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Shuttle Retirement In 2010 Under Review
An anonymous reader alerts us to an Orlando Sentinel report based on a leaked NASA email, indicating that NASA is looking at options to extend the Shuttle program. The fighting between Russia and Georgia has put a strain on plans to rely on Russian boosters until the Shuttle's replacement flies in 2015. Yet extending the Shuttle's life is no sure thing. According to a former NASA program manager, "We started shutting down the shuttle four years ago. That horse has left the barn." And NASA Administrator Michael Griffin has told Congress that if the Shuttle fleet were to fly two missions a year until 2015, "the risk would be about one in 12 that we would lose another crew. That's a high risk... [one] I would not choose to accept on behalf of our astronauts." And then there's the matter of finding the $4 billion a year it would take to keep the fleet operational. The Sentinel mentions that John McCain has called for additional Shuttle flights, but doesn't mention that Barack Obama has made the same point, as the BBC reports.
Not that we shouldn't try and make space travel safer, but the idea that loss of life is completely unacceptable I find very strange when we have no problem sending people who may or may not understand the risks into a myriad of dangerous situations where the loss of someones life is all but guaranteed. War, crab fishing, oil drilling, car driving, and on and on.
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I can deal with not having manned space flight for a few years while we get something more viable going. The shuttle is a piece of crap that has to be rebuilt after every mission. Instead of spending a ridiculous amount of money extending the life of a half-assed "reusable" space vehicle that costs more to rebuild every mission than a disposable capsule, we should put that money toward the R&D of a truly viable space vehicle, even if it takes years (or even a decade) to develop it.
I mean, NASA already has the program in place and already has participants. It would take a hell of a lot less than $4B/year to speed up COTS.
More info: http://www.nasa.gov/directorates/esmd/ccc/
When was the last time any NASA program was ahead of schedule?? http://www.nasa.gov/offices/c3po/home/spacex_9enginefire.html
Slightly better than russian roulette uh?
Seriously, you would think that the US would take a more "global" approach to space and start truly cooperating with other countries, say like uh.. Canada, UK, Japan, China, India, etc...
After all the race for the stars should be for humanity's sake, not just one country.
There would obviously be some economic advantages, that's for sure.
Russia, I believe would join in, if a real "space" coalition would be formed, I'm sure of that, if only not to be left behind in any form of discovery.
Minus 11 inches? Er.... congratulations?
I have a 2 inch cock you insensitive clod!
Kill the shuttle. Every year we extend the shuttle is a year that it's easier to make excuses for not having Orion ready. The shuttle was a disastrous decision from the start - a joke of a space program that made no progress in exploration, and provides nothing in the way of useful scientific research except inasmuch as it was used to work on the Hubble.
The sooner it is put out to pasture the sooner this country can have a real space program again.
Philip Sandifer's academic website
is the shuttle then the space program deserves to die and I'd be happy to take it out behind the barn and put a bullet through its head. The shuttle has accomplished absolutely nothing of value that couldn't have been done by unmanned boosters. ISS is a fucking joke, it's smaller than Skylab, a space station that we launched in an afternoon over 30 years ago. Let's face it, the manned space program is a bad joke that should have been shut down years ago. NASA should have gone to Congress and said "if you want us to have a significant and real manned space program then this is what it will cost" and if Congress didn't approve the money then NASA should have said, "OK, forget it, we'll do unmanned stuff.". Instead of doing that NASA has spent the last 35 years running a manned space program that has accomplished nothing except to thoroughly explore low earth orbit, kill astronauts in avoidable accidents because of the incompetence of NASA management, provide pork for various congressional districts and pad the bottom lines of bloated, stupid, corrupt and inefficient aerospace contractors such as Lockheed and Boeing. Fuck NASA's manned space program. Scuttle the shuttle and for good measure de-orbit ISS and let the US Navy use it for target practice when it re-enters.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
But it would be a tragedy if Orion replaced the Shuttle's current functionality. The whole point of Ares/Orion should be exploration, not the menial (and uninspiring) resupply of low-Earth orbit. That's where I'd like to see broader use of commercial options, like SpaceX, Blue Origin, Orbital Sciences, or an assortment of others.
The shuttle program is primarily a technology-jobs program. The science stuff they do in space (orbiting grade-school teachers, studying John Glenn's bones) is kind of trivial compared to the 10,000 high-tech jobs created in the USA, paid for by the billions of dollars NASA spends on shuttle contracts. How all that money would otherwise get spent, is what I wonder about.
I could have told you the shuttles will keep on flying. It'd be embarrassing for the Americans to have to rely on others to get American astronauts into space. The shuttles will keep on flying until another one blows up. Keep in mind that the Orion program will be years late and billions over budget. There'll be quite a gap to stop.
Contract PRIVATE sector companies.
The idea that manned space flight has never involved risk is a absurd concept. The first astronauts are heroes, simply because they took risks that seem crazy today. From the Apollo 1 fire to the engine that got the Apollo 11 crew off the surface of the moon had a 50/50 record in testing, and now a 1 in 12 shot is too risky? The current astronauts are much better trained, but they don't have the same drive as the Mercury/Gemini/Apollo crews. The American space program has become a semblance of its former self, kept alive on meager handouts.
IIRC the US brought Russia in on ISS support to give the Russian rocket scientists something to do so they wouldn't go work for the likes of the Axis of Evil(tm).
Which makes sense. Has that changed?
As for flying the STS beyond its planned retirement, I think estimates of its reliability don't take account of the tlc it receives. Those things get practically rebuilt by some very big brains every time they fly. I do respect his 1/12 failure probability it's probably a rigorous number, but conservative.
What puzzles me is why NASA chose to re-do Apollo with improvements instead of re-doing an improved shuttle. It's just odd.
Equine Mammals Are Considerably Smaller
I've been waiting for this to happen - NASAs exemption to the Iran Non-Proliferation Act expires in 2011, meaning they would no longer be able to purchase manned capacity off the Russians (Soyuz), which in turn means no American crew on the ISS. What with the worsening relationship with Russia this past year, getting the exemption extended would essentially be political suicide at the moment. Extending the Shuttles life is the only alternative.
According to Putin it was done to improve chances of one of the candidates, because when the international situation worsens, moves closer to a war, people tend to vote for a conservative candidate. Not for a change.
If it is true then it should not have been a surprise that there was the tension with Russia.
So the real reason then is not Russian politics, but the US presidential election.
One may write instead that due to the coming election it was decided to prolong the Shuttle program, because the world should have been shown to the voters with more defined scares.
Exactly. Then we'll need a government organization to manage the contracts. Let's call them, I don't know, "NASA".
Oh, wait...
Who precisely do you think actually builds, services and maintains these craft? Thats right, the OEMs and not NASA. The Shuttle was built by Rockwell, now maintained by Boeing. Orion will be built by private sector companies (Lockheed as prime contractor, with a whole bunch of others as subcontractors), Ares will be built by private sector companies (Alliant and Boeing as prime contractors) - so what do you propose to do differently?
Communism was never the problem. The problem was and is, the Russians.
I piss off bigots.
According to a former NASA program manager, "We started shutting down the shuttle four years ago. That horse has left the barn."
The horse got tired of pushing all the shuttles up into orbit over the years.
Perhaps they should have considered another power source.
>[the shuttle] did virtually nothing of merit in its entire lifespan.
Read the following, and then go read a book. If you can read, that is...
The shuttle has launched:
Department of Defense misions (we know of at least one experiment using the shuttle to test part of the Star Wars system) and an unknown number of intel satellites
the hubble telescope
numerous communication satellites (can you say cell phone/sms?)
notable basic research experiments in microgravity effects on materials science, metallurgy, chemical synthesis, fluid dynamics, electromagnetics, cosmic radiation, crystallography, fiber optics, power systems, mechanical systems, solar-electric energy, tissue/red blood cell growth and other life sciences, bacteriology, semiconductor thin film (can you say computers?)
lots of astronomical research (multiple experiments including Chandra which found some of the most important data in a century), and interplanetary probes like Magellan, Galileo, Ulysses
earth science (atmospheric research [can you say "global waming"?], ozone hole monitoring)
If you look at the overall federal budget, NASA gets a drop in the bucket compared to Social Services and Defense. The move to extend the Shuttle for a few more years is not a surprise. I don't know, I just get the feeling that if the manned space program ever ends, that will be it. People will start to ask, "Do we really need it?"
Shortsighted people have been doing that since day one. Its one reason NASA has such a small budget now. its hard to fight ignorance with science.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Maybe there's a site already doing this, but I think it would absolutely fascinating, based on the shared points of their philosophy, to see the complete list of "things Americans already know about their next president". Both candidates seem to have the same view on a lot of issues. It would be interesting to see, at a high level, the exact intersection.
Who precisely do you think actually builds, services and maintains these craft? Thats right, the OEMs and not NASA. The Shuttle was built by Rockwell, now maintained by Boeing. Orion will be built by private sector companies (Lockheed as prime contractor, with a whole bunch of others as subcontractors), Ares will be built by private sector companies (Alliant and Boeing as prime contractors) - so what do you propose to do differently?
A couple things:
* don't use cost-plus contracts, which reward waste
* Instead of specifying a single design and essentially giving one company a monopoly over manned spaceflight, do things like the rest of the transportation market and commercial satellite launches -- just purchase individual rides or payload deliveries. SpaceX , Orbital, and Lockheed Martin are all currently working on orbital manned spaceflight systems. As it is now, it looks like they're going to have to end up competing against NASA's Ares I. Instead of competing against them, NASA should ditch Ares I and just offer transportation contracts to give these companies the financial incentive to speed development of their vehicles.
NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Systems program is a huge step in the right direction -- it's only getting a fraction of the budget (total is less than a single shuttle flight) that Ares I is getting, but is already showing much more progress and promise.
it's called a vagina. Look into it.
* Instead of specifying a single design and essentially giving one company a monopoly over manned spaceflight, do things like the rest of the transportation market and commercial satellite launches -- just purchase individual rides or payload deliveries. SpaceX , Orbital, and Lockheed Martin are all currently working on orbital manned spaceflight systems. As it is now, it looks like they're going to have to end up competing against NASA's Ares I. Instead of competing against them, NASA should ditch Ares I and just offer transportation contracts to give these companies the financial incentive to speed development of their vehicles.
If... and that's a big honking huge if, from what I've understood, any of these become actual commercial possibilities then sure. The first one you mention is SpaceX and they haven't made a rocket reach orbit yet, far less deliver cargo to orbit, far less something with a track record and security record to fly people for many years to come. I realize what you want but it sounds a little like the flying car that's always coming soon.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Compared to the cost of the ground support and the space craft. Launch the damn shuttle. If it blows up, it blows up. I bet you could find plenty of Americans willing to take their place, even with a 1 in 10 chance of getting killed, in exchange for a ride into space.
Come on. To many people, spaceflight is worth the risk of death. If astronauts aren't willing to take that chance, fire them, and get someone who will.
This is my sig.
I would like to think I'm not a fatalist but it is my opinion that if the human race died off the Earth and galaxy probably wouldn't care much and may be better off for it. If evolution is to be believed then there will surely come something behind us that is better than we are.
Sure sounds fatalist to me. And the galaxy can't care any more than the sentient beings in it. As far as we know (re likelihood of habitable star systems), we're it--and if we die, there may never be another. And it it wouldn't be better, just empty of any thought, good or bad.
For now, we have to assume that it's up to us and there is no other.
It did virtually nothing of merit in its entire lifespan.
The whole idea that the shuttle hasn't done nothing is bull. The shuttle has enabled countless other projects and experiments which have furthered our knowledge of the universe. I suppose you also believe that there is no point to sending the shuttle to service the Hubble Space Telescope, something which has done a lot of nothing in its nearly 15 years of serviceable history. The partnership with countless other space agencies on MIR and the ISS I'm sure must have also been nothing to you. Puhleese.
Read Mullane's all too articulate book to get some idea of how screwed up NASA's approach is if you haven't studied already. This isn't about spending more money; it's about culture.
The ISS averages about 230 miles up, which is a reachable orbit for any number of possibilities. Just to quote Wikipedia, they list:
Visiting spacecraft
Russian (Roskosmos) Soyuz spacecraft - crew rotation and emergency evacuation, replaced every 6 months
Russian (Roskosmos) Progress spacecraft - resupply vehicle
European (ESA) Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) - resupply vehicle
Currently docked As of 2008-06-11:
Soyuz TMA-12 is at the Pirs nadir port
Jules Verne (ATV-001) is at the Zvezda aft port[39]
Progress M-64 is at the Zarya nadir port
Planned
Japanese (JAXA) H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV) resupply vehicle for Kibo module (scheduled for 2009)
American (NASA) Orion for possible crew rotation and as resupply transporter (officially scheduled for 2014)
Proposed
SpaceX Dragon for NASA Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (Scheduled for 2009)
Russian (Roskosmos) Space Shuttle Kliper for possible crew rotation and as resupply transporter (cancelled)
European-Russian Crew Space Transportation System (Soyuz-derived) crew rotation and resupply spacecraft (scheduled for 2014)
An additional spacecraft, the K-1 Vehicle manufactured by Rocketplane Kistler, was proposed as part of the NASA Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program, and was scheduled to fly in 2009. On October 18, 2007, NASA discontinued its agreement with Rocketplane Kistler after the company couldn't secure further financing and didn't meet a critical design review for the pressurized cargo module. NASA then announced that the remaining $175 million commitment to the project would be made available to other companies. On 19 February 2008, NASA awarded Orbital Sciences Corporation with the remaining $170 million to develop its Cygnus spacecraft for the COTS program.
If we had our act together, the first thing we would do would be to pump a billion or two into expanding the Rocket Racing people's planned races into more vehicle types, thus effectively funding lots of fast work to develop better technologies without having to manage squat. The next would be to have a thousand people or so taking every possible document about space-related technology, including maintenance protocols that NASA's got and bloody well put them into web-accessable PDFs. Will this mean a few more billion buying rights from aerospace firms? Yes. This is their final payment for many of those technologies; from here on in that tech is being open-sourced. They've been paid enough already and afaic they haven't done any too good a job of it.
We don't need yet another centralized, sixties-style project to develop a vessel. We need just the kind of diverse and open approach that the rest of out here beyond the defense/aerospace sealed up culture use very day.
I don't dispute that getting humans to space and back is serious business, but it's also something we've been doing for decades now.
We have plenty of possibilities. We just need to do a rational job of exploiting them.
It's all about the information. And what we do with it.
"After all the race for the stars should be for humanity's sake, not just one country."
Given nobody has even the first inkling of a theoretical approach toward starting to work out how to talk about designing a warp drive, and most physicists seem to think it's a priori impossible, that would be a rather slow race.
Did you mean "the race to be the second country to land massively inefficient but impressive looking human rated spacecraft on a bunch of inhospitable rocks that aren't actually useful for anything either militarily or economically, and haven't been for fifty years?"
Yeah, we'll get right on that.
Or we could keep spending money on boring little LEO and GEO comms satellites, which are the only actually *useful* applications we've so far found for space.
Reality != Star Trek, and the stars aren't necessarily ours in this or anyone's lifetime.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
Getting ESA to shoulder more of the burden? Greenhouses? I couldn't agree more. In theory. How do you suggest actually getting that done? How does one get the fractious, miserly, feuding Europeans to actually get that sort of things done? Or, for that matter, Japan?
You show me a battle plan and I'll climb aboard. But for now I'll just continue paying my NSS dues, encourage local kids to get into space-related stuff (spent about fifty bucks and about three hours on that in the past month), and stick to what I can see in front of me.
It's all about the information. And what we do with it.
"Nobody panics when the expected people got killed. Nobody panics when things go according to plan, even if the plans are horrifying. If I tell the press that tomorrow a gangbanger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will get blown up, nobody panics. But when I say one little old mayor will die, everyone loses their minds!"
How many rockets has the Ares program launched so far? Also, do you dispute Orbital and Lockheed's ability to launch craft into orbit?
The problem will be that the $4B or whatever will come out of Ares project. Gov't has been stingy with NASA and regardless of your opinion of NASA (I respect all views, honestly, I do work for NASA but have a lot of friends who have valid criticisms of the beast, it is a gov't entity after all), it is a lot more efficient, per dollar, than most government agencies when you look at buying power.
Sadly though it's underfunded when you compare to other agencies, and again compare accomplishments. That $4B, I guarantee you, will come from Ares project dollars, not new funding, if this becomes reality, which further sets back Ares. So we dig our hole deeper, and deeper, and deeper still.
People mention COTS - COTS is great, or will be great, when the COTS members prove they can do it. SpaceX is 0 for 3. I am confident they will hit space, but until they can prove reliability we can't just rely on them as the primary source. We have to see a few Dragon modules go up and dock with ISS, and come back with minor, if any, hitches.
It's inevitable. It would cost more to get Ares I to work than to make new shuttle parts. What about having 1 shuttle launch a year for crew transfer only & what if that freed up enough money for a shuttle derived lunar capability involving half a lunar payload on a shuttle & half on an Ares V.
Let's make some comparisons, non-military:
Fishers and related: 118.4 per 100k. That means you're a bit over .1% likely to die on the job.
Logging: 92.9. Just a smidgen less
Aircraft pilots & engineers: 66.9.
A '1 in 12' chance - if that's per mission it's 8.3% likely to kill you. Assuming 1 mission per year.
If it's a 1 in 12 over the 5 year extension, 2 flights a year, it's not as bad. Assume any given astronaut only flies once a year, that's a .83% chance of being killed per year, discounting all other possible work related accidents. That's 833 per 100k.
Per one site the rate for deployed combat troops is ~633 per 100k, back before the surge and the drop in deaths.
In other words - they're estimating that being a astronaut is 8 times as deadly as any other non-military job large enough to keep statistics. And about a third higher than serving a combat tour in Iraq during the worst point.
Now, I'm not going to say that you can't find qualified volunteers even if you fully disclose this, but considering the other costs of a failed launch, we might want to consider safer alternatives. Sadly enough, that's the Russians right now.
I don't read AC A human right
Who do you think bullt Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo? Not NASA.
NASA had much of the design work done in house though, right? Not really.
Get rid of NASA, and who 'runs' the ongoing space programs? Duh. I say keep NASA, for all its failings. The choice is NASA or just contractors.
No choice.
$4 billion/year to keep the fleet up and running ? Let's see... $200 million/day spent on the war in Iraq... that's 20 days of war to keep the Space Shuttle in the air.
How about pulling out of Iraq and adding a few Space Shuttles, a mission to the moon, one to Mars... and I'm sure there will be lots of research centres that will know what to do with the other $50 billion or so... maybe find a cure for cancer ? Or is it worth more to fight a hopeless war than to cure cancer ?
Some people's dumbness never ceases to amaze me...
Greglh...
The space shuttle was never properly funded, but despite this it proved a huge experience for space exploration. Too many of you take their work for granted. It isn't as easy as it looks.
The space station was the mistake. It should have been a go between station between earth and the moon so we could launch vehicles to it as it come and go between earth and the moon.
Oh and in case you didn't realize this the shuttle extension might be necessary considering Russia relations. They will be the only means to maintain it without the shuttle. So we will be outsourcing the space station we have spent the most on to construct. We need to move from our current rocket technology just like gas vehicles, but it looks like it will take another foreign scientist to move us forward just like our dependency on toyota and honda to move us forward in car technology.
Bad probability calculation. Dr. Griffin is quoted as saying that the per-mission risk of a fatal accident is one in 75, and that therefore extending the shuttle's service by 10 additional missions would result in an overall risk of "about one in 12". An undergraduate student of probability would compute that risk as about one in 8, which is much higher. [ Probability of no fatality = one minus ((74/75)-to-the-tenth-power), which is about 7/8. ]
Isn't everything NASA does basically contracted from Lockheed and Boeing already?
Or are you talking about the penny-ante private sector companies, the ones who haven't managed to even get a payload into orbit yet? How many years away from having meeting the Shuttle functional requirements? Twenty? Forty?
Comment of the year
You're right. They need to call it The Boeing and Lockheed rocket to remind people.
Feynman determined that the Shuttle's design flaws give it a failure rate of 1 in every 50 launches. Not 75, as is now being claimed. Meaning that the risk is actually greater than 1 in 12 of another crew being lost. Talk about extending its lifespan is ridiculous. This craft is in IMMEDIATE need of retirement, as two crews have already died in it. The continued service of the Shuttle fleet is unconscionable. What I'm reading is two presidential candidate douchebags whining that it's politically inconvenient, who don't seem to particularly care about the potential future loss of human life.
The Shuttle's obligation to the ISS is a fucking joke, and does not deserve superior consideration. The ISS is a non-issue, and means absolutely nothing.
Get or extort or steal full specs for the Progress. We've watched the thing resupply the ISS so it's debugged; get or steal specs or a working Progress from them and build our own ISS resupply vehicle. Then expand it into generic lift capability for the Moon site. Then strap 4 together and shoot it at Mars.
God knows the avionics (?) and computers would be better! Why not? Remember the Buran rip-off of the Shuttle? Or the Tupolev Concorde clone? It's our turn to steal some technology! Reverse engineering is fun and good for the nation! The Russians RE'd a B-29, the Chaika GAZ was a cloned 1955 Packard Patricion; they ran their entire launch center at Baikunur on a stolen 8-bit IBM box until well after Perestroika (1985).
Have Linux run Progress technology we "liberate" from the Russians. I love it. Problem solved.
Progress M1
Mass: 7,150 kg
Capacity cargo: 2,230 kg
Capacity propellant: 1,950 kg
Capacity dry cargo: 1,800 kg
What we need more than a new spacecraft is a new space agency, or at least new management in the current one. It took the "real" NASA just 6.5 years to go from Kennedy's go-ahead to the launch of Apollo 4. They had to create entirely new technologies, build the launch support infrastructure, create the communications networks, train the astronauts, everything had to be done for the first time from scratch.
The Orion is little more than an updated Apollo CSM mated to a shuttle SRB. Why should that take twice as long to build as the entire Apollo space program? It's practically off the shelf, they don't even have to build the LEM this time. All they have to do for the Block 1 spacecraft is get it into LEO.
If NASA can't get this job done in less than 5 years, outsource the job to someone who can.
The shuttle has been disastrous for real space exploration. It's only job is to fly to the international space trailer and keep that boondoggle eating up valuable resources. Some say the the shuttle has done some good by placing the Hubble in orbit. An unmanned booster could have done that and wouldn't have limited the mirror size to 2.4m. The shuttle costs at least $3bn per launch; the cost of the 4 servicing missions alone would have paid for four more complete telescopes. We could be doing space-based interferometry on three or four operational Block 2+ HST's right now instead of waiting for this one to die.
No, let the shuttle program die. Extending it will only allow it to continue to consume the majority of the space budget, delaying the introduction of new spacecraft, and probably killing another seven astronauts before this flying coffin is finally grounded.
There are plenty of existing proven commercial providers. SpaceX is not one of them at this time, but there are a lot of others. If NASA would hire rides into orbit on a basis which could include SpaceX or other startups once they get up and running, it would be a huge boost to commercial space launch.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
Historically speaking there has been 2 crews lost in 123 launches (121 success) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_shuttle [wikipedia.org] Thats about one out of 60.
So the risk doesn't seem to have changed. If anything they are saying it is less risky.
For a single shuttle flight the risk will be unchanged or change only a little. However when you are talking about repeated flights, the risk of the shuttle blowing up across all of those flights is cumulative. Let's use your numbers to illustrate.
1/12 = 0.0833 = 8.33%
...
1/60 = 0.0167 = 1.67%
This means a shuttle has roughly a 98.33% chance of a disaster free mission each time it goes up. But with repeated flights:
Flight 1 - 98.33%
Flight 2 = 96.69%
Flight 3 = 95.08%
Flight 9 = 85.96%
So by flight 9 using your numbers there is about a 1/12 chance of a shuttle disaster occurring. Might not happen at all or it might happen on the first flight. No way to know. But the risk is there. Incidentally with your numbers we should *expect* to see a shuttle blow up on average every 42 missions. So the real risk per mission is probably less than you are estimating - but not by much.
The Ministry of Silly Walks' Hop-Skip-And-Jump program which, for a mere 300,000 pounds, managed to get every school kid in the Thames Valley area skipping rope, and school, by 1982.
Trying to become famous by taking photos. Visit my homepage please.
Very true. Hubble could have been serviced by Apollo. The Hubble can also be serviced by Orion, though not as part of the Constellation architecture. An Orion riding atop a Jupiter launch vehicle of the DIRECT architecture could do it, however.
Where they only do not spend a tax money !
First of all, Mike Griffin is eager to kill the shuttle NOT because of the money that would free up (icing on the cake), but to burn bridges. You see, NASA was tasked by Congress with creating a new launch system utilizing as much of the STS infrastructure and components as possible, less the orbiter. This was to be a "Shuttle Derived Launch Vehicle", or SDLV. The idea being that the US taxpayers have paid a boatload to develop this system, and that investment shouldn't just be thrown away like the Apollo and Saturn capability was. Making an entirely new spacecraft and launch system would cost on the scale of a new Shuttle or Apollo development effort. There is also the issue of the massive, post-Apollo style brain drain that would occur if NASA killed STS and started something entirely different.
The problem here is that Mike Griffin REALLY WANTS the Ares V BFR, but there is no way that America will pay for that, what with the deficits and war and all. Furthermore, the Ares I and Ares V share NOTHING in common with the shuttle Space Transport System (STS), other than perhaps the orange paint that is used on the shuttle's external tank and (maybe) the steel casings used to make the bodies of the Solid Rocket Boosters (the least valuable components and technology of the STS, btw).
Congress still thinks that the Constellation architecture (Ares I and Ares V) is shuttle derived. Griffin and his accomplices have been misleading Congress for years to keep them believing this lie. Congress is starting to ask questions, however, and if there is a regime change in the US (looks very likely), then it is very probable that the Constellation architecture will get a thorough independent evaluation by some outfit like RAND. This will expose the fact that Constellation is NOT shuttle derived.
So, what is the big deal with shuttle derived? "Perhaps", you think, "Ares is the best that NASA can do right now". Fact is that there are other architectures that more accurately reflect the mandate given to NASA by Congress. One example would be Shuttle-C. Another would be an architecture developed by NASA engineers and contractors while off the clock (an open source-style project, actually) called DIRECT. Direct would cost a fraction of what Constellation is projected to cost, have lower operating costs, and be ready to fly in two or three years. The money freed up could be used to accelerate the development of the Orion capsule and even do interesting things like expand the ISS or do another Hubble maintenance mission. The Direct architecture could even support (relatively) cheap crewed missions to Near Earth Objects, like asteroids.
Griffin is aware of these alternatives to Constellation, and internal NASA studies have shown that Direct, at least, is far superior to Constellation. Being a true Shuttle Derived Launch Vehicle system, as long as STS infrastructure remains, Direct will be a cheap, quick drop-in replacement for Griffin's Big Freakin Rocket. As long as the shuttle exists, Griffin's BFR can be replaced by a real SDLV.
For this reason alone, Griffin wants shuttle dead ASAP. With all alternatives snuffed out, America will have no choice but to cough up the cash for his all new launch system, or so Griffin thinks. He is counting on no one noticing that Orion can ride to orbit on an Atlas or Delta Heavy.
Ares V will NOT get built (too expensive). If the STS is shut down without a reasonable (read: REAL shuttle derived) launch system in its place, NASA will experience crippling layoffs and a huge, post-Apollo style brain drain that will set America back decades in space presence.
The shuttle program needs to be kept alive until Congress realizes just how badly they have been deceived. The STS infrastructure and manufacturing capability and skill base needs to be maintained until its best parts can be rolled into a new, real, Shuttle Derived Launch Vehicle.
As soon as someone figures out how to make $ we'll be in space in the blink of an eye. Branson et al have got the closest. The next 20 years is going to see the start of the Gold Rush.
NASA is akin to the king of Spain sending a caravel to Cuba. Had its uses, long past due. It's only future is an academic institute sending science satellites up with commercial rockets.
This is a mod point of the +1 variety.
This comment is my opinion and does not represent an official position of Donald Trump or others I do not work for