Secular Pinoy

Feather, then I guess I can now go on with my thread.

Jackalope, I actually think that's a good idea. A good way for NASA to have the money for that is to scale back the use of Space Shuttles and to scrap the ISS. Then they try to master the planet traveling technology via unmanned vehicles and rovers. Of course, if a cheaper unmanned system could be developed by that time which can perform nearly as well as humans, then I guess we'd let them conquer the Solar System for us.

Bob Park has a few comments on the Space Shuttle in his weekly What's New article for the APS (though it's not yet uploaded in the APS website, it goes out as email first). It's his opinions, so a certain someone may wish to avoid reading this.

sullster

I voted "no" and here are my reasons.

Manned spaceflight is a hold-over from the Cold War when the US had to prove it was superior to the USSR in such technology. Back then we proved we were.

Manned spaceflight has gone from being something that macho fighter-jocks did to being what adventure seeking over-achieving scientists do. Why on earth have we come to a point where we can risk the lives of such highly motivated and vastly intelligent people who could do so much for society? Why must we send 7 near-geniuses up in space only to be killed in a fireball? Are fighter-jock's lives more expendable you might ask?, well in the pragmatic world of military type thinking, the answer is yes.

The science being performed on the shuttle seems to be silly. How ants behave in space and how roses smell is just absurd. Making those Phd. astronauts manage silly science experiments in a billion dollar death-trap is a fool's errand.

It is time for the private sector to take over space exploration. The well-heeled universities such as MIT and Havard could stop taking the governments' money and could put up their own for the furtherance of human knowledge. How about Bill Gates dropping a billion or two? I support unmanned craft such as Galileo, Viking or Mariner.

It is time to stop this expensive nonsense of sending humans into space and put resources into more orbiting telescopes and spacecraft which go far into the galaxy. Stop taking my tax money and burning it up. It is welfare for Boeing and other industries.

Just say "no" to the shuttle.

Mageth

The science being performed on the shuttle seems to be silly. How ants behave in space and how roses smell is just absurd. Making those Phd. astronauts manage silly science experiments in a billion dollar death-trap is a fool's errand.

There were around 80 other experiments on STS-107, so your generalization based on these two experiments seems a bit extreme, to me.

Master payload list

Fact sheets on some of the experiments on STS-107, if you want to learn more.

Note that the "rose fragrance" experiment was a commerical experiment, and thus for a large part, if not entirely, privately funded. It's one of many commercial experiments that have flown, and is an example of how commerce can benefit from space-based research. Read about it before summarily judging it as "silly":

Fact sheet on astroculture experiment(s)

NASA was directed many years ago to promote and help develop the commercialization of spaceflight. Experiments such as the "silly" rose experiment are the result. They don't choose the experiments, commercial endeavors do. NASA merely flies the experiments, and supports them during flight.

The "ants in space" experiment was an experiment sponsored by the space supplier SPACEHAB's Space Technology and Research Students program, one of many such that have flown, indeed one of several on this mission. As such, it's an educational experiment intended to increase students' interests in science, engineering, and math. Any "real" benefits to science that come from such experiments (and there undoubtedly are some) are a bonus. This experiment was proposed and developed by a group of high school students (I believe from Fowler HS in NY, with the help of faculty members and students in Syracuse University's L.C. Smith College of Engineering and Computer Science). Once again, NASA doesn't choose or design the experiments (actually, they select the experiments from groups of proposals); they fly them, and support them during flight. I'll be damned if I'd call such efforts by the space program as "silly."

By the way, the SPACEHAB module was developed by a private corporation (SPACEHAB Inc.) that develops and supplies the modules to support both public (NASA, educational institution, etc.) and private (corporation, commercial science, etc.) ventures in space.

Valentine Pontifex

Is the shuttle worth it?

I would want to change this into two distinct questions:

Is a shuttle worth it?
and
Is this shuttle system worth it?


I would like the U.S. to have a shuttle of some sort,
but the current system is by any objective measure
a failure.

The best way judge the current system is to look at what NASA promised and what it has delivered.

What we were promised was a means of transport to space that was fast, reliable, safe, and cheap. We have gotten none of those things. Lets look at this in detail.

We were promised a system that would launch in excess of one hundred flights a year. I am not kidding in the slightest that NASA had promised more flights by the time the first launch actually occured (April 1981) than the Shuttle has done in over twenty years since its launch. There should have been well in excess of two thousand missions by now. A space shuttle was supposed to launch in two weeks after it landed.

We were promised a system that would make delivering cargo into orbit that was far less expensive than the system of unmanned rocket launchers in operation when the Shuttle was proposed. In reality the shuttle is far more expensive way to launch cargo than unmanned rockets. That is why anyone who wants to launch a satellite goes to Europeans, the Russians, the Chinese, the Indians, to anyone but NASA. True the Shuttle can lift far more than anything else then NASA has, but that is because NASA has not bothered to develop the appropriate unmanned capacity.

We were promised a system that could go into polar orbit via launching at Vandenberg AFB. Admittedly the military was to be the main beneficiary of that but it was to be used for civilian missions as well. But a combination of the military realizing that the shuttle was too expensive/unreliable and post-Challenger safety concerns nixed this. Add this to the list of promises that did not happen.

Also post-Challenger a type of rocket that the Shuttle was to carry to launch satellites into higher orbit or out of Earth orbit was axed for safety concerns. This means that NASA's ability to launch large cargo beyond low-earth orbit was drastically curtailed. Fortunately for Galileo probe to Jupiter and the Cassini probe to Saturn they developed a work around that involved several years of gravity assists. Still it is not exactly getting the capacity that was promised.

Finally safety. Though NASA had been estimating a chance of shuttle being lost at one in several hundred (I have heard multiple contradicting figures). The figure I think that we must
use is the the actual frequency of shuttles been lost. I am sure some will argue that NASA was just unlucky. But then again I don't see any reason to suppose that NASA was just incredibly lucky to have taken so long to have lost two shuttles. I will be agnostic on whether NASA has been lucky or unlucky and say that the shuttle has about a 2% chance of not surviving a mission. Half of the original four shuttles have now been lost.

Now in a mission of exploration I would say that 2% of killing seven human beings is well worth the risk. Armstrong and Aldrin certainly had a far greater chance of dying by all accounts. And indeed in retrospect it is clear that NASA was extraordinarily lucky in the Apollo program.

But the Shuttle is NOT exploration. And the vast majority, if not all, the things it has done are not things which a 2% chance of killing seven people (or whatever the size of the crew of that mission is) is acceptable. No collection of 80 experiments is worth that risk.

Nor is the launching of satelites or other cargo worth a 2% chance of killing seven people. This is especially the case since if we had developed the proper collection of unmanned rockets we could have launched them faster and far cheaper without killing anyone.

Indeed about the only worth while thing I can think of that the shuttle has done that can't be done by unmanned systems is the Hubble Telescope repair/maintainance/refitting missions. Some might mention the repair of a satellite that was not working. But that was a publicity ploy. The simple fact is that it is simply cheaper to launch a new satellites via an unmanned rocket than to have this shuttle to repair them.

I would not mind having a space station per se. But the one being done by NASA at present has no real mission other than simply existing. A space station, well planned to fit a budget, can be well worth it if it is part of a long-term plan. In and of itself a station is nearly worthless. I don't see any plans a return to the Moon, going Mars, going anywhere, starting industrialization, or anything. A space station should be a mean to and end -- part of a plan for the future -- and not merely an excess to spend billions of dollars with no plan whatsoever to be a stepping stone for anything.

Why has this shuttle gone wrong? The main reason is simple. It is a one size fits all attitude. The shuttle was designed to try to please everyone, to do everything, to be the sole means of going into space for the United States. It is as if the best way to go is that every person should have an eighteen wheeler in their garage. That this is so unrealistic meant that the shuttle could never work. A variety of tools instead should have developed. A variety of unmanned rockets from small to large should have been made to cheaply get cargo into space. If men are not needed on a mission then they should not go. A shuttle could be developed to transport people into orbit when the mission needs people. This would be smaller than the current shuttle since it would not need to carry a people plus a large cargo. This would require far less thrust to get into orbit and hence smaller and safer rockets.

Another thing about NASA's attitude. Even if the shuttle did keep its promises, a next system should have been developed by now. Indeed serious work on the next generation of craft should be underway by the time any craft is put into play. If we are serious about going to space this must be the case. Even by the time of the first shuttle launch, it had been pointed out that you could put a unmanned cargo instead of the shuttle on the external tank/solid rocket boosters setup. And yet no work has ever been done on this or on other "shuttle-derived vehicles." It as if Detroit after introducing this years cars said that it did not have to develop anything new for fourty years.

And for the record, I would support spending money on NASA far greater than the amount it gets now if a sensible package of programs could be put together. A group of people who have no personal financial/job interest with NASA contracters (or administrators) with everything on the table should evaluate where NASA should do and go. A long term and ambitious plan should be made. We should get other nations on board. And then we should do it.

Easy Be

I agree completely with this. Why not just build a smaller fleet of spacecraft. Have manned missions to space but only when the benefits outweigh the risks. I just don't understand how people can think of manned missions worth the risk and the cost. I'm not implying all missions are worthless just to many.

Great Post VP

Starboy

I voted no, send money elsewhere. My reasons are as follows:

1) The shuttle was great for its time, but that was a long time ago technologically speaking. We need to spend money on developing a new fleet, not on keeping the old fleet going.

2) The major problem of space exploration is the cost of payload to orbit. Much of the money spent to send up astronauts to play Buck Rogers would be better spent on research that would lower that cost.

3) There is a place for manned space flight but NASA has gone way overboard. The ISS is premature. Without a more economical way to place payload in orbit too many resources are being used for too little return.

I am for manned space exploration but in proportion to our capabilities to perform it. At the present we are better at performing unmanned missions. I would like to see more money spend on propulsion research. That would not only unlock manned space exploration but would actually turn NASA into a real space exploration agency as opposed to mostly exploring very low Earth orbit.

Starboy

echidna

Purpose of the Space shuttle : build the ISS
Purpose of the ISS : give the Space Shuttle a destination

Friar Bellows

purpose of echidna: to post smart-arsed witticisms on IIDB
purpose of IIDB: give echidna a place to hang out

echidna

And how grateful I am !! The local homeless refuge tired of me long ago.

echidna

The problem with re-usable orbiters, is that one is forever locked into lifting off tens of tons of orbiter, with a good proportion of that mass contributed to by manoeuvering and orbital functionality, which ultimately comes back to ground anyway. Putting kilos into orbit is extremely costly in fuel and risk & re-usable multipurpose orbiters inherently increase both exponentially. Witness the shuttle, 80 tons for a payload of 4. Clearly a phenomenally ineffective use of resources and irresponsibly risky exercise, all for the sake of pandering to our romanticised and misplaced views of space travel.

So while the concept of large multipurpose re-usable orbiters is technically feasible, time would be better spent on simpler re-entry vehicles which simply perform the purpose of getting people safely back.