Username Protected wrote:
the USA has forgotten the lessons of early engineers and the Soviet Union that brute force works. Instead, we spend gobs of time and testing to get the absolutely last drop of efficency from everything and as a result no longer have a concept of good enough and that brute force works.
Tim
A dear friend of mine who, for reasons of privacy, shall remain nameless here, had the occasion to serve on the ISS twice. Once he went up and back on the now retired Shuttle and once he went up and back on the Soyuz.
I can spend tens of pages describing our conversation over many beers one evening because like most aviation geeks I wanted to know "what was it like?" I will leave the assent for another time because it is, IMHO, interesting.
The punch line is this: He said that the Shuttle was modern, sophisticated, technologically advanced and predictably American. What you would expect. In spacecraft terms, it had many creature comforts.
The descent back to earth in the Shuttle was uneventful. Much like a routine aircraft flight (apart from the blistering, but otherwise, undetectable speeds).
As for the Soyuz, he described the experience, as I recall, "three exposions and a car crash."
It made me spit beer through my nose.
The point being, both craft got the job done.
Guess which one cost less, at least with regard to that application?
