The Space Shuttle Must Be Stopped

Time ^ | 2/2/2003 | Gregg Easterbrook

[cynicom]

A few hundred years ago, when daring sailors were given sailing ships and stores, to sail off and never to be seen again, there was loss of life and of treasure. The author, if living in those days would have had great concern, wringing his hands and whining about the losses.

The author has learned little from history and surely never takes time to let his mind wander into the future. The man is to damned busy wringing his hands and whining.

[Tijeras_Slim]

When America stops getting back on the horse after being thrown, it stops being America.

[SamAdams76]

When I first started reading this article, I thought it was another whiney liberal complaining about the money we spend on the space program when we could be spending it on "social services" at home.

But it wasn't that and the author does make a few good points. We should not be depending upon 1970s technology to take us into space for the next 20 years! We should be developing a new generation of orbiters that utilize today's technology. During the past 20 years the advances in computer and materials technology has been phenomenal. A run-of-the-mill laptop computer today has more computing power then the original Space Shuttle had on its first launch in 1981. We should be moving forward, not treading water with the same old technology (even though the Space Shuttle has been "modified" over the years to take advantage of some of the newer technologies).

BTW, I don't think the Space Shuttle is unsafe at all. I agree with you that manned spaceflight is dangerous and will be for the forseeable future. Anybody going into space willingly assumes those risks. I think the 98.2% success rate of the 113 Space Shuttle flights is a record that NASA can be proud of. But we must move on.

[Jim Noble]

We can do much better, and if you were a dreamer of high flight when you were a kid and are over 40 you damned well know it.

Letting your mind wander into the future is not a defense of cowardly politicians and PR bullshit artists being allowed to cripple a technical and engineering program so we lose wonderful heroes like this crew.

[RKV]

I like your analogy. I think it fits well. The ship owners, investors, officers and crew all knew that there were risk and rewards. The risks were isolated, not shared by the country at large (via government). That profit (and in some cases quite handsome profits) went with the assumption of risk was assumed. I wish more people today got the risk/reward association. I think we have reached the point where private ventures ought to take over from state sponsored enterprises. This was the historical pattern as well, if I read it correctly.

[Budge]

I wondered how long before the naysayers would start the "end it now" BS.

[Lancey Howard]

Not long after the Challenger explosion there was the usual cowardly din from the socialists that the US would be better off and spend far less money on its space program if it concentrated on unmanned rather than manned space exploration.

A very good editorial cartoonist at the time published a cartoon which depicted several horse-drawn Conestoga wagons with nobody in them. People were instead standing behind the wagons, which were ostensibly pointed westward, and the cartoon was captioned, "Fearful of the unknown, the early pioneers launched unmanned wagon trains to explore the American West."

I wish I still had a copy of that cartoon because my description doesn't do it justice. But it was beautiful, and it really hit home. Space exploration is all about man reaching for the stars.

[Jim Noble]

>>. I think the 98.2% success rate of the 113 Space Shuttle flights is a record that NASA can be proud of<<

I don't know if they're proud or not.

But I do know that they have designed a program around a failure rate of 1/100,000 whose empirical failure rate is 1/75.

There is no engineering or production capability that has been created or is planned to back up a complete loss of orbiter fleet every 300 missions.

I grieve for our heros-we can't spare people like that.

But I spit on the politicians and PR artists who have allowed the STS program to become what it is-no, not allowed it to become-demanded that it become what it is.

People, please-honor our heroes but don't mix that up with defending their bureaucrat masters.

[Physicist]

Can you imagine the panic this coward would have, if he had been around when people were getting scalped? "HELP, HELP! Egad, everyone swim back to the old world - quick. Leave this place to the ants before you get staked out on an ant hill."

You're making the same mistake that NASA has made: equating the Shuttle program with the Space Program. The Shuttle should be ditched because it is standing in the way of progress in space.

Everyone would be eating sushi and speaking Japanese, if this smarmy little coward had been in charge after Pearl Harbor.

We didn't stick with biplanes and conventional explosives after Pearl Harbor, we developed jets and nuclear weapons. We didn't rebuild the Arizona, we built the Missouri. That's the real spirit.

[brityank]

... how about we use capitalism to our advantage?

We need to continue with exploration of space -- but we also need to get the pioneers, then the settlers, out into a true space station and Moon colony. The restrictions that the military holds on NASA, while necessary in part, are also the main holdback to Mankind's future in space. Were NASA in charge of the Western Expansion of the US we'd all be stuffed along the Atlantic/Pacific seaboards, still exploring the interior. Expensive? Yes; but Penny wise/Pound foolish, as there are many capitalistic opportunities known that can currently be sent off-Earth that will lead to even more.

Privatize Space Access.

[RKV]

Good point. I have been following these programs over the years. I wish we had a Kelly Johnson today.

[AmishDude]

Actually, the word you're looking for is "luddite". The author truly is one.

[tuna_battle]

"Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much or suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory or defeat" -Teddy Roosevelt

Brilliant!

"Five years before Challenger, he wrote in the Washington Monthly that the shuttles' solid rocket boosters were not safe."

What a numbnuts. This is like me saying that someone is going to die from a heart attack today. Even a broken clock is right at least twice a day!

[Man of the Right]

The concept that you need to have spam in a can for manned space flight is a legacy of Goddard and Von Braun. Space is of value only in relation to earth. What matters is low-earth and geosynchronous orbits. Launching satellites robotically is a mature technology, even with the '60s and '70s hardware and software they use.

For a society to progress, it has to be able to learn from facts. The shuttle was conceived by Von Braun. The premise was that you could dramatically reduce the cost of accessing space through reuseable boosters. The Shuttle Program disproved that premise. A decade and more ago, commercial interests and the DOD largely abandoned the Shuttle and returned to using disposable boosters. But no government program, however useless, can ever be terminated as long as a special interest lobbies for its continuance. So the Shuttle soldiers on as an anachronism. Now, we've lost two of the fleet of 5. NASA is killing more Americans than Al Qaeda. The best we can hope for, is that after all five crash, the program will end. Essentially, that's what happened to hydrogen dirigibles after the Hindenburg.

[FITZ]

usual cowardly din from the socialists that the US would be better off and spend far less money on its space program if it concentrated on unmanned rather than manned space exploration.

How is it socialist to think it might be better to send robots than parents of small children into space?

[RKV]

I'd like to think positively of long term manned presence in space. The problem that we have is that the human body does not tolerate weightlessness well over long periods. At least, that is what my admittedly limited research tells me. If we want to go stay on the moon or in orbit for long periods we will have to overcome this issue. We are a long way from there now, if I read the science correctly.

[js1138]

You're making the same mistake that NASA has made: equating the Shuttle program with the Space Program. The Shuttle should be ditched because it is standing in the way of progress in space.

So what are the chances of W taking a Kennedy-like stand on this, proposing a new mission and direction for NASA?

[Man of the Right]

Publishing a quote like this is silly. To the degree that exploitation of space makes economic sense, robotic vehicles are doing it.

[Man of the Right]

The Space Program isn't on his radar screen. The White House janitor supervises NASA.

[Man of the Right]

Conceptually, manned space exploration was a phenomenon of the 1940s-1960s. It represents the past, not the future. It's been superceded by other technical developments--the computer revolution, robotics, miniaturization.