Space Shuttle Transport System on the pad in prior to the first launch in 1981
Former moon-walkers address Congress last week on the future of the US space program and it wasn’t pretty. The overall gist was the US should maintain our lead in manned spaceflight, a laudable goal. But given the engineering reality, some of the specific suggestions they made could be judged misguided:
Cernan thinks that it’s not too late to reinstate the space shuttle. “You want a launch vehicle today that will service the ISS? We’ve got it sitting down there. So before we put it in a museum, let’s make use of it. It’s in the prime of its life, how could we just put it away?” he asked Congress. “Get the shuttle out of the garage down there at Kennedy [Space Center], crank up the motors and put it back in service.”
The shuttle was a prototype forced by budget concerns and too many masters to serve as a production spacecraft, and in that role it was proven dangerous. Occupants faced a one in 75 chance of death. That’s way, way too high for manned spaceflight to become routine, which was one of the primary things the shuttle was advertised and built. And it delivered those daunting odds at a premium price. If the cost of the two orbiters that were lost and the ensuing delays are factored in, the shuttle cost almost a billion dollars per flight by some estimates.
A smaller, second generation reentry space-plane intended to ferry humans only might work. But that still means things like wings and landing gear have to be paid for in precious payload from beginning to end. Ideally, our space program should run on a single axiom: what goes up stays up. As much as possible anyway. If humans have to come down the most efficient, proven safest way is in the smallest lightweight container possible.
Traditional, medium-sized rockets are going to give us the cheapest and safest transport into space in the forseeable future, reentry space-planes and lifting bodies could eventually play a role, but a great deal of work will have to be done before super sized winged reentry vehicles that serve as launch vehicle, high altitude hypersonic glider, mini space station, launch platform, space-truck, and many other roles can compete head to head as safely, cheaply, and efficiently as the 50 year-old Soyuz design our manned program currently depends on.
To hell with all these spaceplanes and shuttles and rockets.
I want the Beanstalk, dammit.
And where does he get the idea that the STS is “in the prime of its life”? Just ‘cos Cernan himself can whip kids a quarter of his age doesn’t mean that the elderly shuttles aren’t on the verge of falling apart. And getting spares for them is impossible without some serious retooling. Some of the original sub-contractors went out of business decades ago.
At least that’s what I’ve been lead to believe.
I think, am I am willing to be wrong, is the misinterpretation of the general public perception of modern spaceflight. Spaceflight is ubiquitous in our society. The use of a personal computer and the inter-net came from the micro-electronic revolution for the needs of man-rated spacecraft (e.g. complex tabulators and high speed switching systems that could fit into a suitcase or a child’s lunch box). That said, there was no inevitable modern life as we know it without the surplus of achieving ‘a man on the moon and safely returning him to Earth’
President Obama’s ‘been there and done that’ comment to preface policy directives for NASA is glib… because in reality a 50 years heritage of manned spaceflight has not rendered everything necessary to get to ‘the next goal post’. All the miles counted versus number of human missions is staggeringly small to the ambitions of ‘the next phase’ of ‘humans in space’.
I do support the Augustine reports conclusions and the ‘spirit’ of ‘what is needed to make safer, cheaper & better spceflight’.
Expendable rockets were ‘fast-tracked’ as the established system not because its the best way to leave Earth, rather in the competition to develop a countermeasure to the Soviets lead in Spaceflight; capability was more important than cost. The Cold War politics of the 50s & 60s dominated NASA directives as much as the ‘Kennedy Mandate’. The costs of delay from implementing a goal for new innovative manned space exploration may be more devastating than cancellation of the Shuttle. We have got to get beyond just spending our way to a ‘token’ presence in space and focus on actually closing the loop from Earth to the rest of the Solar System. Could you imagine if you could reach Pluto in 8 months instead of 8 years? And not just flybys, but actually doing proper, sustained exploration. There are a handful of companies right now, if financed and mandated, could do a lot of the critical technical work to ‘take’ that next step.
Companies need to be allowed to form ‘long-term’ and capital investment must be kept ‘inside’ project development… that means no more arbitrary cancellations because an administration changes either corporately or by National election. This does not mean OMB or the Justice department is neutered, rather you separate administration from industrial laboratory work. What is also needed is putting all you technical expertise ‘under’ one roof. Spreading the pie around to ‘make jobs’ is not in the best interest of meeting schedules or keeping cohesion from design graphics all the way to target objectives in flight mission. Companies should also be allowed ‘foreign’ clients and ‘customers’. North Korea should be allowed to buy a Bigelow ‘Sun Dancer’ without having to file an official ‘securities and trade’ petition with our state department. LLoyds of London should be able to underwrite insurance policies for Spacex launches. That may make some people worry that we are ‘negatively’ globalizing space technology, but I find it legally undefendable to ‘claim’ other people’s property when you have less than an uncontested 51% of ownership or liability.
As far as other nations who have no goals in space… maybe these folks should be approached because in reality, things that are going to make huge beneficial changes should have a lot of candor? I’m not really interested in being a space policy director or a stock owner in a Martian resort; rather I’m frustrated that one of the most important developments in human culture has stagnated, because provincial ignorance and political footballing has cost us from gaining the real legacy of ‘Apollo’…. that we should be farther along and more capable as American, Earth people and the human explorers that we truly are. YOU can’t get to LOw Earth Orbit with daydreams, but without dreams you won’t go anywhere either.