Manned space program at crossroads

Chicago Sun Times ^ | 02/03/03 | Robert Novak

[theFIRMbss]

Manned space program at crossroads

February 3, 2003

BY ROBERT NOVAK SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

WASHINGTON--Amid the grief over the Columbia disaster, hard questions are being debated in the nation's capital.

*Was penny-pinching by both the executive and legislative branches of government the primary cause of the breakup of the space shuttle Columbia?

*Is this the time to end human space flight on grounds that robotic missions can be conducted without the risks that became reality in Saturday's tragedy?

*Should a determination be made that the program cannot be conducted on the cheap and that it must be a high priority--or not at all?

National Aeronautics and Space Administration officials insist that their manned space expeditions will continue, but the U.S. space shuttle program has been shut down indefinitely. The astronauts currently on the International Space Station are being supplied by Russia's Soyuz rockets. Talk about space tourism or even manned missions to Mars, discussed in space circles until Saturday's events, are now inappropriate.

The principal defender of what has been done and the advocate of what should be done is somebody who is new to the space program but an old hand at government: Sean O'Keefe, who has been NASA's administrator for a little less than a year.

While he has been engaged in on-the-job training on space, O'Keefe long has been a trusted appointee to responsible positions in Republican administrations. A former secretary of the Navy, he was deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget in the current Bush administration. He was sent to NASA to provide what has been widely regarded as stricter management that long has been needed there.

O'Keefe also had to deal with fading public interest in and support for the manned space program. Until Saturday, the ill-fated Columbia mission had received little attention from the American public (though vastly more in Israel because of the first Israeli astronaut aboard).

Even before the disaster, O'Keefe's mission was daunting. He was expected to continue human space flight on short rations, with the federal budget in deficit and all government spending being squeezed. Now, his task is exponentially expanded.

He first must face charges from within the space community that the thin budget may have contributed to the disaster. Richard Blomberg, then chairman of the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, told Congress last April: "I have never been as worried for space shuttle safety as I am right now." Blomberg worried that budgetary restrictions had resulted in hiring freezes that reduced the margin of safety.

Then and now, such concerns were rejected by NASA officials and members of Congress who are responsible for the level of funding. Nevertheless, recriminations will be a national by-product of investigations that will stretch out for months to come.

The broader question involves the future of manned flight. A substantial number of space reporters and analysts have speculated that sending humans into space has seen its day and, as a feature of the 20th century, will not be seen much longer in the 21st century. The Columbia disaster only bolsters this school of thought.

O'Keefe vigorously rejected any thought of the abandonment of human space flight when I interviewed him for CNN last month and asked whether this decade will see the end of manned operations. "Oh, not at all," the NASA administrator replied. "I think we're just at the beginning of it."

As for the budget squeeze on space operations, O'Keefe told me "there's a lot of mileage you can get out of a $15 billion program that the American public has entrusted to us for the purposes of exploration and discovery." He added that "we take every dollar as something that is not to be expected, that we have to earn each and every step of the way."

In the wake of the Columbia disaster, however, a decision will have to be made--ultimately by President Bush--whether or not it is feasible to shortchange this program. If human space flight is to be fully funded, greater public support may be necessary.

In the Cold War days of the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union, Americans followed the space program closely and the sky was the limit for funding. The original astronauts, typified by John Glenn, were national celebrities. Until Saturday, who could identify one of today's astronauts by name?

O'Keefe told me last month that "we need to get to know a lot more" about such astronauts as Rick Husband, the space shuttle's commander, who perished Saturday with his crew mates. Now that his name is tragically a household word, the future of human space flight by the United States never has been more in doubt.

Copyright © The Sun-Times Company
All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

[theFIRMbss]

>"Talk about space tourism or even manned missions to Mars, discussed in space circles until Saturday's events, are now inappropriate."

There is a profound
political dimension
to this disaster.

Many reports say
Bush was about to announce
an initiative

for a manned Mars trip.
This would have ear-marked billions
to the aerospace

industry, mostly
the same military folk
the left wing types hate.

This new disaster
precludes Bush from announcing
and implementing

this new space program.
It's unsettling to wonder
how the politics

of deep new funding
plays some role in the current
deaths and aftermath.

[mykdsmom]

[sticker]

Let's take the billions being sent overseas " to fight aids" and spend it on the space program were it can do some good.

[Conan the Librarian]

This speaks volumes. If we drop the manned space program for robots, we might as well fold up the country and sign it over to the Europeans or the Chinese. Humanity is at its best when exploring and reaching out. Hiding behind robots leads to stagnation and disaster.

[Stefan Stackhouse]

The fundamental flaw in the shuttle program is the design of a spacecraft that hauls both astronauts and cargo. The shuttle is a huge, extremely heavy vehicle. The rocketry that is necessarilly required to lift such a heavy payload into orbit is correspondingly more hazard-prone than would be the case with a lighter payload. A large and massive shuttle diving through the upper atmosphere means a large surface area of tiles, all with extreme stress applied to them. The entire system is extremely complex, increasing the probabilities that something will go wrong.

We have had two catastrophic failures in a little over 100 missions, suggesting a catastrophic failure rate probability of 1:50, or 2% per mission. This is a much higher risk than has previously been acknowledged by anyone in the space program, and even by many of its critics. (Richard Feynman speculated that the risk might be as low as 1:100.)

Is it an acceptable risk? Everyone understands that manned space flight is inherently dangerous, and that it is probably impossible to drive the risks down to zero. But the real question is whether or not there are feasible, less risky alternatives.

There has been considerable research and discussion regarding smaller reusable "space planes" designed for human payloads only. Such vehicles, being so much smaller and lighter, would need much smaller rockets to lift them into orbit; perhaps the inherently dangerous combination of solid fuel rockets strapped to a huge liquid fuel tank could be eliminated altogether. A smaller space plane might still have to be lined by tiles, but there would need to be fewer of them, and thus fewer points of vulnerability. If a smaller space plane was our primary manned vehicle, the system could be designed so that each mission would include at least the capability to rendezvous with the ISS. This would at least allow a close visual inspection of the tiles by ISS personnel before a re-entry was attempted. Should the space plane be damaged, they could use docking hardware (which would be standard equipment on all space planes) to dock with the ISS and use the ISS as their "lifeboat" until a rescue or repair mission could get to them.

As for bulky and heavy cargo, this should be boosted into orbit on unmanned rockets. Given this tried, true, and reasonably economical option, I have trouble seeing any good reason to put astronauts lives at risk just to haul cargo into orbit. There may indeed be things that need to be done with cargo once it is in orbit: satelites need to be deployed, lab experiments need to be tended to, etc. We also need to have a repair capability in space. Thus, a space plane needs to be equipped with a remote-control arm, and also an airlock so that astronauts can perform EVAs. A lighter spacecraft with more fuel on board might actually be able to climb into higher orbits than is usually done with the shuttles, thus making it more useful for a wider range of missions.

Would it be more costly than the shuttle? I am not so sure about that. Sending bulk cargo into orbit on unmanned boosters is clearly more economical than using the shuttle. A smaller space plane would require smaller, fewer rockets, yielding some small savings there. It is possible that a smaller, simpler space plane system might result in a quicker turnaround time between missions, thus requiring a smaller fleet of vehicles. A smaller, less complex spacecraft should cost a little less to build.

I am forced to conclude that the shuttle is by no means the best possible solution. Less risky, and possibly less costly alternatives should have been researched, developed, and implemented years ago. Time is past due to seriously look into them now.

[jd777]

50,000 a year die in auto related deaths.... 15,000 people are victims of homocide. (and you don't even hear a peep about it) I would say the media distorts our idea of "safety" by what it chooses to focus our attention on.

[mykdsmom]

I would say the media distorts our idea of "safety" by what it chooses to focus our attention on.

I would go farther and say the "liberal" media distorts virtually everything they report on.

MKM

[Atlas Sneezed]

"*Was penny-pinching by both the executive and legislative branches of government the primary cause of the breakup of the space shuttle Columbia?"

Penny-pinching and limited budgets for government bureaucracies is GOOD.

They need to learn how best to achieve (or adjust) their mission given the financial constraints.

And the cartoon is absurd, as if western migration was a government-funded effort.

[theFIRMbss]

> I have trouble seeing any good reason to put astronauts lives at risk just to haul cargo into orbit.

When I'm cynical,
I see our space program as
our generation's

version of things like
Europe's gothic cathedrals
or the ancient world's

famous pyramids --
that is, they are giant scale,
awe-inspiring

projects that busy
millions of people, funnel
endless streams of cash

through entrenched rulers,
and only must accomplish
just "being awesome."

(This view would explain
why big, heavy and flashy
things like the shuttles

beat out logical
systems such as you suggest,
separating freight

from people lifting.
The political pluses
of a "flashy show,"

labor intensive
system with few (or no) goals
makes me think we won't

see a rational
space program in our life time.
Not in our country

where political
considerations define
all social business.)

[theFIRMbss]

>Let's take the billions being sent overseas " to fight aids" and spend it on the space program were it can do some good.

"The DC-XA Program-- The Delta Clipper Experimental Advanced was a modified version of the DC-X. It had a lightweight graphite-epoxy liquid hydrogen tank and an advanced graphite/aluminum honeycomb intertank built by McDonnell Douglas; an aluminum-lithium liquid oxygen tank built by Energia; and an improved reaction control system from Aerojet. These improvements reduced dry vehicle mass by 620 kilograms. The DC-XA was operated by NASA and the Department of Defense under the Reusable Launch Vehicle program. The flight vehicle was tested at White Sands during the summer of 1996, and demonstrated a 26-hour turnaround between its second and third flights, a first for any rocket. After the fourth flight, however, the DC-XA suffered severe damage and the program ended due to lack of funding."

[Joe Hadenuf]

I in light of recent events, I think our focus and direction should be development of new space craft and the lunar surface, instead of jumping to the planet Mars.

We have barley explored the lunar surface and a small manned lunar base would make an excellent platform for scientific exploration and study. I believe it is critical that we get back to the lunar surface and develop this manned scientific outpost, and throughly explore the lunar surface, before leaping to outer planets.

And it's my opinion that the ISS is doing nothing more than siphoning off money that could be used in other, more practical, common sense areas, like a manned exploratory base, on the lunar surface.

[vannrox]

[tet68]

We have had two catastrophic failures in a little over 100 missions, suggesting a catastrophic failure rate probability of 1:50, or 2% per mission. This is a much higher risk than has previously been acknowledged by anyone in the space program, and even by many of its critics. (Richard Feynman speculated that the risk might be as low as 1:100.)

Is it an acceptable risk?


Actually the problem is not enough "Passenger Miles."

[adx]

And it's my opinion that the ISS is doing nothing more than siphoning off money that could be used in other, more practical, common sense areas, like a manned exploratory base, on the lunar surface.

And incidentally, prevent the Chicoms from putting a military installation (like a mass driver) there.

[farmguy]

I've heard a lot of talk today that even though they knew about the problem with the insulation impacting the space craft they decided to go ahead as though nothing had happened because there was nothing they could do about it anyway. (indeed, they knew this was an ongoing problem since they changed the insulation for environmental reasons)

From all appearances, NASA decided it was to much trouble to insure there wasn't a problem and instead chose to stick its collective heads up its collective derriere and hope for the best. ( I know its only been three days and the jury is still out)

This is a radical change from the NASA that put men on the moon. If NASA had felt and acted this way when Apollo 13 happened, there would still be three corpses orbiting the moon today.

The problem with today's NASA is that, as with all other Federal programs, it is more concerned with politics and appearances than with the purpose it was originally created to accomplish.

[Porterville]

LOL

[theFIRMbss]

>We have had two catastrophic failures in a little over 100 missions, suggesting a catastrophic failure rate probability of 1:50, or 2% per mission. This is a much higher risk than has previously been acknowledged...

I believe the real
odds (based on performance) are
in fact much, much worse.

It is one hundred
missions, but that's spread across
five different shuttles.

The shuttles that blew
had vastly fewer missions.
So, by blunt numbers,

it's really something
like one chance in ten of death! (2 of (100/5))
I like adventure,

but with these results,
I wouldn't ride a shuttle
even as a prize...

(Dr. S., am I
abusing prob and stats here?
Are these "odds" correct?)

[Doctor Stochastic]

Too little data to go on. It's hard to compute a probability of death with such small numbers. The 2% is correct if averaged over all shuttles.

[theFIRMbss]

>Too little data to go on. It's hard to compute a probability of death with such small numbers. The 2% is correct if averaged over all shuttles.

I'm not good with math.
Thanks for the note. FYI,
Challenger, I learned,

was only on its
10th flight when its launch went wrong.
Discovery has

completed 30.
Atlantis has 25.
And Endeavour has

made 17 flights.
Perhaps NASA should retire
Discovery now...

[tet68]

I wouldn't ride a shuttle
even as a prize...


Can I have your seat?

I would rather ride the shuttle as fly a commercial airliner.