Save the Shuttles!

I personally think it is a mistake to end the shuttle before its replacement is built and tested.

In 1989 or so I wrote representative Pat Schroeder of Colorado a suggestion that the shuttle should be removed from the flight program and a program such as the Apollo, which is now Orion take its place. This was done for safety reasons because the shuttle launch vehicle was complex and unsafe. This recent failure, I have offered to assist with the modifications, and I am certain a new configuration is possible for the fuel sensors, but I am not happy with a winter launch. If my services are wanted it is best NASA use them now because I am not in good heath. Former High Reliability

As usual there is that nagging question from Ned, should we or could we keep them flying?. Aything to stir up the comment board and controversy.
The obvious thing is that it’s just plain bad policy to end one program before starting another. And it doesn’t take a Rocket Scientist to figure that one out! To depend on another government for any space related activities is asinine.
The very idea of “parking” an Orbiter at the ISS shows a complete lack of knowledge of the shuttle’s systems requirements. Keep the vehicles flying until the Orion comes on line! It’s not emotional, it’s common sense.

If NASA was smart (and they are not) they would buy about 12 of the very reliable and fairly inexpensive Soyuz launchers and use them for the period of 2010 to 2015. The big trouble with the shuttle is its bound to crash again and NASA just can’t afford another wrecked ship with a dead crew. Also, it would mean that over half the fleet crashed and NASA would have to endure the shouts of people who said “we told you so”.
No, the Shuttle was a good idea. But at four billion per year and only three flights then by any imagination it was an expensive boondoggle. Oh, the residents of Florida loved it. However, the Northern states were left with just the bill and a nearly semi-annual shot of a shuttle. Perhaps that “love triangle” is something that NASA could sell tickets for the public to watch. At a price of $4 billion for three flights then the big question is why are not some administratiors going to jail for miss appropriation of funds.
Last, some very rotten poster owes me a big apology.

The larger question has not been asked and certainly not answered: why, exactly, do we need a mega-expensive space program? To what end do we devote billions of dollars every year in national treasure – is it for the purpose of our national interest or is it just to keep NASA program personnel and contractors employed? I’d argue that the mission of NASA, if indeed it was ever a necessity, is entirely superfluous and the entire organization a boondoggle of the worst sort.
If space exploration is of any economic value, let private industry take a crack at it – without public subsidy. I think we’ll find there is no national economic value, and the only “value” to be had is the benefit to the state of Florida by means of enormous federal spending.
Kill NASA. Kill it now.

You know a nation, or a school, or empire is on it’s decline when they can no longer fund their art or their science. I agree we should not stop funding and running shuttles until we have the replacement built and running. As someone who has worked on subsystems for NASA I can tell you that countless techonolgies were founded on NASA developments that made their ways into commercial products with patents in US companies and industries. Temperature sensors that are now in cars, GPS, high temperature composite materials, high efficiency insulators, every conceivable product that has any techonological breakthrough invented by an American company I guarrentee you benefitted from grants and the push from either DOD or NASA. When you kill NASA you kill R&D in the US and thati s a bad bad bad sign. our R&D and innovation is one of the last bastions of our economy that still flourishes. If you think it’s all market economy and free enterprise that fuels it, you are sorely out of touch. Look up the grants, see who gets them, see what companies have the innovations that spur the new products that helps our economy, it’s all fueled from NASA or DOD. you cannot kill NASA without killing many many US companies’ futures.

One who assumes that we should “buy about 12 of the very reliable and fairly inexpensive Soyuz launchers and use them for the period of 2010 to 2015″ knows little and assumes a lot about the Russian space craft reliability. All one need do is to go on line and study the reliability factors of the Soyuz. There have been crews lost and injured and nearly lost (many times) over it’s history. The croakings of doom posted in the “predictions” of another lost crew and ship are not statistically sound based upon the number of remaining Shuttle flights even with a program extension. You are speaking without clear facts and baseing it solely upon bad assumption.

they should end it, you can’t prolong something like that, just because you want to, its not a political decision, its an engineering one. if the nasa engineers have determined that they can no longer operate the space shuttles safely after a certain date, then that’s that. they could build a new space shuttle, but that would cost money, to keep a new solution in the works and build a new shuttle. they should have never dumped their rockets from the 60s and early 70s, my understanding is they destroyed the plans to force themselves to transition to the shuttle program. if they go beyond the current shuttles’ lifespan, they are at greater risk of another catastrophic failure, which would be devastating to our space program, and national pride, especially when we have new nations pushing ahead into space, leaving us behind.

Vizorsdn, how is it going? When do I get my apology for your many posts against me?
Did you read that the poor taxpayer spent $4 billion for just three lift offs this year?
Yep, hide behind your engineering degree. However, if our government worked then a few program managers would be going to jail for mismanagement. The taxpayers spent 4 billion dollars this year on shuttle flights. That is $1.33 billion per launch and that does not include the sunk costs of the launch vehicle.
Anybody with any accounting back ground knows many of the engineers and project managers at NASA squander billions of dollars.
The shuttle is getting shut down. Conventional wisdom is the shuttle is dangerous (2 wrecks and 14 dead out of less than 140 flights), expensive (4 billion for 3 launches), and pointless.
History will harshly judge the space program when the shuttle came on line.
Spin that engineering spin all you want, vizorsdn. The bottom line is your side lost.

yes1fan I asked that question in 1986 while at Teledyne, and was informed it was a question of flight integrity that a shuttle had to fly under the tank for safety reason in the case of immediate break away or tank’s fiery mishap and shuttle survival. If that was a correct reasoning and rational I have zero idea. My source then was the engineers within Teledyne.

LB750, you’re talking about the X-33 test vehicle and its larger operational follow-on, the Venture Star. Yes, they had a big problem fabricating the large composite fuel tanks, which was apparently overcome by another company some years later. Good luck convincing the gov’t into resurrecting a program that’s been dead for a decade, though.
There was also the HL-20 in the early 90′s, a small passenger-only shuttle to be launched atop a normal rocket. A rather handy thing to have at this time. This was also canceled, an all too common occourance with many NASA programs. A few years ago, this vehicle’s $1 billion of R&D data was picked up by a private company, SpaceDev, for development. How far they are able to get remains to be seen.
It’s not just a problem of money, but also a supreme lack of interest, making these programs very easy targets for spending cuts, especially if there is a perception of development difficulties, and if the program hasn’t become big enough yet (lots of jobs) to make pulling the plug politically painful. Canceling a “troubled” or “unnecessary” program makes for a good brief headline, which is quickly forgotten anyhow by the the public at large. Why worry about the future when you can slightly help your own present?
Just keeping Aries/Orion funded by the next President and Congress will be hard enough, unfortunately. NASA will be lucky to keep that plan intact…
Matt

re: “For us to be totally putting the goal of getting our astronauts into space in the hands of the Russians, I think, is very, very bad foreign policy.”
As I recall, it was the Russian’s Proton rocket that could have been used to rescue astronauts aboard Columbia. I’m unclear on why we — that is, American politicians are placing so much importance on the origin of the vehicle when, as I understand it, is has been made available to save American lives? These are integrated systems. The minds behind both the ELV and STS components that make up the technology that make up the systems should be reflecting the spirit the Apollo lunar landing: We came in peace for all mankind (today, “all kind.”) Kind of a Thomas Jefferson ideaology early on — don’t you think? Apparently, four score and seven years and a couple of centuries later or so later — we need to be reminded of the politicians roll in “system integration.”