I watched the very first ever launch – attempt -of the Space Shuttle ‘Columbia’ back when I was a little kid. I stayed up way past my bedtime awed by this then all-white all-new sleek spaceplane like something out of an SF cartoon come to life.

The Space Shuttle has flown so many times -135 or so – since and delivered so much joy and science, provided sucha lot of wonder and knowledge for us all. All but two of its flights landed safe and sound.

I’ve seen or listened to many of those flights – at least parts of them like the launches. Sometimes on TV, sometimes on the internet, once whilst on an astronomy camp looking at the stars listening to the radio coverage as Andy Thomas, Adelaide’s own astronaut headed up to Mir for a stay.

It was one of the marvels of the modern world.

It will be very sorely missed.

It will be a very long time before we see its like again – if we ever do.

***

“”The unfortunate decision eight and a half years ago to terminate the shuttle program, in my opinion, prematurely grounded Discovery and delayed our research.”
- John Glenn, first American to orbit the Earth who achieved that 50 years agao this year.

The idea that you need to pay tax dollars in the relevant nation to have an opinion on subject X strikes me as some kind of logical fallacy.

It also seems if not technically a logical fallacy then certainly a huge and fairly insulting over-generalisation to call astronauts “cowboys” – for starters, many of them of course are women too!

To me, vince charles, it seems clear that you hate the human spaceflight project and value money over a hell of a lot of other things that and many others would consider more important. Your view of space travel and the goals and wishes of Humanity generally seems to me to be very limited and I think you are missing the point – in fact missing a whole lot of broader points. You clearly have a lot of expertise and may well have accomplished a lot in your life and your narrow field but I think you may be missing the forest for the trees as the saying goes. I don’t think you get it.

I guess you probably think the same about me.

As for the BA being willing to allow everyone their say here and havinga hadns off policy, sure, seems to be the case. I try to make a positive contribution here, informing, entertaining and making people think and yes putting my case on some topics. I’m certainly not perfect and never claim to be and, yeah, on some issues – in part because of arguing over things on this blog I’ve changed my views.

If you don’t agree with that asessment and don’t like what I’ve got to say here, then, well, it saddens me but I certainly can’t and won’t force you to read my comments. Its a big varied cosmos out there and not everyone will agree with me – or you – or anybody else – all the time. (Shrug.)

Que sera sera.

Phil has a very hands-off policy. You should have noted this with your posts on global warming. Or, should I say, your initial posts on global warming, remember?

“Do you know more than Neil Armstrong, Jim Lovell, Eugene Cernan and all the many other critics of Obama’s space policy as noted in the article linked to my name? There are some strong and varied opinions here onthis topic and they aren’t all on your side.”

“The Space Shuttle flew someone I’ve seen, an astronaut from my home city, Andy Thomas, into orbit ”

Funny you should mention. We’ve had millions of dollars of hardware, jeopardized by astronauts being too “cowboy”. Multiple managers have stated on record that some astronauts will “fly anything.” It’s perfectly fine to risk your own life; I know plenty of doctors who smoke. However, it’s no longer just your life when you pilot a taxpayer vehicle, replaceable only at massive cost, in a backlogged schedule. Jeopardizing my hardware makes it my business; jeopardizing my project also means it’s my career. Someone who is not completely rational about their own life is not who should steer the future of my project and my career. For this reason, project managers prefer their payloads on cheap, simple, obvious, _unmanned_ systems… and have done so for twenty-five years.

Your ability to name-drop one astronaut on a personal (?), not professional level does not make me value your opinion on what’s cool. My speaking with managers and technicians (including those who state plainly that they ‘would never fly that thing’) makes me value what the past decades have shown to actually work. We know now.

“I have the right to have and express my views just as you do.”

Sure, except my projects, my career, and my tax dollars are at hand. Yours aren’t, just your feelings on what’s cool.

“So that means I don’t have the right to have and express my opinion? I don’t think so somehow!”

Until you pay taxes to the United States Government, your opinion will be just another internet post. And yet, you think your opinion is somehow “for the ages,” from neanderthals to monoliths.

“Yeah, ’bout that, y’know the collapse of the Soviet union around that time just may have had a litttle more to do with the Russian space programs woes, eh?”

Except, you have little perspective on that too. On seeing the Space Shuttle, Soviet engineers considered it breathtakingly complex. Within a few years, their Shuttle’s cryogenic engines had half the parts count of the SSME, while maintaining similar performance. Their thrusters were both easier to work on while being more efficient, and their crew escape system was better- it actually existed! There’s something about paying for a Shuttle program while invading Afghanistan that brings down large organizations. I recall you endorse expeditionary war too.

“I think the fact that they didn’t fly their Buran more than once was a great pity and a mistake on their part.”

And have you paid a single ruble in taxes to them, either? I’m going to say no. But go ahead, call up Popovkin and see how long you get to talk.

“Again, the ESA has less money, and, again, I think that was the wrong call.”

The launch industry disagrees with you. Huygens disagrees with you. Mars/Venus Express disagrees with you. Rosetta disagrees with you. SMART definitely disagrees with you, and MicroThrust, in particular, will laugh in your face. There’s something about hard resource limits that keep you on the ball.

“we should remember the good it did do. The space probes like Galileo, Magellan, Ulysesses and more that it *did* launch successfully.”

So the kid still gets a medal just for finishing the race. No, the kid gets a penalty, for weaving all over the track, and blocking the other runners lapping him. Again, you fail to note that having a fixed budget or other resource limitations forces you to stay focused, and stick to a preset goal. You fail to note this, probably because you love talking about other peoples’ budgets. You talk as if they’re barely limited, too.

The Concorde falls within your MO as well. You state that it was cool, and should still be flying. This is because you seem unaware that it was hemorrhaging money, and was hurled skyward by massive taxpayer subsidies. I’m going to guess you’ve never bought a Concorde ticket for thousands of dollars, and have paid few pounds or francs to their respective subsidizers. You have, likely, bought a seat on a boring, old subsonic plane. By doing so, you endorse and support _actual_ engineering, and airline operations, and contractors, and the rest of the aircraft field, uncool as it is. You just won’t accept that your notions of what’s cool don’t actually work in the real world, by operating profitably. No, that’s for British and French workers to buy for you, whatever the price.

It continues with the Shuttle. You think it’s cool, despite never actually having done any Shuttle or payload work. With that rationale, there’s nothing I can say to you about unusual interfaces, imposed safety limits, odd operating hurdles and outright operating gambles, unresponsive “liaisons,” shifting manifests and schedules and budgets, and other sundry red tape. All of which are much milder or possibly nonexistent on ANY competing launch vehicle. But hey, the launch acceleration is kept low, so the kid gets a medal anyway, right? And never mind the high acoustic loading, the dirty payload bay and prep area, the thermal extremes, and the abort demands… mostly inherent to the Shuttle design and operating concept, and not very solvable with any “Shuttle Mark II” that even resembles this orbiter.

You think it’s cool, because you’re a spectator seeing it through a screen. You’re not seeing it as the payload, which is the whole point of a Transportation System in the real world. You’re certainly not seeing it as a mission manager, just trying to get a 15-minute ride. You’re definitely not seeing it as a payload manager that’s looked into the competing launchers, and what they offer as standard, let alone optionally. You’re definitely not seeing it as a taxpayer… you’d give the kid a medal anyway, and it isn’t even YOUR KID.

Wernher von Braun was shown OTRAG, and became a backer. OTRAG had massive potential, and is valued as a consultant to private launcher firms to this day. And yet, the OTRAG vehicle (plus the similar Scorpius and Neptune) is about as uncool as it gets, so clearly it can’t work, right?

“Could things have been done differently? Yeah. Might that ahve worked better? Perhaps, who knows?”

Yes, and we know this fact quite well. I know as a launch customer. The project managers know, from over twenty years of past experience. The scientists know, from the usable data returned since about 1996. The boards and many shareholders know, from their birds operating successfully. The competing vehicles (including Delta again, and Atlas again, and Titan again) certainly know, from their launch backlogs, filled by managers, scientists, shareholders, and other launch customers like myself. You? You don’t know.

“Mind you, if we’re playing hypotheticals here, who knows maybe in a parallel universe where the Space Shuttle launched the Mars Observer things may have been different and it may have suceeded rather than being lost.”

The stated failure mode would not have changed on a different launch vehicle. It was inherent to commercial components, being flown by some amount differently from what their vendors had designed and built. This philosophy ran through the entire spacecraft bus; if the one failure mode had not occurred, there were others lurking within the design… who knows? Actual project engineers know.

“You can win every argument and still lose the war. The war is for public support and political capital. Win the war and funding becomes, well not exactly easy, but possible. Lose the war and watch the funding dry up. That causes all NASA space programs, worthy or not, to dry up and die.”

Surely you’re not suggesting the voters need to be lied to. Mars Pathfinder generated more interest than any comparable probe, Shuttle or no Shuttle. The fact that it went “no Shuttle” meant it generated more interest for _less_ money. The later rovers only reinforce my point. Meanwhile, the ISS contradicts your point. The ISS rationale was largely political, not technical, and yet I hear no Station buzz from the “lay” people.

Of course, if we’re talking about public support and political capital, Hubble has to come up. And yet, fourteen KH-series reconnaissance satellites (on which Hubble was based) launched just fine on Titans, before and after Hubble. Then add the KH-follow-on birds. The proposed Hubble reflight (Hubble Origins Probe) would have flown on an Atlas just fine, and in fact preferred it.

(And if I have to repeat it, human servicing has turned out to cost more than it was worth, which is why NASA, DoD, and private firms stopped designing craft to be human-serviceable. The DoD, NASA, and private builders have found that reflights just make more sense, and the space-insurance industry makes for a pretty convincing second/third/fourth opinion. Meanwhile the DoD has gone quite far with robotic servicing, and both NASA and private groups are trying to do the same. You don’t know how much robotic servicing military and civil groups are capable of now, and are planning on in the near future.)

“Meanwhile your argumentation is so deeply flawed that I will not address it in detail. Ariane was great… until ESA changed it. So why did they change it? JAXA was never great. Proton is great but “crude”?”

Congratulations, you’ve just demonstrated that you don’t work on rockets. The reasons for the Ariane 5 design could go on for pages and pages. Suffice it to say, Arianes 1 to 4 justified themselves through earnings from commercial-launch contracts, and Ariane 5 tried to keep the streak going as markets shifted naturally. This includes a shifting commercial-satellite market, the way launch-services contracts are now drafted, and the shifting markets for rocket technology and propellants. For instance, the various choices of fuels were an accident of history, followed by another accident of history, and the engineers coped as best they could. In contrast, the Shuttle accommodations did not change- you changed your project to fit, and you liked it.

Similarly, the Proton design is an accident of Soviet history. No sane engineer would design that from scratch, this would be obvious to a rocket builder. It was redeemed by key subsystem designers turning out quite good work- and now, the accident of Russian history clearing the books of certain costs. Engineers from Lockheed, Saab Aero, etc. didn’t hurt, either. Sane engineers are now working on its replacement, the Angara, which is completely different from Proton.

“You are still arguing over opportunity costs. The thing about opportunity costs is that we do not know how successful the lost opportunities would have been… because they died without funding.”

NO, I’M NOT, and we know quite well. I do not need to speculate between launch services, because as mentioned, Delta, Atlas, Titan, etc. kept right on flying payloads that had abandoned the Shuttle. And they continued flying just fine, for less money, closer to schedule, and with the occasional customer requests that one can’t foresee. This is not speculation, this is not argument. This is successful comsat dividends in the bank, military and TDRSS assets on station, science data in the archive, etc. Deep-space launches after the Shuttle Gap soon equalled launch rates before the Shuttle. Why do you deny these successful launches exist? It is the Gap-era missions that died without funding- my point, not yours. And why do you suppose they did not get funding?

“So the question is, Shuttle retained public support, in spite of 2 lost vehicles, with crew (RIP astronauts)… Why?”

Again, it seems like you’re claiming that the public needs to be lied to. Or that there’s some multibillion-dollar dance that’s put on, which you endorse. If so, you must support the Soviet Shuttle program to be consistent. The Soviet Shuttle design, too, was what the politicians wanted, not what the mission scientists wanted at all. The irony is that Zenit and Energia turned out to be the better launch vehicles, again by virtue of having no Shuttle to drag along. For the quite simple Zenit in particular, both the Soviet government and commercial markets eventually agreed- oh, the irony!

“There’s more going on there than just “a self-licking ice cream cone”.”

Apparently you are not aware of what Nixon (and specifically, Agnew) was sold to fund the STS, or rather, the STS we got. The cone goes deeper than you think. Meanwhile, Ariane keeps on signing launch contracts. DoD spy satellites and NASA’s TDRS birds launch just fine again, out of the public eye. Soyuz rockets and Soyuz capsules both fly, with little public fanfare, including for commercial contracts. Heck, Vega is the red-headed stepchild of the launch market, with public indifference at best, and still got about a billion euros from the politicians- do you know why? (Do you _really_ know why?) And Spiro Agnew is still an asterisk on history. Your political-backing argument is a weakness of a space program, not a strength.

“…there is a good argument to be made against Shuttle and you are not making it. It became a butt of jokes about how the mission control announcers would say, immediately after liftoff, “shuttle mission STS-99, restocking groceries and replacing failed toilets”, or some such.”

I don’t need to, the Rogers Commission had noted that argument just fine. The absurdity of jeopardizing a national asset on a logistics flight would later be shown in ISS assembly (or lack thereof). Far from being boring, the issue became an international incident. Is that the political dance you intend?

In that report, Richard Feynmann concluded “For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.” In other words, the flight record and the launch market is right, and you’re wrong.

@46. vince charles :

“For these reasons, even NASA itself declared enough is enough, and moved Mars Observer off the Shuttle. (Oh, and the entire rest of the Mars program too… and the Lunar probes… and even most LEO missions.) I suppose in your esteem, Mars Observer was simply not worthy of the payload bay?” – vince charles.
No, don’t be silly.

Meaning of course, that yes the Mars Observer spaceprobe *was* worthy of being launched from the Space Shuttle payload bay if they’d chosen to do so.

BTW. vince charles, last time I looked this was Phil Plait’s blog not yours. If he asks me to change my commenting style or not post on certain topics here then I’ll listen, you not-so-much.

For these reasons, even NASA itself declared enough is enough, and moved Mars Observer off the Shuttle. (Oh, and the entire rest of the Mars program too… and the Lunar probes… and even most LEO missions.) I suppose in your esteem, Mars Observer was simply not worthy of the payload bay?

No, don’t be silly.

Mind you, if we’re playing hypotheticals here, who knows maybe in a parallel universe where the Space Shuttle launched the Mars Observer things may have been different and it may have suceeded rather than being lost.

And that you know more than four consecutive NASA administrators… including a Shuttle mission commander?

Course not & I’ve never said I did.

Do you know more than Neil Armstrong, Jim Lovell, Eugene Cernan and all the many other critics of Obama’s space policy as noted in the article linked to my name?

There are some strong and varied opinions here onthis topic and they aren’t all on your side.

I’m on Neil Armstrong’s side, guess you ain’t.

@45. vince charles :

I could’ve gone easier on you. But your insistent, incessant postings pass judgement while not passing muster. You are asking to be shot down, again, and again.

I have the right to have and express my views just as you do.

Yet again, you show that you do not make budget decisions- and why would you? As an Australian, you _do_not_make_budget_contributions to NASA, DoD, or likely a majority of private space operations.

So that means I don’t have the right to have and express my opinion? I don’t think so somehow!

The Space Shuttle flew someone I’ve seen, an astronaut from my home city, Andy Thomas, into orbit -sverela times and delivered him to Russia’s Mirspace station for a tour. The Space Shuttle is an American program, sure, but it is broader in its scope and has affected and delivered joy (and very occassionally sorrow too) to people all around our globe.

The Soviets did, in fact, follow up with a mark II shuttle, and it helped grind their civil space program into oblivion for about a decade.

Yeah, ’bout that, y’know the collapse of the Soviet union around that time just may have had a litttle more to do with the Russian space programs woes, eh?

The Russians always suffered from having much less money than the USA. I think the fact that they didn’t fly their Buran more than once was a great pity and a mistake on their part.

ESA, with the benefit of hindsight, had the sense to ax their mini-shuttle. And even that was atop a launcher that had been fully justified on its own.

Again, the ESA has less money, and, again, I think that was the wrong call.

Again, click on MY bibliographic references for the “Shuttle Gap”- an opinion from two people who are actually qualified to render it. You fail to mention all the projects that got bumped from the payload bay, nor all those that never even got in due to technical or budget conflicts. You certainly don’t mention all those spacecraft that chose not to bother with Shuttle issues at all- including NASA’s own.

You are totally missing the point.

I’m not saying the Space Shuttle was perfect or that there weren’t some issues with the program only that we should remember the good it did do. The space probes like Galileo, Magellan, Ulysesses and more that it *did* launch successfully.

IOW, Give the Space Shuttles credit where credit is due.

“It flew the most people and the most different astronauts into space – the first woman – Sally Ride, the first African American – Guion “Guy” Bluford, the first Australian astronaut Andy Thomas and so many more.”
Again, you are not informed enough to note that not only was the Shuttle originally intended to have fewer seats, but the resulting manifests were loaded with “seat fillers”- crew who had work made up to justify their flight. The military was under less of this political pressure, and flew Shuttle missions with empty seats all the time:

So what? That doesn’t make what i write untrue or change the fact that the Sapce Shuttles did fly more astronauts into space than any other craft.

Once again, you miss my point and once again, you fail to acknowledge and credit the Space Shuttles for their successes and all the positive things they did achieve.

Are you some sort of Trojan Horse? Do you wish to see the Shuttle continue flying, or rather spending, so that NASA will collapse entirely?

Don’t be ridiculous and offensive – of course NOT!

What I want is to see NASA properly funded and building and flying spacecraft like the Space Shuttles but even better and more capable. I wish they’d built new Space Shuttles with revised designs and improved capabilitites able to take us to the Moon, Mars and beyond. I want the opposite of what you suggest – a strong, really well funded and directed and advancing NASA that is flying and building constantly with no long gaps between older model spacecraft being retired and newer ones flown.

@46. vince charles :

Gee, you fail to note that there were supposed to be TWO spacecraft in the International Solar Polar Mission, and that they were intended to launch in the mid-Eighties. Dual spacecraft would have given us even better spatial information (one north, one south) on the Sun and gamma-ray bursts. But Ulysses is what we ended up with, years behind schedule due to the Shuttle, while still burning funds all the while. Funds that could have started a follow-on, or some other worthwhile mission. You also fail to note that when a Hubble successor was proposed (Hubble Origins Probe), the project was not foolish enough to even postulate a Shuttle launch. You fail, yet again, to note that Shuttle limitations resulted in Magellan’s risky trajectory. STS overruns also contributed to the severe descope of the mission from Venus Orbital Imaging Radar- a much more capable probe.

You’re missing the point once again.

Could things have been done differently? Yeah. Might that ahve worked better? Perhaps, who knows? Were they still done as they were and should we acknowledge that the Space Shuttle did suceed in those missions? By Jove yes!

“There is a rather nasty scientific concept called “entropy”, which means that, if you don’t keep going forward, you end up going backwards. Stability becomes stagnation.” – #31. Peter Davey – ed.
There’s a rather nasty term called “pseudoscience”. You are engaging in it. Entropy has a specific technical meaning. It is not some sort of vague metaphor, as you are using it. Its specific technical meaning doesn’t imply what you think it implies.

It may not technically be called or exactly analogous with “entropy” but I think what Peter Davey said there that :

if you don’t keep going forward, you end up going backwards. Stability becomes stagnation.

is very true – historically speaking.

Look at what happened to China and Japan when they cut themselves off from the world until the world beat down their metaphoorical doors inthe 19th /20th centuries.

Look at how European cultures that explored and advanced scientifically overcame stagnant cultures such as the indigenous ones and the Ottoman and Russian (tsarist) empires. Or how homo sapiens spread and took over the planet whereas neanderthals and homo floriensis became stayed put and went extinct.

@45. & #46. vince charles : As you might expect I completely disagree with you. You are wrong and I’ll have a more detailed rebuttal of your erronous and insulting comments later.