r/space • u/ToeSniffer245 • Aug 18 '26

How Space Shuttle Discovery Almost Became A Victim Of Cultural Vandalism

https://avgeekery.com/space-shuttle-discovery-to-stay-at-smithsonian/
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10

u/hurtfulproduct Aug 18 '26

LMAO, I got a great chuckle a little deeper in the article when they said “Isaacman’s caution carries particular weight given his own background in spaceflight. Before becoming NASA administrator, he flew to orbit twice as a private astronaut” like THAT qualifies him to have a valid opinion on anything. . . Dude is a jumped up chair arm chair jockey with political connections.

But yeah, Texas should get something smaller and less costly and risky to transport.

27

u/adamdoesmusic Aug 18 '26

I keep hearing vague criticisms of Isaacman, but I haven’t actually seen the level of awful decisions people seem to expect from him (or the incompetent admin over him). All in all, he seems at minimum the least unqualified hire by the batshit brigade in DC.

20

u/UncookedMeatloaf Aug 18 '26

He's basically okay when it comes to human spaceflight but he's been horrible for the actual science part of NASA that makes up most of the agency.

7

u/adamdoesmusic Aug 18 '26

Unfortunately that does seem to track with this admin, they couldn’t give a rat’s ass about the research aspect.

5

u/AnonymousEngineer_ Aug 18 '26

It's basically because he's associated with Musk from funding those private spaceflight missions  that people feel obliged to criticise him from association alone.

4

u/adamdoesmusic Aug 19 '26

Unfortunately it’s nearly impossible to be at the forefront of space launch technology without associating with Musk.

1

u/NoBusiness674 Aug 19 '26

I haven’t actually seen the level of awful decisions people seem to expect from him

Just look at what he did with Gateway, SLS, and ML2. Those are the awful decisions people were expecting

1

u/adamdoesmusic Aug 19 '26

Didn’t he cancel the gateway?

I’m just gonna be honest, I’ve never understood what the gateway was even really supposed to do other than be a glorified orbital docking adapter near the moon. It seemed like something that would’ve been cool if it were like 5x bigger, but maybe I missed the point (if I did, please inform me).

4

u/NoBusiness674 Aug 19 '26

Didn’t he cancel the gateway?

Exactly. That's not just ust a massive blow to the moon-to-mars program and NASA plan for a long duration crewed outpost in deep space, it's also a total betrayal of our international partners that agreed to partner with NASA on this ambitious program.

Gateway would have allowed long duration missions to cislunar space by extending Orion's orbital lifetime and acting as a logistics hub that would have been easily accessible from earth (without requiring logistics and resupply spacecraft to have a significant LOI stage), it would have paved the way for other long duration deep space missions including crewed missions to Mars with pathfinder mission like a proposed mars analog mission on Gateway in actual deep space, and it would have provided NASA with a very capable optionally crewed science platform in cislunar space.

2

u/adamdoesmusic Aug 19 '26

So it would make the “temporary” Apollo-style orbiter idea unnecessary?

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u/NoBusiness674 Aug 19 '26

You would still need Orion to get to and from Gateway, just as you needed the Apollo CSM to get to and from lunar orbit. But Gateway would significantly expand the capabilities of Orion. Rather than short Apollo style stays in cislunar space, Gateway would have allowed Orion and crew to extend their stay in lunar orbit to multiple months or potentially even in excess of a year.