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

[cbcanb]

The US modules for the ISS are designed with the shuttle's payload bay in mind. In particular, they expect the loads during launch to be applied from fixtures mounted along the sides and bottom of the bay. For expendable launches, you need to design the modules to take their loads from their bottom end. Converting a module would be very expensive.

If you wanted to, you could launch the module in a sort of adaptor that held the modules as they would be if the shuttle was carrying them. However, that would be heavy, to the point where even a Delta-IV Heavy may have trouble launching the module+adaptor combination.

Name change

[Belseth]

Isn't it about time we start calling the shuttle the Albatross? It was a bad idea from day one. Heavy lift rockets are more efficent and more dependable. Now science is going to suffer while we continue to throw good money after bad. If the Russians can get astronauts in orbit for 20 mill a pop isn't it more cost effective to pay so they can hitch a ride and dump the shuttle? In truth the 20 mill was paying most of the flight costs, third world economy with first world technology. They may not be able to carry the payload but they still have heavy lift rockets so even that could be somewhat resolved until we could restart a heavy lift program. The shuttle's safty record makes them a massive risk. Isn't this more about the government trying to save face and not crawling to the Russians for help than about science and saving lives? Before the shuttle NASA had a perfect inflight record. Now the shuttle flights seem to be a ticking timebomb.

#1 replacement candidate = 2 words...

[Zantetsuken]

Mass... Driver...

IMO most economical if all you are doing is heavy lifting/cargo - thats all the Shuttle ever was in the first place - a glorified bus to take up people and supplies. Go ahead and try to argue that the shuttle was also used for science expirements, the only reason that happened is it has a decent amount of space inside to put shelves with expirements in the shuttle.

BTW: previous points I've made here on /. as to why a mass driver would be economical is

One: no more buying million dollar per pound of thrust rocket fuel.

Two: If you make it an electromagnetic rail (a rail-gun) or a gauss gun system and power it with a nuclear reactor, you could sell the electricity being produced when you arent launching things, and so in the long run cutting costs and maybe even paying for the whole launching system (mass driver and reactor). If you are worried you might not get enough energy at once, do what that laser-fusion facility is supposed to use - basically a bunch of capacitators with a fast discharge rate - the fusion facility claims it only costs a few pennies (actual pennies, not just that it doesnt make a dent in their budget)

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.

Re:Space shuttle overruns?

[linc_s]

Oh, and how about the fact that SpaceShipOne can't even get in to orbit? I'm sorry.. but it always frustrates me when people go on how much cheaper SS1 is for getting to space... when they neglect the fact that it can barely carry any load, and promptly falls back out of space just after getting there. Wake me when they create an orbital vehicle...

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).

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