The LA Times makes a big deal out of the fact that Max Faget has called for an end to the Shuttle program, as though it’s of some great portent. The article implies that Faget was the designer of the Shuttle, and that this is somehow like a throwing in the towel of a former die-hard supporter. The last paragraph says:

Faget said such a program might make sense, but questioned why anybody would use the same shuttle architecture that he pioneered almost 30 years ago.

It’s too bad the reporter isn’t a little more familiar with space history. Unfortunately for his thesis, Max didn’t pioneer this architecture, thirty years ago or at any other time, and he has never been a fan of this shuttle. Max designed the capsules used throughout the sixties, but he didn’t design the current space shuttle.

He had a much different concept. He envisioned a much smaller vehicle that would be launched on an expendable, or perhaps a reusable flyback booster, and it had small, stubby straight wings. He minimized entry heating with an extreme nose-up attitude, spreading the heat of the base of the vehicle, rather than concentrating it in the leading edges.

When the requirements for a thousand miles cross-range, and sixty-five-thousands pounds of payload appeared, and the budget was cut to preclude development of a reusable booster, his concept (and “architecture”) was doomed, and as this interview with George Mueller from 1989 points out, Max was never happy about it.

MUELLER: Well, the point of the problem was that it took a while to get agreement on what the configuration of the Shuttle should be. We decided we needed a fully reusable one in ’68, but boy, there were a lot of different approaches. Max Faget had a radically different approach, which at least our analysis indicated wouldn’t work, but he stuck through it for about a year. In fact, I think he still believes in it.

MAUER: This is the straight wing.

MUELLER: Straight wing.

MAUER: High angle of attack re-entry vehicle.

MUELLER: Exactly.

It appears to me that he’s simply grabbing an opportunity to finally put a stake in its heart. Of course, most people in the business are aware of this, and will discount his comments appropriately. I’m not saying that it won’t be cancelled, but if it is, it won’t be because of anything that Maxime Faget says.

[via the Pathetic Earthling.]