Can the US Still Lead In Space Despite Shuttle's End?

Hugh Pickens writes "NASA Administrator Charles F. Bolden says that the future is bright and promises that one day humans will land on Mars. 'American leadership in space will continue for at least the next half-century because we've laid the foundation for success,' the nation's space chief said in a speech at the National Press Club. 'When I hear people say that the final shuttle flight marks the end of U.S. human space flight, you all must be living on another planet. We are not ending human space flight. We are recommitting ourselves to it.' Bolden says within a year private companies can take over the process of sending cargo shipments into orbit and by 2015 industry can take over astronaut transport, freeing NASA to focus on the long-term goals of reaching beyond Earth's shadow. 'Do we want to keep repeating ourselves or do we want to look at the big horizon?' says Bolden. 'My generation touched the moon today, NASA, and the nation, wants to touch an asteroid, and eventually send a human to Mars.' A group of former astronauts and other critics have blasted the agency and the Obama administration for ending the 30-year-old shuttle program, once the cornerstone of NASA. 'NASA's human spaceflight program is in substantial disarray with no clear-cut mission in the offing. We will have no rockets to carry humans to low-Earth orbit and beyond for an indeterminate number of years,' write Neil Armstrong, Jim Lovell and Gene Cernan. 'After a half-century of remarkable progress, a coherent plan for maintaining America's leadership in space exploration is no longer apparent.'"

Comments

One Era Ends To Make Way For Another

[TooMuchToDo]

SpaceX's Dragon Capsule is going to be on display until July 10th at the Kennedy Space Center Air Force air/space museum, right down the street from the last shuttle launch (disclaimer: I'm going to see the last shuttle launch, and to see the Dragon capsule that has been to space and back). This is no accident.

The shuttle has been NASA's workhorse for the last 30 years, but its time for it to make way for the next generation of orbital launch vehicles. Goodbye Shuttle, and thanks for all the hard work.

Re:One Era Ends To Make Way For Another

[impaledsunset]

They are asking the wrong question. The question is "Can the US lead in space thanks to shuttle's end?" The Shuttle program was too expensive for what it actually brought on the table, and it was already too old. Replacing it with something like the Dragon capsule (and the other lifting capabilities in development by private companies) would only be an improvement. It's going to be more efficient, it will allow for more space project to be done with the money that would be saved, it will fund the private industry to develop space-faring technologies. The end of the shuttle will be good for the US space program and the human space program in general. Will the US lead? I doubt it, my bet is on China, but the shuttle going away is the biggest improvement.

Re:One Era Ends To Make Way For Another

[queazocotal]

The shuttle was not a shining example of the US doing well.
It was a shining example of how much pork you can pack into one project and have it stumble along and achieve a bare fraction of the aims at huge cost.

For example.
Do you know why the shuttle has large wings?
It's largely so that it can take off, launch a military satellite into a polar orbit, and land back in the continental united states, without overflying russian territory.

Needless to say, it's never actually needed to do this.
But the requirement to do so meant the need for SRBs, and the complex thermal protection system. This was so that the DOD would kick in some funding into the project early on.

A shuttle launch costs a really, really large slice of a billion dollars.

SpaceX's Falcon Heavy is currently selling twice the amount of payload to low earth orbit, for well under a quarter of the price.

Yes, it's not quite as nice, as you need a few percent of that to be able to push it around a bit to match orbits you can reach with the shuttle.

And you need a bit more payload sacrificed if you actually want anything of significant weight recovered.
But the shuttle has only done that task perhaps half a dozen times, for payloads where in many cases it was debatable as to the value of doing so.

The shuttle has basically been the shining light akin to the caver that finds his way by periodically lighting his hair on fire.

Not having a Nasa rocket != not having a US rocket

[phayes]

How is the coming hiatus any different that that between the end of Saturn V & the first Shuttle or for that matter the multi-year launch stoppage after Columbia? Why MUST it be a NASA developped rocket? Is it because parts NASA have turned into the aerospace work assurance administration?

I'm a manned space exploration fan but I have come to the conclusion that it would be better off for Manned space explorattion were Nasa to get out of the development of it's own launchers & buy from SpaceX or whoever else develops a reliable launcher without falling into the trap of growing a self justifying administration.

Joyriding astronauts != space exploration

[yesterdaystomorrow]

*Real* space exploration these days is performed by robots. Humans have the wrong senses, the wrong body form, and needs that are very difficult to satisfy in space. But we're very good at building and directing robots, and getting better very fast.

The shuttle? Absolute garbage engineering. Sold as the cheapest way to get to space, it wound up the most expensive of all time. It was supposed to be as safe and easy to operate as an airliner, but it proved extremely dangerous. It proved the capability of the USA only in the sense that no other entity could possibly have thrown enough resources at it to make it work at all. NASA has finally come to its collective senses and decided to quit "throwing good money after bad", a decision that's about 35 years too late.

Human beings will have a future in space when the resources and infrastructure to support them can be gathered, constructed, and maintained by robots. But we have proven beyond any reasonable argument that using human beings as "space laborers" is hyper-expensive and counterproductive.

Ending the Shuttle program is a good thing

[drgould]

The Shuttle and ISS are black holes in NASA's budget sucking all the money away from almost every other project. Everything at NASA has been secondary to maintaining the Shuttle and ISS.

The best thing that could happen is that shutting down the Shuttle program will free up budget money to develop better, cheaper, faster manned and unmanned space programs.

The worst thing that could happen is that NASA decides to create another white elephant space program simply to keep the massive army of NASA employees and contractors who worked on the Shuttle program employed.

I'd say manned space program is what is wrng w USA

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a nice PBS program called "The Astrospies". It reveals that a major purpose of the manned space program was to operate space stations to take pictures of enemy nations, much like the U-2 spy plane. By the late sixties, unmanned spy satellites were comparable to manned spy satellites. The manned space program then received major cuts. The use of manned spy satellites was classified in the US of course for a long time, and I bet major parts are still classified.

In the early 90s, Congress was ready to kill the fledgling space station, but thanks to lobbying and spreading out of pork, it lived. The Clinton administration tried to use it as an international relations ploy. $100 billion later, not much science has been done. What science will ever be done on the ISS?

The American public still doesn't know the original purpose of putting people into outer space, but the ISS and Shuttle consume more than half of NASA's budget. Would the average American notice if they disappeared? Does the average American even care about space science? The 40 meter European optical telescope is expected to cost $1.5 billion. How big of a telescope could $100 billion buy?

If the purpose of the manned space program is colonization, why didn't NASA build something like Biosphere 2 for experimentation? Why isn't NASA using Biosphere 2 more aggressively? How much will it cost to build buildings for growing food in outer space? People on Earth have a hard time affording housing. What makes you think they will be able to afford the much more expensive Mars and Lunar counterpart?

No.

[hackus]

For the simple reason, human presence defines empires and civilization and freedom and tyranny.

You can't flee disaster whether it be man made or nature made with robots.

The single driving goal should be manned colonization of space, and building the science and technology to make it happen.

If you really are a proponent of man made global warming, you wouldn't be wasting time like Al Gore and his billionaire pals proclaiming we have to pay taxes to him and his pals or Man Made global warming will doom the planet.

You also wouldn't be meeting in secret places like Bill Gates does to discuss how we can kill off 2/3rd's of the "useless eaters" because it is just too hard to put 6 billion people under your thumb to rule them.

If anyone is serious about what are future is, what we are and actually believe in the future of humanity in a compassionate way, we would have given 27 trillion dollars to start a new era or Golden Age of space exploration to tap the limitless materials and energy which space holds.

Instead, we decided to give it to a bunch of bankers.

Humanity is running out of chances and missed opportunities. Time and time again throughout history, we have had civilizations rise to our level and beyond and we have squandered the chance to remove the tyranny and injustice which plague our world. Instead, a handful of people end up torching the entire surface of the globe into lifeless soot, or just end up burning libraries because the fire looks "glorious" as entire human lifetimes are wasted in pursuit of knowledge.

Only to end up getting burned and having to be "rediscovered" all over again.....well....in between centuries or eons dark ages at least.

I doubt the Universe or God or whatever you believe in is going to let this nonsense go on indefinitely. The next Dark Age may find us in a bit of a disadvantage when we sit around the fire in the grass hut village and the elders talk about a time when men flew in the skies and walked like Gods on the moon.

Or when Men hurled "thunderbolts charged with the energy of the universe" and obliterated whole countries in a single hour.

And what will children say when they look at the sky at night and point out to the elders the new star?

Will they know that the new star up in the sky that night they notice spells DOOM for the human species as a rock 23km in diameter heads for Asia and wipes out anything larger than a mouse on the surface.

Too bad too. Because we have had many attempts to get off and stay off this planet and they have all been squandered by a few very foolish people who always tend to get in the way.

-Hackus

I had lunch with an astronaut last week...

[Vandil X]

Astronaut John Blaha was available for a group lunch last week at KSC and I attended. When asked about the end of the Space Shuttle program, his disgust and frustration was clearly communicated in his response. He blamed politicians Washington. When asked about life in a post-STS world, he said: "We need another Kennedy to get us (humankind) further. It doesn't have to be a U.S. figure, just any Kennedy-like person somewhere who can get the ball rolling."