Over at LiveScience blog, Dave Brody makes some interesting points. He wants to retire the Shuttle now. I find most of his points to be salient, but he is forgetting one very important thing: the U.S. has no other way of getting people into space at all right now. NASA knows this, which is why it wants the timeline for the Crew Exploration Vehicle to overlap the Shuttle’s, or at least minimize any gaps between the two. Retiring the Shuttle right now would mean no manned access to space for a decade (not to mention the small problem of suddenly having thousands of employees with nothing to do).
NASA has really painted itself into a corner by not having any future plans for rockets, and waiting until too late to start thinking about it. The Shuttle’s time has come and gone, and we do need a replacement now. Really, we need a replacement ten years ago.
NASA has started setting up workshops and such for people to start really working the vision, to try to look ahead and see what needs to be done now so we are prepared ten or twenty years from now. I fear this has come too late, and that corner is the last unpainted spot of floor. When I see press conferences, statements made by NASA admin, and attend meetings with other scientists, it is impossible not to see NASA as floundering when it comes to the future. And I’m not even talking about the way science has been so severely threatened at NASA, either.
It seems to me that the admin of NASA really is trying to figure out what to do about the future of manned spaceflight, and I appreciate that and give them kudos. But it is beyond doubt that this should all have been done a decade ago, so that we’d be sustaining space travel today, instead of trying to figure out how to sustain it. There were calls back then to do it, but somehow no plans were made for what to do in the post-Shuttle era.
When a replacement for the Shuttle is built, I hope that plans will be laid right away for what to do in ten years when that technology gets old, and when the needs for the future of space flight change. NASA may be hurting right now, but its future depends on its learning from this experience.
May 8th, 2006 at 5:19 am
The biggest problem for Nasa ia political. It takes so long to get one of their projects from conception to launch, that they are at the mercy of funding decisions made in Washington in future budget years. There’s very little incentive for the political bosses to invest a lot of time and energy to get a program started when the benefits will be claimed by some future administration.
May 8th, 2006 at 6:00 am
I knew we were in trouble when I read that NASA has to take apart old medical equipment to replace the outdated chips in the Shuttle’s computers.
May 8th, 2006 at 7:06 am
I really like Nasa but mention the recent accidents and I will probably tell you someone should go to jail.
Taking chips from medical devices for repair of the shuttles and the total lack of real backup safety measures before the accidents is just,well, unbelievable.
For pete sakes, we are the nation that went to The Moon not once, but many times.
And now we can’t even put men into orbit safely?
Sheesh, if it wasn’t so ugly, I would think it was a
Made for TV Movie!
May 8th, 2006 at 8:11 am
From “The Right Stuff”:
“You know what makes your planes go up?”
“Well, hell the aerodynamics alone would take so long to explain to ‘ya…”
“Funding makes your planes go up!”
Nasa is one of the most underfunded agencies when you look at what they are asked to do. I think there must be some natural law regarding funding and short-sightedness. Every organization that I’ve seen that is low on funds has always turned their attention to the here and now to take care of immediate needs and disregarded the needs of the future. A good example is the development of the shuttle from the beginning. It was originally supposed to be two manned vehicles that were totally reusable. The orbiter was to be carried on a manned launch vehicle. After separation, the launch vehicle would return to Earth and be completely reusable. This approach was costly to build and because of buget constraints NASA went with the reusable boosters and expendable tank. In the long run the original concept would have been much less costly to fly, or so it has been claimed. I’m recalling this from a trip to the National Air and Space Museum five years ago!
In any case, I maintain that money shortages almost always breed short sightedness, unless possibly there is very good leadership.
May 8th, 2006 at 8:32 am
I’ve always been amazed we’ve not found a better technology for putting things into orbit/space than strapping explosives to things and exploding them off the planet.
There are probably people working at NASA who weren’t even born when some of the components in the shuttles were manufactured.
May 8th, 2006 at 8:36 am
Dave Brody’s criticisms are valid, and of course he’s not the first to point these out. He does fail to see one point.
The ISS was designed with a specific philosophy of resupply. That philosophy requires something that we don’t have without the Shuttle, and is not in Bush’s Exploration Agenda for the future. That capability is downmass – the ability to bring items back to Earth.
The Resupply philosophy of ISS means we lauch up completed boxes and run them. When there are failures, we fly up replacement boxes and trade them out, then bring the old ones home for repair/refurbishment. They’re called Orbital Replacement Units (ORUs). However, that philosophy is not limited to just possible failures. Some items on ISS will wear out during use. It’s an engineering fact that you can’t make things last forever. Think about oil change on your car. You wouldn’t throw away your car after 3000 miles and buy a new one, you change the oil. There are plenty of items on ISS that need regular servicing. The sensible plan that NASA designed with is that you bring home the worn out bits and reservice as much as possible. But that requires that you can bring those items down safely.
Soyuz can’t do that. It is a crowded compartment barely suited to bringing home three people. You don’t want heavy or bulky items in the crew cabin. There’s no room, not enough weight allowance, and things jiggling around in the passenger compartment is a good way to get battered crew. Can you say scrambled eggs?
Progress can’t do it. Progress can carry up some decent weight and volume, but it doesn’t return safely, it burns up on reentry.
The proposed CEV design is a return to Apollo style reentry – essentially Soyuz but slightly larger. The return capsule on CEV will be large enough for 4 to 6 people, but not really have space for cargo return. Again, no ability to bring things back.
It has been clearly demonstrated during the post Columbia timeframe that ISS will be difficult to service without return capability. On-orbit operations have been severly constrained by using all available space for storage of items requiring the Shuttle to bring home – so much so that things had to be prioritized and some items that engineers wanted back for evaluation purposes were jettisoned because they were too bulky and had too low of a practical value.
Essentially this brings up the other point that many people argue – the Shuttle isn’t the only white elephant. Personally, I think the ISS is an important engineering challenge and valuable for what it is telling us about long-term space operations. I think it is a much better plan to iron out these problems in Low Earth Orbit rather than on the Moon or Mars. The space science benefits from ISS are unfortunately not dramatic and largely focused on sustaining crew on ISS.
I do agree that NASA has been unable to direct enough attention to what comes next, expecting Shuttle to last forever. There are numerous reasons, most significantly NASA’s political hamperings by Congress. NASA as an agency has had difficulty with delivering products on time – major schedule slips and cost overruns are historically common with the projects. It should be pointed out that much of the projects are playing on the hairy edge of capability. True, ISS design (for instance) relies more on well-defined technology rather than new tech. However, the particular task itself of building in space and sequential launching and rendezvous is a cutting edge endeavor.
But ruidh is correct – it is difficult to plan for the future when the politicians pulling the fiscal strings can’t see the long term benefit serving their short term needs. The facilities and KSC were allowed to run down because Congress wouldn’t cough up the dough, playing tug-of-war games with the competing ideas “the Shuttle will be dead in five years so why waste the money on the facilities” with “the Shuttle will last us decades so there’s no need to worry about the next launch vehicle yet”. Those two competing ideas had numerous detrimental effects, such as not improving the Shuttle Main Engines, as well as the previous mention of KSC facilities.
Also, I don’t think NASA has been completely sticking its head in the sand. Anybody here remember a little project called VentureStar? There have been efforts along the way at looking for the next generation launch vehicle, they just haven’t been fully pursued and haven’t panned out.
May 8th, 2006 at 10:22 am
Keep the Space Shuttle operational!
I went to the May 6th Astronomy Day Spacetacular Saturday events at the Christa McAuliffe Planetarium, Concord, NH. Plan to be there next year, the first Saturday in May.
Astronaut Rick Linnehan (three shuttle missions; one to repair Hubble) gave a presentation and urges all to go watch the remaining Space Shuttle launches while they last.
Space Tourist Greg Olsen also gave a presentation and his three inspirational words were “Don’t Give Up”.
The Planetarium show “Black Holes” was an awesome graphics wiz program. A must see experience.
May 8th, 2006 at 11:27 am
On a less tangible level, what does a successful shuttle program do for the psyche of this country? More particulary, what does it do to inspire new generations to participate in space science? What would we use to inspire that if we didn’t have the shuttle? I know that in the case of my kids, they’ve both decided they’re going to be astronauts since we were in Cocoa Beach for last year’s shuttle launch. Sure, they’re young enough that they’ll change their minds several times before college, but I’d like them to never have that option removed from their plate.
Obviously, such romanticism can’t justify a program on its own, but I think it’s important enough not to be left out of consideration.
May 8th, 2006 at 2:11 pm
DennyMo consider replacing Shuttle with some other successful human space program. All the benefits, none of the drawbacks.
May 8th, 2006 at 3:39 pm
Irishman hit the nail right on the head….remember these NASA programs:
- Venturestar
- DC-X
- Updated/lightweight shuttle (with electric-not heavy hydraulic-actuators) and lots of other improvements to take advantage of 10-20 year newer technology)
All canceled due to lack of funding.
May 9th, 2006 at 4:11 am
One thing I haven’t seen mentioned: No Shuttle = no Hubble repair!
May 9th, 2006 at 8:28 am
Brody specifically stated performing Hubble repair before canning Shuttle.
May 9th, 2006 at 12:55 pm
How about launching via a really BIG catapault???
GAry7
May 9th, 2006 at 11:20 pm
I agree with the essay, one last mission to Hubble and retire on that high note. If or I should say when another accident occurs the Shuttle program will be over anyway and who wants to end on that note.
Goverment workers not having anything to do is no reason to keep the Shuttle going.
The Shuttle was an idea worth pursuing, it didn’t live up to its mandate so kill it without flinching. Reusability isn’t all it was cracked up to be. Another issue the Shuttle doesn’t capture the public’s imagination. A manned mission to the Moon, Mars, and/or Near Earth Asteroid will generate a lot of excitement, we need to pursue the new avenue without delay and without another wastefull shuttle launch. 10 years without manned flight isn’t that long to wait, we waited more than 2 just between accidents.
May 10th, 2006 at 8:09 am
Arguable. Many people feel a better approach than launching a goal to reach out is to first establish a space infrastructure. That means cheaper, more ready access to space, and the ability to build/assembly larger space vehicles in LEO to send farther away.
The Shuttle was supposed to be one element of that plan. A Space Station was supposed to be another element. Neither really accomplishes their role in that plan, though that isn’t to say that we haven’t learned from both.
Gary, if by catapult you mean a spring loaded lever arm, that would be pretty funny. If you mean an EM rail type device, that is one approach to launch vehicles. There are serious challenges to overcome. Lauch site needs to be near Equator. Preferably running up a mountain. Then you need a precisely aligned path for several miles (no earthquakes). Now you need a way to remove the air from the whole length of the tube, or deal with the shock wave built up in the tunnel. Plus there are acceleration concerns – people don’t like being slung faster than about 3 or 4 gees. Some payloads can’t take much more than that, either. The larger the accelerations, the more robust the designs have to be, trading viable payload for structural integrity.
Another possibility is the space elevator – the tether system. There are numerous design challenges with that as well. One key challenge is making the tether strong enough and large enough to sustain strikes from debris and still function long enough to be repaired. Also sending power to the climbers. Making climbers that can grip the tether and still climb with a reasonable speed (50 mph?). It doesn’t look impossible, but it does look challenging.
The alternative is to use existing technology to do something now. This gets us back into space exploration, but we still need to commit to future launch technology development. The inevitable funding shortage awaits.
May 12th, 2006 at 1:51 am
Lets just use that flying saucer we have in area 51
December 23rd, 2006 at 8:56 am
I think all will agree that “Space” is an inherently dangerous place. Yes, we have had accidents…. possibly avoidable. We will continue to have accidents. We will also continue to learn. We have learned a great deal since 1984 and the first Shuttle flight. Perhaps we should draw a parallel to the avation evolution as a whole.
With what we learned fron the Shuttle we should be building the next generation Shuttle instead if falling back to 1969 technology. The Russians can continue to provide the world with well tested 1969 technology.
Budget problems will always be “Budget Problems” . However, if we look at the people and hardware payload the Shuttle is capable of it becomes a lot more economical then re-developing technology already available from our Russian space partners. Our next step should be building the next generation Shuttle.