The Next 'Revolution' in Space
April 12, 2006 — -- Twenty-five years ago this morning, the Space Shuttle Columbia lifted off for the first time -- with such violence that it damaged the metal and concrete of its launch pad.
It was the first of 114 launches, and along the way there have been many such surprises. Some were pleasant, such as the spectacular images from the Hubble Space Telescope, which was launched and serviced by shuttle astronauts. Others -- the loss of the Columbia and Challenger crews -- were tragic.
Today in Houston and at other NASA centers, astronauts and engineers quietly marked the anniversary of the first shuttle flight, designated STS-1.
"Exploring space is a hazardous line of work, always has been and always will be," said John Young, the commander of that mission and a veteran of six space flights. "But if you're going to make progress in aerospace, you've got to accept some risk."
"The shuttle has carried more humans to orbit than any other vehicle," said shuttle program manager Wayne Hale. "It is a technological revolution of the first order."
April 12 is a fabled day in space history. It is also the 45th anniversary of the flight that made Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin the first man ever to fly in space.
He made one orbit in his Vostok 1 spacecraft. Decades later Russia released records that showed he'd come close to getting killed as he prepared to return to Earth.
But his flight -- seen as a challenge to the United States -- was greeted with a surge of energy in Washington. Only six weeks later, President Kennedy committed NASA to land astronauts on the moon by the end of the 1960s. It succeeded in 1969 with the Apollo 11 mission.
Successes and Failures
But then the astronauts came back -- to a planet with more immediate priorities. Under tremendous pressure from Washington to cut costs, NASA designed the shuttle as a compromise -- an attempt to make space flight affordable and routine by creating a reusable spacecraft.
In the end, NASA's current managers concede, it was neither. The shuttles have turned out to be expensive and delicate. In the three years since the Columbia tragedy, only one mission has been flown.
But in fairness, many who worked on the shuttle program said, the agency pulled off something very difficult. The shuttles were asked to undergo myriad types of missions -- launch satellites, retrieve other satellites (including spacecraft from enemy countries in times of war), help build the space station, and act as an orbiting laboratory. Each type of mission puts different demands on a ship; combining those requirements into one ship made it astronomically more complex.
"If you look back over the program at what the shuttle has accomplished, it's pretty amazing," said Robert Crippen, who flew with John Young on STS-1 and went on to command three other missions. "The space shuttle, as all of us know, is a very complex vehicle ... but it can be flown safely."
The shuttle's anniversary comes as NASA works on its replacement. The new ship, for now, is called the Crew Exploration Vehicle, or CEV, and it was ordered by the Bush administration as a way to recapture the energy of the early days of the space age. Early designs for the CEV look very much like the Apollo spacecraft of 30 years ago; they show a simpler design that should be more reliable.
Already, according to some reports, its design is becoming more and more complicated. It's not expected to carry astronauts until 2014, and not take them back to the moon until 2018 or later. "The new crew exploration vehicle will come in late, over cost and underspent, and it will stress the agency to get it to function according to plan," said Alex Roland, a history professor at Duke University who was once NASA's chief historian.
"It will underperform," he told The Associated Press. "It will be just a shadow of what they promised and by the time it's done, critics like me will ask, 'What's the payoff in the investment?"'
But it also has powerful backers, such as Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson, R-Texas. Today in Houston she reassured a NASA audience, "America will lead the way back to the moon, and on to Mars."