Shuttle Retirement Costs Divert Science Funding

FleaPlus writes "Although overall NASA funding is expected to increase next year, NASA has announced plans to divert money from its science program to help pay for the expected cost overruns for flying the Space Shuttle safely until its retirement in 2010. A number of science projects are being canceled or delayed indefinitely."

Comments

Painted itself into a corner

[Oldsmobile]

This might be classified as hindsight, but NASA has FORSEEABLY painted itself into a corner. The ISS is going to fail without the shuttle, yet NASA (or those that set policy for NASA) procrastinated with building a replacement for the shuttle for years and years. Now the Shuttle has been bleeding NASA dry, yet they can't abandon it without losing the ISS. Talk about being between a rock and a hard place.

They really need to make some hard choices. One possibility would be the diverting of funds to find out how to assemble the ISS with existing hardware, mainly Russian, as they are the only ones with heavy lift vehicles, though this might be very difficult. Another might be to try to reconfigure the shuttle platform as a heavy lift vehicle, thought that would take time and the ISS would be on hold. Of course the ISS is on hold now too...

The problem with the shuttle is, that a tremendous amount of energy is used to lift not only the required ISS part, but also a heavy hunk of 70's junk covered in tiles. This is not a smart way of lifting things into orbit.

I'm sorry, but NASA really needs to find a way to ditch the shuttle real soon. Considering the fact that the new Federal budget gives no hope of fixing the huge deficit, NASA money might be harder to come by in the near future, even thought they did get their money this time around.

Re:Painted itself into a corner

[m50d]

How about just sending ISS bits up on a US conventional rocket? Surely a Delta IV Heavy has the capacity to plonk anything we need up there, though obviously it can't transfer it onto the ISS as easily as the shuttle can. But it ought to be possible.

Re:Painted itself into a corner

[J05H]

Delta IV-H has plenty of capacity to handle handle a "Cargo Bay" adapter and still fly the Columbus and Kibo modules. The modules are each around 12 tons-15tons, Delta IV-H can theoretically fly 25tons to LEO. Also, the real question to ask w/ this is: Would the cost of adapting current mainfest to fly on EELV exceed the cancellation costs of Shuttle? At $4+ Billion per year, the Shuttle is definitely eating the rest of NASA alive. Station isn't in as bad a shape, IMHO, at least it is functional. Also, compare the cost of Shuttle (or upcoming CEV) to Soyuz: we now have a price for one six-month stay via Soyuz, $44 million. Compared to Shuttle costs, that should be sobering news to Dr. Griffin, policy wonks and all us space cadets.

For getting modules to ISS, I think they should actually use a Soyuz (with bigger service module and American CBM adapter on nose) to meet and tug the EELV-launched modules into the proper orbit. It's still pennies on the dollar compared to maintaining STS.

Josh

Wonderfull

[wakeboard]

Wow, so nasa is now like an airline I guess. Just trying to keep flying those pointless shuttle flights.

Kill the shuttle and keep the science, after all they are going to spend 100 billion dollars to get back to the moon and do nothing there AGAIN, no base, no telescope, no science, most likley just golf.

STUPID

Re:Wonderfull

[16K Ram Pack]

Since early shuttle launches which proved the shuttle concept, we've done nothing useful in manned space travel. The real science has been done by unmanned missions.

Manned space travel should be given over to the sort of missions being run by Branson and Rutan. That's where the real innovation is going to come from. Even if it starts off being for multimillionaires, it will become for everyone, whether for pleasure or science. Scientists reap the benefits of cheaper more powerful PCs that are often the result of research for commercial markets.

Re:typical...

[DilbertLand]

There's more to it than just keeping a spaceship flying or maintaining the basic science. The space program plays an important role as the "carrot" to inspire young engineers and scientists. The thought of one day going into space or living on the moon drives a lot of 8 years olds down the path of math and science. Most never end up working in the space program, but if all future engineers think they have to look forward to is designing braking systems at Ford (not that there's anything wrong with that) even fewer students are going to head in that direction. Throwing a few dollars at hungry people isn't going to fix the problem (especially when the problem generally isn't lack of dollars but 3rd world corruption). It's the ranks of future engineers and scientists that will increase food production and find cures for diseases...

Misconceptions

[tsotha]

Wow! Does anybody really believe this is about science?

1. NASA isn't about science. NASA exists to funnel tax money to specific congressional districts. The shuttle can't be cancelled because that would put too many people out of work. As far as Congress is concerned, well, if we get some science it's a great side effect, but jobs is the motivation.
2. For reasons given in the above point we will never pay the Russians for launch services. Space is not the point, jobs are the point. Congress would rather accomplish nothing with 20,000 extra American jobs than go to Andromeda on a Russian rocket.
3. Enough with the Spaceship 1 talk. It's nothing close to an orbital craft and doesn't lead to an orbital craft. What Rutan did, while pretty cool, is orders of magnitude less difficult than what the shuttle does. That's why SS-1 is orders of magnitude cheaper. SS-1 pretty much a copy of the X-15, which is a dead-end as far as getting into orbit is concerned.

Note I'm not saying this is the way things should be, but if you want an actual space program instead of a white-elephant jobs program you have to address the real problem. The continued existance of the shuttle program is a symptom of a structural problem in Congress, and that has to get fixed before you can expect anything useful from NASA beyond the odd robotic probe.

Mod parent down!

[Big Nothing]

Seriously; I hate Bush - and religious fanaticism - more than most people, but parent post is no more than a troll or flamebait! The current NASA situation is not a result of the current administration as it is a result of years and years of under-funding and beating the PR dead horse called Space Shuttle. Regretfully, NASA has no viable alternative but to keep the Shuttle in service, despite it being an old, inefficient, money-guzzling launch platform.

Re:Name change

[arivanov]

Vastly less capable for what?

• Putting people in orbit? - nope. This is what Soyuz does considerably better. It can reach higher orbit, it has longer autonomy and considerably smaller cost
• Putting payload into oribit? - nope. If you put only payload onto Soyuz (especially in the Soyuz/Fregat variety) it can blast it to escape velocity. Shuttle cannot. Soyuz launch cost is also considerably less.

The only thing the shuttle is good at is launching payload and people at the same time when the payload has to be delivered to the same place as people and possibly serviced prior to installation. In reality this is usefull only for space construction and nothing else which funnily enough is the program US insists on closing. Even in that case sending the payload on a proper heavy booster like Ariana, Proton, Energia or Delta 5 and people separately will end up being cheaper and safer.

This has been going on for years now

[Anonymous Coward]

The shuttle and space station have been sucking funding from other programs for years now. I recall reading an article in Aviation Week a couple years back talking about how NASA had eliminated all funding for rotorcraft (helicopter) research. Much aviation related research has gone the way of the dinosaur, needed to keep the space station and shuttle going. The first A in NASA used to stand for aeronautics, now I'm not sure what it stands for.

Real world calling, do you accept collect charge?

[n54]

No, this has nothing to do with ideology and everything to do with the fact that NASA exists in the real world.

That's the same world where you and I exist; even if you would happen to a billionaire (I'm certainly not one) there is always some level beyond which you have to prioritize, beyond which you can't have everything. Most people learn this as little toddlers however a lot of (or all) politicans love forgetting it if it can get them elected :)

In the system which NASA exists that power of priority is in the hands of Congress (mainly) & Senate, however in this case it is NASA itself which is rearranging and reprioritizing at their own discretion.

Yes, one can argue for more money to NASA (even if they've already gotten more). Yes, I support "pet" projects of my own (like the Dawn mission which is on hold, and that's just a start; if I started listing all the things I'd like to see it would keep me occupied for the rest of my life) and I would of course love to see them get a massive increase in support. But neither changes the fact of how the world works or that there are other things than NASA which needs funding and/or which a majority of the elected representatives across any boundary deem important enough to manage to agree upon.

Enter the current plethora of private space initiatives; it's the only solution because it strives and directly aims to be economically profitable (something which 1. simply isn't NASAs job and 2. for the most part wouldn't even be legal for NASA as they as part of the US government aren't allowed to for example hold patents).

To sum it up: if you don't expect "this kind of thing" from anyone and everyone, always, you're going to be constantly disappointed (and to no gain for anyone including yourself).

--
this additional sig includes a portrait of Mohammed in support of freedom of expression, feel free to reproduce it

Re:Manned programs are more important

[BarryNorton]

What immediate benefits? How about turning that around and saying: "living and working in space" is not something that's going to be done on any scale for decades, so what does it matter if it's delayed a few years when the funding could be used for research that has more immediate benefits? Rather than talking out of my hat I'm saying that as someone who's done some work at the Langley Research Centre...