this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2024
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The Vasa comes to mind. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasa_(ship)
USSRs space shuttle, although technically that didnt fail on its own.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_(spacecraft)
The failed Chinese attempts to use stolen SpaceX plans that resulted in at least one town that we know of being destroyed with toxic smoke and fire.
Virgin's space program.
Boeing's space program. Increasingly, the 737-MAX too.
Amazon's space program.
Musk and the stupid decisions made around Starship, that resulted in over a year of setbacks since the launchpad had a woefully inadequate flame trench that everyone called out long before the first two failed launches.
The Titanic.
Related to the last one: OceanGate and the Titan.
When the Athenians starts the Peloponnesian War by invading a different city state than Sparta(to ostensibly use that city's military against Sparta), but screwed it up, creating the conditions for them to lose said war.
The Buran was actually quite technologically advanced. It was able to fly to orbit and land itself completely autonomously.
And looked pretty cool
The Space Shuttle had autoland, they never used it to my knowledge though.
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19820056897
It also just got crushed in a collapsing hangar? 4 years after the test flight? That doesn't sound like a failure, it sounds like it got mothballed and forgotten
And they were smart enough to recognize it as a huge boondoggle and cancel it, before killing a bunch of astronauts.
It was canceled because of budget issues and also the fall of the USSR itself. USSR wasn't really doing too hot at the time, economically. Not because it was dangerous. It was obviously proven space-worthy.
The only boondoggle was not iterating on the design, especially when they couldn't launch intelligence payloads to polar orbits. They should have kept the original fleet and been given funding to develop another one - a "space car" for the Shuttle's "space truck" - that could ferry lighter payloads and a smaller crew to more varied orbits.
I used to think like you but I've grown to like the Shuttle. Without it things like the final Hubble repair and building the ISS would have been a lot more complicated. Yes, it was a very ambitious design with more fatal flaws than we'll ever really know about - what if it had had a major issue in orbit - it kept the dream of manned spaceflight alive, and built a ton of experience at NASA for managing manned spaceflight.
The biggest downside I see to the shuttle is how it blocked anything better. Spaceflight got stuck in a local maximum for 30 years, possibly solely to enrich certain congressional districts and well connected contractors. True reuse is needed to make manned space travel possible to more than a few elite astronauts, and the shuttle never had that.
I think we're seeing two sides of the same coin: The fact that we didn't keep designing new spacecraft is the problem. And I wouldn't blame the shuttle for that, just the American people for losing their zeal.
I blame the politicians like Richard Shelby actively preventing any other technology from being used or even considered. The lack of zeal was from the people in charge of the money, who clearly had no interest in space beyond its ability to get them and their pals larger McMansions on a golf course somewhere. Myopic, stupid and corrupt assholes.
I think the Vasa is still my favorite. All the others at least were able to leave the docks right side up.
Hey! Vasa sailed for thousands of meters!
"What is that wet stuff below my belly? I HATE IT!"
topples over
Casa definitely was worth it, just in a different way the king envisioned at the time