In Leaked Email, NASA Chief Vents On Shuttle Program's End

jerryasher writes "In a leaked memo, NASA Administrator Mike Griffin discusses 'the jihad' to prematurely terminate the Shuttle and what that means for the International Space Station. One implication: there may come a long interval when only our Russian Allies are aboard the Space Station. Add that bit of irony to your new cold war kit and then wonder why Griffin discusses why we wouldn't sabotage the Space Station, and how and why the memo got leaked in the first place."

Comments

Re:So let's stop faffing around

[cohensh]

Part of the point of this is that it takes an incredible amount of time and money to send something into space. Adding one more flight will not be a huge issue, because there is a rescue flight scheduled for the last current shuttle flight. But after that to add a flight would be a ton of work. With the knowledge that the shuttle program was coming to an end the ability to make the antique parts that the shuttle flies on is diminished, as no one makes them anymore. (To give an idea of how old the hardware is, the navigation system runs on something like 512 K) It would cost in the order of $400 million dollars per additional flight. Also, to speed up Constellation it would cost hundreds of millions of dollars per month, and even with expanded funding there is a limit to how fast it can be realized. In short, everyone is asking for money, NASA included, and lots of people question how important manned space flight actually is.

Re:My problem with the article

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, I heard that a retail 12 megapixel camera attached to a retail telescope can, from orbit, discriminate objects as small as fingerprints, and that advanced video analysis software can identify an individual by his gait if not by his impossible-to-mask facial features. Doesn't that make you wonder what the kind or money that launches stuff into orbit could buy? Could they scan you for cancer? Do I have your attention yet?

You heard wrong. First of all, a 12 megapixel camera has trouble picking up fingerprints here on earth, unless the surface and lighting are conducive. Second, with a 1-meter aperture, the THEORETICAL limit for resolution would be picking up something 6 inches in diameter. With a 2.4 meter aperture (about the limit for optics going into space. It's the size of the Hubble, in case you were wondering), the (again, theoretical) limit of resolution that could be achieved is 3 inches in diameter.

Both of those numbers are, again, entirely theoretical. That's assuming you weren't looking through ~70 miles of turbulent, dusty atmosphere.

So unless the US Government beat the laws of electromagnetic diffraction and didn't tell anybody...

Stephen Metschan said it best

[QuantumG]

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1188/1

Time is short. Senior NASA management is committed to beginning the destruction of the tooling used to construct the Space Shuttle's External Tank as early as next month. This destruction is completely unnecessary to support the current Ares 1 production plan because the floor space NASA plans to use is not occupied by the External Tank tooling. The only apparent objective of beginning the destruction of this $12-billion national asset next month, used by both the Space Shuttle and Jupiter Launch System, is to maliciously eliminate any competition to the current plan. In an attempt to put a halt to this unnecessary destruction of government property, the Senate version of 2009 NASA authorization bill sought to make this imminent action of the NASA administrator explicitly illegal. Specifically, the Senate provision directed the NASA administrator "to terminate or suspend any activity of the Agency that, if continued, would preclude the continued safe and effective flight of the Space Shuttle Orbiter after fiscal year 2010." Unfortunately, this provision, that cost us nothing to include yet wisely keeps our options open, was removed from the Senate-House conference bill just before the summer recess.

Engineering

[florescent_beige]

I'll take Griffin's assertions of context at face value and assume he thinks it's the right thing to replace the STS with Constellation.

He did, however, say the retirement of the STS was not based on engineering. I can see why he might say that.

The most incredible thing about the STS is the main engine, both incredibly amazing and incredibly problematic. The development of those machines as been long and winding. Here is a nice summary of the problems they had just up to first flight.

The thing is, work on improving those engines has continued non-stop since 1972, and finally their performance and reliability is in the ballpark of where is was originally spec'd to be.

Mainly due to new fuel and oxidizer turbopumps.

And now they throw it all away. I just don't get it. It's too Arrow-esque for me.

Why not re-do the STS instead of re-doing Apollo?