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After Discovery's Launch, What's Left For the Shuttle?

Posted by kdawson on from the short-timer dept.

coondoggie writes "NASA space shuttle Discovery rocketed into orbit this morning and, despite some communications problems, is slated to dock with the International Space Station in the wee hours of Wednesday, April 7. After this mission NASA has only three shuttles scheduled to launch, though speculation persists that the program may be extended. NetworkWorld has a roundup of what the last Shuttle missions consist of and what happens next."

10 of 150 comments (clear)

  1. "...the program may be extended..." by John+Hasler · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It will.

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    Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
    1. Re:"...the program may be extended..." by khallow · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It probably will be extended a little, but not significantly for three important reasons. The budget game in Washington is such that you can fly the Shuttle or develop a heavy lift replacement (or exclusive to both of those, some sort of beyond Earth orbit program). Sure the US is a wealthy country and could afford to run many space-related things at once. But it's not going to. The extension proposals seem to launch the Shuttle twice a year, which aside from being a pathetic launch rate (which causes serious safety issues), result in massive cost per launch, somewhere in excess of a billion dollars per launch.

      Second, the Shuttle doesn't serve a useful role in any serious US space program. The only argument for it is ro provide "downmass" from the ISS (that is, returning mass from the ISS safely to Earth). All those other fancy capabilities are near useless for what the Shuttle is used for.

      Third, the supply chain for the Shuttle has been completely disrupted. The US already has shutdown the facilities for making external tanks. The SRBs probably will be shut down this year or next. And there's only three orbiters. Sure we could spend a bunch of money to restart that manufacture, but what would be the point? See the first two problems above.

  2. So after 28 years... by Darkness404 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So after 28 years, we don't have a replacement for the shuttle yet? In less than half the time, mankind went from sending metal orbs in orbit to landing a man on the moon. After 28 years in the US we can't even backport an older design and make a working manned spacecraft.

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    Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
    1. Re:So after 28 years... by gandhi_2 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Between 2.5 wars, a few major natural disasters, an economic mess, a heaping helping of social programs and agriculture subsidies, and the US's loss of the world tech leadership position....we just couldn't seem to find the time.

      Busy and Lazy can have the same effect.

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      THL phish sticks
    2. Re:So after 28 years... by Darkness404 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      ...Because we all know that the 1960s were just a happy time!

      Lets see, Coalition forces dead in both Iraq and Afghanistan total 6,411 in 2010. 58,159 died in Vietnam. The US has been pretty stable in recent years with the exception of 9/11, compared to massive domestic instability, the assassination of a president, the time closest the world has come to total nuclear destruction, the cold war, etc.

      Yeah, the 1960s were just a -great- time.

      Yeah, we aren't going to great in 2010, but we, and the world, are a whole lot more stable now than we were when we landed a man on the moon.

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      Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
    3. Re:So after 28 years... by RoboRay · · Score: 4, Interesting

      No, there weren't. There were exactly three more Apollo flights planned. Those are the three Saturn V lawn ornaments scattered around NASA centers. Those weren't models or mock-ups; they were fully operational, man-rated moon-rockets that could have been used with little additional expenditure. Nearly all of the funds that could have potentially been "saved" were already spent; the hardware was already bought and built.

      The program was killed not to "free up money" for Vietnam, but to kill a program that nobody in power really wanted but couldn't eliminate until it succeeded without appearing to spit on JFK's grave.

  3. Re:Reduce the debt via... by robot256 · · Score: 4, Informative

    They started taking bids from museums a year or two ago, and closed the bidding last month. Currently marked down to the bargain-basement price of $28 million each, including shipping, no quantity discounts.

  4. Re:accelerated decline by Dunbal · · Score: 4, Interesting

    We go down, they go down...

          But remember, the bigger you are, the harder the fall. How would the average Chinese peasant's life change in some form of global economic collapse? He would be on the verge of starvation. But then again, he's on the verge of starvation today anyway. Now how is your average US suburbanite going to take starvation...?

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    Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
  5. What's left? by SheeEttin · · Score: 5, Funny

    After Discovery's Launch, What's Left For the Shuttle?

    Discovery's landing, I should hope!

  6. Missing $2B experiment by Trapezium+Artist · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm amazed that they've missed the fact that the July flight of Endeavour is due to carry the $2B particle physics experiment, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), to the ISS.

    Spearheaded by Nobel-prize winner, Sam Ting, and built and funded largely outside the normal peer review process, AMS is one of the most significant physics experiments of recent years, but as much for political and sociological reasons as scientific. If nothing else, without AMS and its friends in high places, there would only two shuttle flights left: this one was added by Bush and ratified by Obama completely over the head of NASA's normal process.

    That all said, AMS recently moved from testing at CERN in Switzerland to ESA's ESTEC in the Netherlands for electromagnetic and thermal-vacuum testing, and is on a really (really) tight timeline to get to KSC in time for the July launch. There are good reasons to suspect that that flight will be delayed into August and perhaps even moved later in the year behind Discovery's last flight.

    I was on a VIP trip to KSC very recently and was thrilled to be shown around the Orbiter Processing Facility where both Endeavour and Atlantis are be prepared for their last flights at present, while Discovery was out on the pad. Very special for a space geek to be literally inches from all of those tiles on the underside of Endeavour and (sorry NASA :-) to have actually sneaked a touch of the undercarriage.

    Also deeply, deeply sad to think that this will all be over very soon: the shuttle programme has been an inspiration all the way back to the drop tests of the Enterprise back in 1977, even in the darkest hours. While I understand all the technical and financial arguments for stopping it now, psychologically it seems crazy to do so, particularly in the absence of any successor. End of an era. There were moments when I was pretty choked up on that OPF visit, I have to admit.