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NASA Considering Early Retirement of Shuttle Program
Rei writes "While publicly assuring the public that it has no plans to do so, leaks have indicated that NASA has been quietly investigating plans to get rid of the Space Shuttle as soon as possible, and finish the International Space Station with disposable rockets, even as NASA works on achieving Return to Flight in 2005."
.. But are the reusable rockets rated for manned space-flight?
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would it be cheaper to use disposible rockets to finish the iss? or are they worried about the possiblity of long term failure of the aging shuttle fleet...
What ever happened to the supersonic spaceplanes that they were working on that were to eventually replace the shuttle? I seem to remember reading about them years ago...
In a word: no.
Not at least until the private sector comes up with a vehicle that is capable of what the shuttle accomplished.
The X-Prize was a good start, but they are still a long way off.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Not necessarily a bad thing... the Soyuz does just fine sending things up and down.
NASA can focus on more far-reaching projects and crafts.
Still, I group up with the shuttle and will miss it.
My understanding is that NASA is going to be focusing on tasks in which there's no money (or incentive for private investment) at the moment. Basically, that means exploration. The rest (research, tourism) can be done privately.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
(except the budget, but that's a separate discussion).
Yes, but it's the discussiont that must be held before your primary query can be addressed.
Look to your own household for examples, do you, for instance, drive a car that is the embodiment of Saturn V era technology (such as a Ford Taurus) or something more akin to today's level of technology (like a McLaren F1).
My guess is that budgetary issues took primacy before you even went out car shopping.
KFG
But like it or not, I think scrubbing the shuttle program without a clear choice for a reusable replacement is a bad idea. Yes, disposable rockets might be more cost-effective in the short-term, but I don't trust NASA (as a bureaucratic US gov't agency) not to turn any project into a bottomless pit of money over time - even a rocket program built on a combination of proven technology (the type of rockets used for Mercury or Apollo missions) and modern tools would still carry the temptation to slowly inflate pricetags if the corproate architecture of NASA doesn't change - not to mention the everpresent risks of death due to, as they so coyly put it, a "mishap."
Disclaimer: IANAAOA (I am not an astronaut or astrophysicist).
Yes, you have a very good point. NASA and other space-agencies should be at the cutting edge of space-exploration and research. Personally I think this is why safety shouldn't be such a huge issue. The people who sign up for this know the risks. These days we have become too caught up in making everything perfectly safe, so that nothing ever gets done.
No, I wouldn't strap myself ontop of several hundred tons of fuel which is on fire, but there are plently of people out there willing it. Remember the days when explorers were heros?
printf("Goodbye cruel world!\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b");
This is a Godsend. The Shuttle was a tarbaby from the get go. In my opinion, they should just halt plan to get the remaining 2 (or is it 3) back in space and work on plans to put them in museums.
But what about all the skilled labor wasted? Well, there are multiple plans I've heard of to build a new class of rocketry largely based on the shuttle launch stack (or bundle). That whole workforce would still be valuable and employed and the shuttle derived vehicle could be capable of launching to Mars directly without pointless pit stops at the ISS, L5, moon or wherever: Mars Direct
Blaze a trail to the New World
This is cool. It costs about $3.26 billion total and yields amazing scientific results
This is not. It costs about $2.4 billion / year and kills a few people occasionally.
All the plans I've seen for L5 colonies assume a lunar base shipping construction materials.
Those people have to get to space somehow. Currently, it's cheaper for them to be born there. (Err, raising / educating them until they're useful may sink that assumption...) So yeah, a spacestation isn't currently needed, but it's basic infrastructure for further development.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
We need a space elevator.
in bed.
I hate it because it is a figurehead of a situation I dislike. Let me explain.
:(
The Shuttles we have now are pretty much ancient. They're not cutting-edge technology anymore, not by a long shot. On one hand, it's great to have a reuseable spacecraft that has a relatively large payload. On the other, it's so very expensive keeping our fleet that most of the money allocated to NASA gets spent on shuttle maintenance and not on a: exploration and b: Research and Development. Since Congress is not thrilled with the idea of giving up even more money for (a) and (b) to happen in earnest, it's the space shuttles that are holding us back (even as they are our greatest step forward to date). Of course, the X-prize was wonderful and all, but that's nowhere even remotely close to what NASA did with the shuttles 30+ years ago. They are still the pinnacle of space flight. It's just that it costs so much, we can't seem to move past it to something bigger/better/faster/cheaper
And that's why I "hate" the shuttle program. It's more frustration than hatred, but after a while, it still boils down to a crappy feeling.
I think a mix of craft, with different mission designs, some re-usable and maybe some not, some cargo and people haulers, and some pure passenger craft should be our new approach. It would allow for greater mission variety. IE. if you need a people hauler with camping capability, you get an RV, if you need a cargo capable system, you get a pickup truck or moving van, if you need just a small team car pool system you buy a honda civic.
In some ways I feel that President Nixon's mandate that a reusable spacecraft be used has hurt all spaceflight for the last two decades.
If there are cost effective and performance effective single use space craft, should they really not be an option?
A McLaren F1 is no more akin to 'todays technology' than a new Ford Taurus. If you wanted to do that example, something like, say, a Volkswagen TDi is 'more akin to today's technology' than a Taurus. The VW doesn't cost more than the Taurus.
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Vostok always went orbital, from the first lauch. It was Mercury that didn't.
Gagarin orbited before Shepherd sub-orbited.
The clearance system sounds logical. It is not. It is completely arbitrary. -- John Bolton
PLUS, IF ALL OUR MIL-IND COMPANIES ARE BUSY WORKING TO PUT US IN SPACE, WE"RE NOT FOMETING IDIOTIC, WASTEFUL FOREIGN WARS TO KEEP THEM BUSY. Think of it as UN resolution 35397, "The US Aerospace full employment act so they stop bombing the rest of us" act.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
You really would not want to build Saturn Vs today anyway. We can do much better with proven parts.
The RD-170 motors "Pratt already builds a development of it as the RD-180 for the Atlas V" puts out more thrust than the F-1 did and is a more modern desgin. The RS-68 "used in the Delta V" puts out more thrust then the j-2. Throw in LiAl structure "used in the Shuttle ET" and modern electronics "used in your desktop pc" you could have a Better heavy lifter than the SatrunV with not that much development and no new engine programs.
You would have to build a new launch pad but then you would have to do the same if you brought back the Saturn.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
What would really be a great thing would be for NASA to get out of engineering, and just let contracts for delivery of pounds or people to orbit. Let the vendors figure out the details.
Doing so would require Presidential intervention: In the beginning, NASA was a mainly scientific (barring political hoo-ha) endeavor which only became commercialized later in answer to ever present budget concerns. In the '80s, after the Challenger disaster, President Reagan again made NASA a mainly scientific operation when he officially prohibited NASA from taking any commercial contracts.
Interestingly enough, I don't know that the shuttle has ever been considered "operational;" that is, officially out of the R&D phase. See the CAIB report for details.
If the Chinese are invited into the partnership, they also can transport personnel aboard their Shenzhou manned spacecraft, whose second orbital flight is expected next year.
This is absurd speculation for a country that has recently hijacked an American surveillance plane from international airspace. The US has already balked at space collaboration with China. It is unlikely to make gratuitous gestures like this until they institute democracy and stop threatening to invade Taiwan.
As for retiring the shuttle, it would be moronic to do this without identifying the new launchers and spacecraft to take its place. The point wasn't addressed in this rather superficial article. I don't think a repeat of the 6 year stand down from manned spaceflight that occurred between Apollo and the shuttle is acceptable.
an ill wind that blows no good
Specalized craft are always the better option from an engineering standpoint, and usually from an operational standpoint. Unfortunately, there will be people who insist on evaluating this from a pure cost perspective, and to them an N-ship fleet of do-it-all birds will always look better than N ships of X different specalizations. Starting with a nominally smaller design budget.
I must disagree with the requirement for a reusable spacecraft has set back spaceflight. NASA went that route with Skylab, which despite it's achievements relied heavily unused hardware from the Apollo program. Yes, disposable manned rockets are cheaper on a per-flight basis at the moment. They are also a derived from ICBMs, which were mostly a mature technology by 1960. Reusability imposes more difficult engineering requirements, yes, but to paraphrase Michael Collins it also implies maturity. (He also likened the shuttle to the DC-1.5, which should say just how mature the shuttle really is.) Would air travel be commercially viable if the 757 was built so that it had to be extensively inspected and refurbished after each flight?
The shuttles may have been flying since the early eighties, but they have required extensive upgrades, refittings, and maintainence to keep flying. All of these point to a design that, for all of it's capabilities, is not yet technologically mature. Something NASA - and Congress - should have been well aware of even before Challenger, let alone Columbia. The fact that they've had several programs to replace the shuttle suggests that at least part of NASA knows this fact. All of which have, on paper, required less operational overhead than the shuttle.
A second generation shuttle, using prior experience and more durable materials from the start, should be more reliable and at least as capable. Ideally, to the point where it is no longer cheaper to use throwaway rockets. Maybe not as good as the promises on paper, but that's nothing new. The shuttle was originally supposed to have a manned, fully reusable booster stage. Which was scrapped because someone decided it was too expensive compared to SRBs. Yet we're still stuck with the same, expensive prototype space "plane" for carrying bigger loads.
I'm sure most of us know the Dilbertism of how managers will waste money on frivolties to make sure their department's budget doesn't get cut next year. I submit that part of the reason we haven't seen any progress beyond the design and prototype stage in reusable craft is the same kind of self-serving logic.
Skylab was actually a little weird. See, the US decided that they had to have a response to Russia's Solyut station. An idea was hatched to take the third stage of a Saturn booster (A Saturn IVB, IIRC) and modify the interior to be habitable. Of course, the problem was that the Saturn IVB didn't have enough fuel to actually get the entire thing into orbit. So Skylab was going to have to liftoff fuel of rocket fuel. This decision resulted in a lot of weird design choices for the station. Chief among them was the grated floor, through which the fuel was supposed to pass.
:-)
Before Skylab was ready for launch, however, a Saturn V became available from the cancelled Apollo missions. Thus Skylab went up dry, but the population had to suffer through Star Trek TNG's grates-for-flooring ships.
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So the Shuttle's been screwing up other programs before it was even built!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff