back to the moon, or, God forbid, Mars, like they've been promising for decades. (The Mars mission has been a constant carrot on a stick for me, always just a decade or so away but oddly, it never gets any sooner!)
Start up orbital propellant depots with propellant obtained from orbital sources, and you can send manned missions effectively anywhere in the system using simple chemical propellant rockets or NTRs. Build a vehicle in orbit with a mass ratio similar to or better than that of a vehicle that has to support itself on the ground and launch through the atmosphere, and make use of powered flyby maneuvers, and you can go places.
Fortunately, there actually appears to be interest in such things among the companies with the capabilities needed to do the job.LegioCI wrote:Of course, now we're ditching the shuttle program and instead of taking the next step we're out-sourcing our spaceflight to the Russians. Right now I'm seeing the future of space flight being a private and corporate endeavor rather than one undertook by governments.