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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 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/
I think suspending manned space flight for that long would be a disaster. At some point, if we have no space flights going on, the new shuttle replacement becomes "restarting manned space flight" rather than "continuing our manned presence in space". Congress will be a lot more likely to simply cut the program entirely if it's seen as starting an entirely new program rather than an evolution of our existing, and continuing, efforts.
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?" If there is not something to replace the shuttle, especially if it is 5+ years from flying, politicians and people will start to ask, "What has NASA done lately? Oh just sink billions into that new rocket that is still in development and has another delay to 2018." So the budget shrinks from 15B a year to 10B or stays the same @ 15B a year, yet 15B today will not buy the same amount of stuff next year, things continue to get delayed and eventually, it's the end of the manned space program.
The shuttle is far from perfect, but it's all we got. And until that something better comes along...
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Agreed. Besides, that 4 billion could be spent on extending the war in Iraq by another 1.6667 weeks!
Because it's there. It's there, and it's big and unknown, and we're humans. And if we don't explore every bit of space that we can get to, we'll sit around itching to go. We go to space for the same reason we went to the south pole, or why we go up mountains that haven't been climbed yet. Because they're there, and we can.
The insidious lie of the modern space program is that there's more to it than that. That space stations and endless low earth orbit missions provide some sort of useful science, and are worth doing. They're not. The point of space is the unknown. So yes. Take out the solar system. Go to every frozen rock we can reach, and start thinking about the frozen rocks we can't. Because they're there. They're places people have never been. And fundamental to the human spirit is the sense that something that seems utterly crazy and impossible is the most important thing there is to do.
Philip Sandifer's academic website
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.
Skylab massed 77,088kg; the ISS at present masses 277,598kg, and if ever completed it will mass 419,600kg.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
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.
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?
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.
Yeah, but Skylab was made out of the much less dense aluminum, while the ISS is made out of lead to shield against cosmic radiation. So technically, the guy was right, the ISS is smaller than Skylab,
Oh, FFS.
Skylab's living volume: 10,000 sqft
ISS living volume: 15,000 sqft
(From Wikipedia. Admittedly, not as big a difference as I had expected)
I was going to make a joke in reply to GP about "oh, but it weighs virtually the same" but instead I had to reply to this silly comment. I hope you're happy.
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!