- Using the entire vehicle as a re-entry device caused a huge need for heat shielding...since the very beginning, the heat tiles were a problem, always some were lost...which really was walking on a razor’s edge
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The Shuttle was designed for a military mission to launch from California, snag Soviet satellites and glide back to California in one orbit without being detected. It had to glide a long distance, so the wings were unnecessarily large. That increased weight and required more tiles. Of course, the Shuttle was never used for that purpose but we were stuck with the design.
I have never heard this before. So it goes up, snags a satellite, and re-enters over thee Pacific, and glides to CA?
It was also unnecessarily large because of the side of payload the Airforce wanted to land with. Ironically the growth in size (weight) meant the launch pad they were building for it at Vandenberg turned out to be too small and they scrapped the whole idea. The darn thing was suppose to make space launches 10 times cheaper and instead it made them twice as expensive.