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How President Jimmy Carter Saved The Space Shuttle (blastingnews.com)
MarkWhittington writes: Eric Berger has published an account in Ars Technica about how President Jimmy Carter saved the space shuttle program. The article is well worth reading for its detail. In essence, around 1978 the space shuttle program had undergone a crisis with technical challenges surrounding its heat-resistant tiles and its reusable rocket engines and cost overruns. President Carter was not all that enthused about human space flight to begin with, adhering to the since discredited notion that robotic space probes were adequate for exploring the universe. His vice president, Walter Mondale, was a vehement foe of human space flight programs, maintaining that money spent on them were better used for social programs.
If it weren't for pussy weakling Republicans willing to sellout to Iran he would have had a second term and our great Nation would be on a solid progressive course.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Star Trek is fiction, you realize. That ship taking pictures of Jupiter right now? Kirk isn't on it.
Never pet a burning dog.
Since discredited by what? I think there might be some bias in the reporting there, because it should say "since credited by 4 decades of remote robotic exploration"
the since discredited notion that robotic space probes were adequate for exploring the universe
Hah. What? Robotic space probes are bloody brilliant for exploring the universe, and they've done far more of it than could have been achieved if we'd had to send a meatbag along for the ride.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
... held back usable, affordable space flight for several decades, this was one program that was not worth saving.
Unless, of course, all you care about in space flight is the feeling of awesomeness while getting exactly nowhere. Then the 250mn per "reusable space vehicle" flight might be well worth it?
“You’d have to be an idiot to get up in front of people and say, ‘I’m now going to trash $5 billion even though we’re that close to the finish line, and I’m going to quit human spaceflight.’
Carter was not such an idiot.
It would take Baby Bush to be that idiot and leave manned flight to the Russians.
Maybe Obama is also an idiot for not trying to revive a gutted NASA while the capability was still there, but he would have had to fight being blocked all the way.
The shuttle was a terrible program. It set the space program back thirty years by cementing in the public mind the idea manned spaceflight must always be far more expensive than the value of any possible benefit.
And the idea Carter is some sort of hero because he was too weak to say "Let's not throw good money after bad..."? Ugh.
In fact, when I look for any successes in space exploration (and no, low earth orbit does not count as "exploration"), all I see is robots and what I see is that many of them are wildly successful.
It seems the story writer is an idiot.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
half our ships were sailing unarmend
You may or may not have been in the Navy, but you are a lying bullshitter.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
... held back usable, affordable space flight for several decades, this was one program that was not worth saving.
That's obvious in hindsight. For those of us old enough to remember the shuttle when it was new I can tell you anyone who thought that about the shuttle at the time was mostly keeping it to themselves. Yes it was a dead end but it took a while to realize that. That happens sometimes. At the time the shuttle seemed like the next logical evolution of spaceflight.
Unless, of course, all you care about in space flight is the feeling of awesomeness while getting exactly nowhere.
Manned spaceflight has had tremendous benefit to humanity. The amount of technology development that has come from the manned program has been tremendous due to the challenge of the task. The information value of manned spaceflight is easy to overlook but it should not be. We've probably gotten more economic benefit from manned spaceflight than from probes and I would argue that the scientific value has been at least equal.
The argument of probe vs manned space flight is an idiotic one. We need both. Probes can tell us things that would be hard to learn or take MUCH longer and are quite economical for many mission profiles. But there are many things we can only learn though manned spaceflight and the technology and economic side benefits tend to be bigger as well. We need both and to present it as an either/or really is doing all of us a huge disservice in the long run.
low earth orbit does not count as "exploration"
Disagree. With the caveat that it is exploration as long as you learn something. And we've learned a lot from our activities in nearby space. It doesn't have the pretty pictures we get from planetary probes but the technology and economic benefits we get from spaceflight are almost entirely from our activities in low to geosync orbit as is virtually all of what we have learned about biology in space. Those probes we send to Jupiter and Pluto have their technology developed and proven in our low earth orbit activities. What we are doing there is definitely exploration unless you are using a needlessly restricted definition of the word.
It seems the story writer is an idiot.
Saying robotic probes are "discredited" is clearly wrong. They have clear and substantial scientific value and they account for a large portion of our understanding of our solar system and astronomy data.
The reason manned spaceflight developed better technologies is that more money was thrown at it.
R&D doesn't work quite like that. More money thrown into research does not automatically equal better results. It helps but the relationship isn't causal. The relationship is more of a correlation. You can throw a LOT of money into R&D and get very little to show for it sometimes. Similarly you often can get very good results without spending a fortune. What technology you get out of the R&D depends heavily on the problem domain. Some areas of research are more fertile ground for technology spinoffs than others. I have no doubt that more money thrown into space R&D (manned or unmanned) would result in better and faster advances but the reason manned spaceflight developed (generally) better tech had probably more to do with the problem domain and the ease of transfer to commercial applications than it did the budget.
Give robotic space exploration an Apollo-sized budget and we might see even greater technological advances.
We almost certainly would see greater advances. No argument there. But the thing is that the manned program necessarily develops technologies that are generally more transferable to human needs. The reasons for this should be obvious. Furthermore the Apollo budgets ended 40 years ago and despite substantially reduced budgets for manned spaceflight it has continued to be a treasure trove of valuable research and technology advances. I'd love to see both robotic and manned spaceflight go back to Apollo era budgets but to be frank that kind of misses the point. Whatever we do it is important to do both manned and unmanned space exploration. We would be negligent if we neglect one or the other.
Imagine the tech we'd have to develop to drill into Europa, make submarines for Titan, construct rovers that can survive on Venus, or reach other star systems.
And imagine the tech we would have to develop to GO to Europe or be in that submarine on Titan. You seem to have missed the point. I'm not arguing for manned or robotic spaceflight. I'm pointing out that we get a huge amount of benefit in the form of technology from our manned program AND our robotic programs and we'd be idiots to neglect either one. The benefits from each are different but I don't see one as more important than the other.
Pretty amazing what a fella can do with only 4 years to do it in.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Since discredited? Been to Mars lately?
Mars is a planet entirely populated by robots.
We built the robots and sent them there, but it is still a planet entirely populated by robots.
I will suggest instead that the problem with the shuttle was that it was kept in service so long.
In the 1960s, we went from launching humans on Redstone, to Titan-II, to Saturn 1B, to Saturn V. Four generations of human launch vehicles in ten years.
In the 1970s, we developed: shuttle. One vehicle in a decade.
In the 1980s, we developed-- nothing new.
The problem isn't that the shuttle didn't turn out to be as cheap and as reliable as it had been expected to be. The problem is that we stopped the practice of try something, learn what works and what doesn't, and then design something new.
You learn by doing. It's no flaw if something doesn't work as well as you hoped... that's the way to find out, to try it. But that only works as long as you can learn from it and design something better the next time.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
The problem is that you hit material and physical limits. That's the end of the space fantasies, you neck-bearded virgin. Look at air travel, same thing there too, a lot of development in a short period, then... coasting. We don't even have the Concorde anymore, you four-eyed sci-fi writing nerd.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function
I'm sorry you're so emotionally invested in dead fantasies and metal boxes that go into space that you can't see the reality that's right in front of you.
And in case you don't get it, here are those realities:
1) Manned "space exploration" is a joke, it always was. Vannevar Bush knew it, why don't you?
2) Space is a dead end, it's a deadly empty radiation-blasted vacuum with less in it than a vacuum tube.
3) There are no space spinoffs, the technology came first.
4) It's over, finished, done. The Space Age fantasies will never, ever happen. Ever.
"adhering to the since discredited notion that robotic space probes were adequate for exploring the universe." Uh, forgot a source for this one. :) Not only are robotic probes "adequate" but they are essential, since humans are fragile bags of water that can't withstand heat, cold, radiation, or lack of oxygen.
I wonder how much more knowledge about our solar system we would have if we hadn't wasted so much money and political capital on human space flight. And please don't tell me we are going to send humans on a generation ship to Wolf 1061c. (maybe frozen embryo's to be raised by an AI but that's it)
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
Reagan scared the crap out of a lot of the rest of the world.
Which only a fool thinks is a good thing. But there are a lot of fools who fantasize about other people being submissive toward them because they're scared. The problem is that scared people don't necessarily act submissively. They often respond aggressively as well.
Put in a Cold War context, the Soviets and the US were in a Mexican standoff, with both sides having their hammers cocked and fingers on the nuclear trigger. In that situation you don't want to alarm anyone, but that is exactly what the senile fool did.
That summed up the election right there, Americans didn't want another 4 more years of someone who could be attacked by a rabbit.
I voted in that election, and I remember it well. You capture the way people were thinking accurately, but not critically. Anyone can be attacked by a (possibly rabid) animal; it wasn't a real issue. There were three actual substantive things people were reacting to in the election: (1) stagflation, (2) the Iran hostage crisis, (3) the energy crisis. While Carter's leadership style might leave a lot to be desired, it's hard to criticize his actions in any of these situations.
(1) Stagflation was the result of his and Paul Volker's successful attempt to ward off imminent hyperinflation by a combination of austerity (reducing the federal debt-to-gdp ratio of 3.3%) and sky high Federal Funds rates. Economic growth resumed pretty much in sync with the reductions in Fed interest rates, in fact under the last Carter budget (Presidents in their first year govern under their predecessor's last budget). Arguably milder steps might have done the job without causing the recession, but the fact that inflation continued even as the Federal Funds rate hit 20% suggest that weaker measures wouldn't have worked.
(2) Carter's handling of the Iran crisis is probably what brought his presidency down, but it came down to this: the military was still dealing with the aftermath of the Vietnam war and couldn't execute the rescue mission successfully. Contrary to popular myth Carter actually raised military spending, from 282 billion under the last Ford budget to 303 billion under the last Carter budget. Yes, some big programs were eliminated or trimmed, but ironically operations and maintenance was a major area of increased spending in Carter's budgets.
(3) The second oil crisis was caused by the Iran Iraq War. In response Carter deregulated oil prices, which caused domestic production to rise and imports to fall.
In short, Carter was the kind of president people think they want: honest, prudent, and responsible willing to do unpopular things because they were right. Had two of the eight helicopters in Operation Eagle Claw failed instead of three, he'd be remembered very differently.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
how President Jimmy Carter saved the space shuttle program.
I like Carter. But I guess no one is perfect.
tl;dr: They told Carter that the shuttle would help spy on and verify Russia's compliance with arms treaties.
President Carter was not all that enthused about human space flight to begin with, adhering to the since discredited notion that robotic space probes were adequate for exploring the universe.
...what? Robotic space probes are most certainly adequate for exploring the universe. At least they are now. In 1978, they had just launched Voyager 1, which was a huge success, right? So it was looking pretty true THEN as well. Jimmy was right on the ball. Just how and when was this crazy notion of sending tools into space discredited?
But ANYWAY, the space shuttle program was a bit of a boondogle. It wasn't worthless, and it achieved a great many things. But all in all, there were better solutions and it never delivered on it's big selling points:
- It wasn't cheaper and faster
- It never captured Russian satellites and brought them back to earth for reverse engineering
Back in 1970, to win Department of Defense support at the program’s outset, NASA had redesigned the shuttle to launch national security payloads. Now, that decision paid off
...Why put the payload inside of the shuttle on top of rocket and not just put the payload on top of a rocket like before and after the shuttle?
The shuttle was never about science.
The reason for the shuttle was to launch, repair, and recover spy satellites. It was also used to launch and repair the Hubble (which is nothing more than a spy satellite looking up instead of down).
The proposed alternative to directed engineering for space flight is directed engineering for other stuff, not random engineering. I think space exploration is neat, but I reject the argument that it's uniquely justified because it's hard and creates spin-offs.
Curing cancers is hard. Building fusion reactors is hard. Detecting gravity waves is hard. If those things are more important (and they arguably are), then do those things and hope they accidentally apply to the space program.
What idiot would argue that the trying to cure cancer would be more likely to advance rocket design than trying to design better rockets? Why is the inverse considered a serious argument? It's just propaganda for people who don't think space exploration is neat.
-Dave
Agreed robotic space probes ARE adequate for exploring the universe. The only reason anyone sends meat sacks into space these days is to do experiments on low orbit space stations. Going anywhere further requires wasting money at a rate that only politicians flattering their own vanity can afford. The last time humans were part of the space race was in the 1970's.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.