Is It a Mistake to End the U.S. Shuttle Program?

As far as the US space shuttle program itself, I think this spectacularly successful program has run its course. Thirty years is an astoundingly long operations time for any supersonic aircraft let alone one that transitions into and back from space. It is time to retire the space shuttle. I am certain that individuals inside American government and NASA tried to make a smooth transition to another launch vehicle, but clearly this transition has been fumbled. There are already other launch methods, Sea Launch and Arianespace come first to my mind, that can get hardware into orbit. There was also the failed attempt of the Conestoga program. So clearly people have anticipated the shuttle's end and not relied on US government funded launch platforms for the use of space. But it is time to end and celebrate the shuttle program.

A CR4 member (AH, I think) said a few days ago the reason private space exploration is not pursued is, there is no money to be made.

While this opinion has some truth, we don't know what we don't know. That is to say it is called space exploration, not exploitation. What might we stumble across? If the discovery missions end (as they have for now), our discovery session for this time in history ends.. But, what are we missing? What undiscovered wonders are out there somewhere, just waiting...

But the coin has two sides: we are out of money... broke, busted, upside-down. Are these budget cuts Antiscience, or survival?

So, the questions: "Should the U.S. forfeit the promise of this program?" No. "Can it afford to give up this source of knowledge?" Is space exploration still a source of knowledge? We don't know if there is more to be learned. It is possible we already know all there is to be learned... but I doubt that very seriously.

O'B will find something else to spend the money on.

Well, the bulk of our scientific discoveries come from our robotic probes. The remainder is almost entirely the ISS.

What the Shuttle had provided was lift capability to/from the ISS.

You wrote, "Are these budget cuts Antiscience, or survival?"

They are neither. It is simply a change of public consciousness that has its roots in the early 1970s (Automatized Individualism) and has persisted in one form or another through today.

well it seems, mistake or not, that USA doesn't have much money to spend in the coming years on space exploration.

I think the way to go would be that a few countries would combine resources to make a new "space shuttle", i am still waiting for the type that lifts of like a normal plane and then switches to ram/scram jet (and boosters) to go out to space.

(or finally use the engines from the UFO in Area51 )

I fear we are declining from excellence and descending into mediocrity where our gaze will turn from the heavens to the masses of ignorant humanity in our country waiting on their government check. They vote, there's more of them than those of us who are interested in space exploration. Heaven help us! We'll have to watch the news to see what China, Japan and India discover in space.

there is some merit to the waiting game as China, Japan and Korea has taught us.

Let others expand their resources and at the right moment, steal the technology and produce something better. In the meanwhile, educate and train our generation to be forerunners of the new space age...

Considering the profligate waste the government is practicing in a number of areas, it is telling, that the few billions per year (with excellent returns) cannot be found. Example: government urged high speed rail in a few parts of the country with subsidies of 20 (or50) Billions total. As it was declined, Washington has blown it on who knows what within 3 weeks. It would pay for 3 - 10 years heavy lifting.

Considering the profligate waste the government is practicing in a number of areas, it is telling, that the few billions per year (with excellent returns) cannot be found

Sell the Post Office to private enterprise. That is at least an 8 billion $ savings/year.

Ron

Bad example Ronclarke, I do believe the post office is self supporting, not tax funded, and is not supposed to be profitable. It does fall under congress' purview though, so how can you expect it to be well run? Try to post a simple greeting card via any private shipper for under $1.00, though.

I heard a Republican on the radio yesterday say the TARP program had turned out to be one of the most profitable Gov't programs ever, returning more money than it spent. There's something you won't hear much about.

NASA, and other Government science programs do not make returns (money) for the gov't, but feeds potential technology opportunities into the private sector. Newly discovered technology from Gov't programs that is not classified is (or should be) in the public domain and available to business entrepreneurs. Any one else get "NASA Tech Briefs"? How do you measure those kind of returns? Why do so many insist on thinking about Gov't as if it is a business entity when it is not and should not be?

The mistake with the shuttle, and probably lots of other programs, is lack of follow up to grow the technology, or to take the next logical step in development. The shuttle program missed a lot of its original goals, but was a huge achievement anyway. It should have been a stepping stone to deeper space exploration and the utility vehicle it was intended to be. But, some politician yelled "waste" (probably to help justify more tax cuts for his campaign contributors), and the political attention span is too short and the political will too weak, and 30 years later we're hitchin' rides to an International Space Station built on the strength of US Space Program with the loser of the cold war.

Sad, ain't it.

People who say that space exploration would not pay for itself have no imagination whatsoever....

and for private enterprise, there is a phenomenal opportunity on the moon.

just think about this plus this plus this plus these... and I'm pretty sure we can find a way to make money.

hey I'm just getting started. 1/6 gravity and rocket powered monster trucks.. i can't wait! the moon is just waiting to become the world's solar system's best racetrack!

Chris

"I'm pretty sure we can find a way to make money"

Just sell rides to billionaires like Oprah. If she doesn't come back, well she knew the risks!

I think that it would have been great idea to have pooled all the good parts of the shuttle, modernised and updated the rest and built a new shuttle, bigger, better and lighter......One that the "turnaround" took less time and less money.

No other country can "really" do it, the Russian copy only flew once into space, I do believe unmanned, but I am not positive about that.....

Alone the computer systems on the old shuttle were so outdated (386 technology I believe), that a lot of weight and size could be saved. The tiles could probably be improved upon and lightened with modern knowledge.....

I couldn't agree more. The shuttle was maybe a bit ambitious for its time and never lived up to the claims in the brochure. I'm a sad to see it retired, but we've been there and done that. I don't really think there is much 'science' left in going back to low earth orbit for the ~200th time. We are at a point when NASA should focus its energy and money (what there is of it) on robotic missions to explore places we may eventually go (asteroids, Mars, etc.), and let the private sector figure out how to operate the low orbit bus system.

Wow I'm jealous. I never got to see a launch in person, but I must have watched most of them on the tube. Never got to hear one either. I've heard an F-14 at full throttle on the deck of an aircraft carrier, but I'd guess that's pretty tame compared to the shuttle.

In a weird way its comforting to know that every day there are freaking humans living in a box up there in space, and I don't think I really care who drives the bus back and forth. Easy to say now, and maybe I'll feel different next time I watch our astronauts blast off on a Russian booster.

The real awesome sight is a night launch (or was).

I met my girlfriend for our first date on the beach and there just happened to be a night launch. What a night, standing on the beach watching that bird light up the sky like dawn.

It is a wonder watching something so much bigger than we are as individuals. I wish I could have watched the Saturn Vs taking flight.

I don't know what tomorrow will bring, but it sadly looks like tomorrow is a long way away right now.

When I was a kid my dad worked for Boeing on the Saturn V 1st stage booster engines. When I first got to see the S-V rockets and the crawler it was all new and awesome. We saw one go up from the employee viewing area. So far away and yet I swear I remember feeling the power as a low vibration in my skinny chest. I was an imaginative grade school kid though, so it could be mixed with other memories.

We only went to see a launch once, but on a sunny day we could just see the tail from the S-V launches from our front yard in Rockledge. The whole neighborhood turned out for the first ones.

It's sad that my generation, who saw such great achievements as kids and got into engineering because of it, have to watch the US take back seat in manned space exploration and technology.

fing awesome!

I totally agree. The shuttle is a heavy truck designed to lift large payloads. It is not an exploration vehical.

Ron

While it is certainly past time to retire the shuttle fleet for reasons previously mentioned, it is a mistake not to have a program. (Thanks, AH). A key factor I don't often see discussed is the ability we had with the shuttles to send big things into space and bring them back down intact. Now we are limited in the scope of science we can do in space by the essentially one-way nature of the available launch platforms.

If we are ever going to find a (commercial) reason for being in space other than tourism, communications, GPS, data gathering, I believe we need that launch and return capability. Private industry will never develop the capability until NASA or ESA or China's space agency does the initial heavy lifting. I'd personally prefer it be the US agency. We should be first in something other than the worlds largest consumer economy.

I think we need two different LEO vehicles. One a "zero fail" vehicle to move a larger number of people to and from orbit. For this we don't really need the heavy (read expensive and problematic) cargo doors. The other a large heavy-lift, unmanned cargo booster (A La Saturn-V) that can throw up a million pounds at a time. We only need the personnel carrier to have a zero percent failure rate. If the BDB (Big, Dumb Booster) fails all we have lost is a million pounds of junk. Once we have the material and people on-site we can get to work. The biggest problem with the Shuttle is that we tried to make it a bus AND a truck at the same time.

Exactly.

There are BDBs available and in use now. How about a big dumb return vehicle as well? We need a way to get big stuff back down intact, or at least in a controlled manner. Even the ISS garbage comes back down. Getting back down has always been the bigger challenge because the you are at the mercy of the physics of reentry, not in control of the acceleration. Everything entering from space mimics a meteor for part of the trip, the trick is avoiding exact emulation.

I don't recall any catastrophic failures related to the cargo doors, though they were problematic on the ground.

Not a mistake. But what about the shuttle replacement that we were promised?

Cancelled. Cancelled.

However, we have some outreach programs that NASA can take on.

Is It a Mistake to End the U.S. Shuttle Program?

Not nitpicking, just getting it to a more realistic kind of questioning.

Was it a mistake to end the U.S. shuttle program.

Denial? Or just bad grammar? It's over for now and that's that. No more sucking sounds coming from that area of tax spending (investing). A good man, woman (or men, women) here on earth and not on the moon is what is asked for.

A small step for man, a large step for mankind my lovely behind. Hyperbole at its best.

How can we discover the universe if we can't even discover what it is that makes us tick?

Tick tock, tick tock ^{tick tock} _{tick tock}

When I told a friend back in 1986 that there will be no space exploration in the year 2000 he declared me crazy and it cost our friendship. I was so convinced back then that it would lead to nowhere that I didn't care very much. I was out by only 10 years. So what? Whats 10 years amongst friends.

Last I heard is that he is in some Ashram in India. Good on him, I'm still here in the real world and hating it one day and loving it the next.

It all comes in waves, even prophecies, Ky.