U.S. Retiring from Space Exploration?

Not going to happen. In the end...

1. The Shuttle is not being retired due to lack of funding, rather, it is old and not cost effective, nor safe. It is being replaced with a new launch system, but not due to lack of funds.

2. The Ares launch system will not be ready in 2015.

3. The Orbiter retirement date has already been pushed once to 2012. Schedules always slip and they will slip again, so will the retirement party.

4. The US will not relinquish a $100 billion space station to the Russians, particularly after the Russians invaded Georgia.

5. Congress will authorize whatever additional funds are needed to keep the Shuttle program active in earnest as long as Russia continues to beat its chest and act like a little bully.

A whole lot depends on the political administrations in the next few election cycles. We haven't seen the kind of leadership required to have a robust space program for quite some time. Or flying cars, either...

Congress, (the House, anyway) just passed NASA's budget with an extra $2billion, with a vote of 409 to 15. That's as close to unanimous support as you can get.

America's space program has been suffering from a lack of presidential leadership for about 35 years. Our fleet has been allowed to age, with nothing being developed to replace it.

Better plan on suckling up to the Ruskies for a few years.

I'm amazed we don't have permanent colonies on the Moon and Mars by now. I know the costs are astronomical but at the rate we are killing off Earth we need to find a backup plan.

You earned that!

I'm an enthusiastic supporter of NASA and the Space Program and leaped for joy when the decision was made to save the Hubble. I am also an equally passionate astronomer and telescope designer.

Having said all that, I think it's time that NASA's priorities were subordinated to our more immediate needs as a Nation.

We need a cost effective, commercially viable Hydrogen Fuel Cell far more and with a greater urgency than any need to walk on Mars.

Let the Ruskies have the Space Station. The ROI on that project has been abysmal. When they find that out, they'll dump it just like we did with Space Lab.

This entire orbiting space station may someday contribute something to our eventual exploration of Space. For the time being at least, we have other more important places to spend our resources.

L. J.

Yes. Agree. We need 'FREE' National health care and all of the 'Feel Good FREE' programs that are proposed by our governmental elite.

And yes, I'm a longtime supporter of NASA.

Yes we all certainly need to pay 80% of our incomes to support free medical care for Mexicans. I volunteer your salary as a test case...

By The Way: it will likely stun many of you, just as it did me, to learn that we buy the rocket engines for our biggest launch systems from the Russians!

A project engineer friend of mine, who now works for Generous Electric, traveled back and forth as a project coordinator during the early days of the Russian-American engine program. He also had a hand in the development of the main engines on the shuttle.

Russia has always had the lead in the development of high power heavy lifters. They were forced to develop the technology by the curtain of technology prohibition we and the Europeans imposed during the cold war years.

Because we had the advantage of small, light, solid state electronics, the incentive to build monster engines was never there. By contrast, Russia was burdened with the weight, power consumption and size of vacuum tube technology.

I seriously doubt that we are dependent on Russia for big engines to the point where it's a national security issue but it's influence on future launch vehicles can not be underestimated.

"Now you know the rest of the story!"

L. J.

Some notes:

The Shuttle Main Engines are built by Pratt & Whitney, but you are correct that the Russians make fine engines.

The most powerful operational rocket was the Saturn V of course, although the Russians tested one that was slightly more powerful. The Saturn V F1 engine is the most powerful single nozzle liquid fuel engine ever flown.

The ISS/Shuttle docking mechanism is also supplied by the Russians.

The difference between our rockets and the Russians' is probably due to the differences among the Nazi rocket developers we both took from Germany, as much as anything else. The fundamentals were done back in the 50's before there were any solid state electronics. Most of what a rocket has to lift is fuel, not electronics.

NASA's new ARES 5 will be a very capable heavy lift vehicle.

The next shuttle flight, STS125, will be servicing the Hubble once again, in the fall of this year.

So Russians have more powerful engine than the Saturn V, which is most powerful engine !

I am joining english school again to learn the english grammer.

Rereading his post I think the grammar was correct, although, I would change the last sentence from, "The Saturn V F1 engine is the most powerful single nozzle liquid fuel engine ever flown." to "The Saturn V F1 engine was the most powerful single nozzle liquid fuel engine ever flown."

The bottom line was the Russian NK33 engine was to be a more powerful engine than the Saturn V, but the Russian Politburo canceled the N1 project after four failures with the NK15 engines and ordered all traces of the rocket and its engines destroyed.

The NK15 was a traditional engine design, but a new engine, the NK33, was crafted just before the N1 project was canceled, which was around the mid 1970s.

The designer of the NK33, Nikolai Kuznetsov, secretly hid away the engines and they escaped destruction. It wasn't until the end of the Cold War that rumors surfaced about the NK33 and someone trying to sell them.

The design, as I understand, has been used as part of the design of modern rocket thrusters and is supposed to be about 25% more efficient than the previous state of the art in the rest of the world.

So, the Saturn V F1 engine, developed by Rocketdyne, was the most powerful engine ever successfully flown. That engine went through almost 15 years of development before landing a man on the Moon. There was another variant called the M1, but it never flew and I don't know why it was canned. It was supposed to be more powerful than the F1.

The F1 still reigns as the most powerful engine ever successfully flown and I think it is more powerful than the Ares RS68B, which relies on solid rocket boosters to get enough boost to champion the Saturn V.

It depends on how you define "engine". The Russians have a more powerful multi-nozzle engine, the F1 is the most powerful single nozzle engine. Both of these are less powerful than the solid rocket engine we use on the shuttle.

On which craft does that multi-nozzle engine fly?

I hapened to be at Stennis on one of the days when the Shuttle main engine was tested. I did not see a single russian...

Both presidential candidates apparently support a new manned space mission to the moon, and maybe even to mars, and so there seems to be a commitment at their level to finance and keep a US-built vehicle in the fleet that could also bring folks to the space station.

So it seems like the burden of financial prudence may be left to congress to keep whoever is elected in check, to avoid financing this during a weak economy with massively expanded US federal debt.

A more sober approach to space exploration, it seems to me, would be scaled-back manned program (maybe just supporting the space station) and an expanded robotics program. A tough idea to sell while the Chinese plan to send folks to the moon and when Iran is expanding its "space program", but still worth considering, I think.

-april05

just supporting the space station, while worthwhile, doesn't qualify as space exploration. We pretty much know every square inch of the ISS.

The value of a hammer, like any tool, is not in knowing its shape, color, or even its flaws, but understanding and utilizing its capabilities.