The Space Shuttle Must Be Stopped

Time ^ | 2/2/2003 | Gregg Easterbrook

[Man of the Right]

I'm not opposed to space exploration. I'm opposed to putting people inside space craft. It's counter-productive.

[FLCowboy,]

No, I chose to not discuss what the government should do regarding the shuttle program. You must have me confused with someone else.

[Hegewisch Dupa]

I hope that does end up posted on every thread. Thanks for finding that quote - I only wish it would sink into the heads of the clowns who use tragedy as an excuse to forward their no-NASA agenda. But I have little hope - you can lead a horse to reason, but you can't make it think.

[Man of the Right]

The way to explore space is remotely.

[Man of the Right]

Bush has explained his Administration's priorities. NASA isn't one of them. It's up there with rural electrification and commodity price supports. Thanks to NASA, he'll have to pay some attention to it now when he should be focusing on the economy, Iraq, North Korea and Iran.

[Man of the Right]

This morning, wire services reported another shuttle could have been prepared within a week theoretically. Assuming any astronaut is still trained to do a rendezvous, resupply or a rescue could have been attempted. Space is at a premium on the Shuttle, but one wishes they could have deployed a video cam with rocket thrusters to inspect the craft. It would have been useful numerous times in manned space flight history. Evidence is growing they were dead man walking from lift-off.

[Man of the Right]

After four voyages Columbus couldn't get funding from anybody. A lot less money involved, similar outcome to NASA.

Most exploration was done by accidental tourists, fishermen, and private expeditions seeking gold or to open a trading route.

[Man of the Right]

Incentives mean indirect subsidies which means I pay higher taxes. I'm opposed to higher taxes for any purpose except national defense.

Colonization won't occur for many generations, if ever.

If human beings can't live on this planet, what makes you think God wants them screwing up other environments?

[Spiff]

We are so close to being able to put up space elevators. No joke - see nanotubes, etc. Maybe this event will be the catalyst to get that program of the ground.

[Cincinatus]

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 It's been superceded by other technical developments--the computer revolution, robotics, miniaturization.

People have said the same thing for 50 years about AI and intelligent machines. Let me know when they get here.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Evidence is growing they were dead man walking from lift-off.

I believe that more than ever now. I viewed an enhanced video clip of the liftoff insulation impact event and it can be seen clearly that the debris contacted the underside of the left wing right in the area of the landing gear bay....not the leading edge of the wing.

I fear that there was quite substantial degradation to the protective thermal tiles in that area and there was no way at all to assess the damage in that area short of an EVA. And as stated by Mr. Dittemore yesterday, that plan of action could very well have caused more damage in the process.

NBC has also reported this morning that there is in fact the existence of a memo(s) stating concern that there was significant damage done during liftoff and that a re-entry would be extremely risky.

I do think we have an instance of NASA being afflicted by a fatal case of "not thinking outside the box."

[SauronOfMordor]

Incentives mean indirect subsidies which means I pay higher taxes. I'm opposed to higher taxes for any purpose except national defense.

The incentives I was thinking of involved establishment of property rights, rather than subsidies. I would favor seeing property rights established for sections of the ocean, to enable undersea mining/drilling/colonization

[freedumb2003]

>>that there was significant damage done during liftoff and that a re-entry would be extremely risky.

NASA has also posited that there was nothing that could be done while the oribiter was in space anyway.

I'm scouring the real news outlets for that gem (I heard it on a blurb on TV News), but if it is true it is a henious position. There are ALWAYS options. It might have been to leave the thing up there and have succeeding Soyuz missions bring up a few parts at a time while repairs are made.

Yhet should at least have gone EVA.

[Man of the Right]

The U.S. would be strongly opposed to any rule that limits our access to any part of the sea or establishes foreign bases at sea. The U.S. has gone to war four times (Quasi-Naval War, 1798; War of 1812; World War I; Undeclared naval war against Germany, 1941) to defend our maritime rights. The U.S. is principally a naval power and a leading trading nation. Without unimpeded access to international waters, we could not fight the coming campaign against Iraq or liberated Afghanistan in 2001.

[biblewonk]

Similarly, it seems clear to me that manned space flight is simply too expensive (note - I didn't say dangerous) to continue at this time. Maybe a hiatus wouldn't be such a bad thing until SSTO rocket technology matures. Even the casual observer sees that the space station manning appears to be largly a maintenance staff tasked with keeping the thing in orbit.

I couldn't agree more. It's a foolish waste of money and they keep trying to say there is a scientific benefit but they sound like janitors trying to write a resume to be surgeons.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

There are ALWAYS options. It might have been to leave the thing up there

True. But you have to ask yourself...

• "How long could they have lasted?"
• "How much oxygen did they have?"
• "How long could they have held out after the cabin was saturated with CO₂?"
• "How long would they have lasted after the fuel and power ran out?"

These are all valid questions and I believe the answers are..."No more than a few days."

[Man of the Right]

The concept of the Shuttle is flawed in many ways. NASA assumed and the public was lead to believe that because the Shuttle looks like an aircraft the risk is comparable to flying an SST. Accordingly, there's an overall lack of redundancy and safety. The crew should be able to deploy a satellite to examine the craft visually in orbit. Also, a backup shuttle should be prepared for search and rescue immediately after launch as a matter of course. The fact they can't do the latter, or do it only at great risk, is further proof the Shuttle has failed. The original purposes were to reduce the cost of entry/lift into space dramatically and make manned space flight routine. With four Shuttles, they were able to fly a total of even four-five times a year only with difficulty. Now there are three, the production line is shut down, and the craft have reached, or are approaching the end of their useful lives. The Concorde is an analogy. Keep three aging Shuttles flying and risk a threepeat relatively soon or terminate the program now?

[biblewonk]

Enough already with space welfare.

BEAUTIFUL!

"You build a canal under my bridge and I'll build a bridge over your canal"

[Man of the Right]

Come on. Automated probes have mapped all of the moon, mars, venusian atmosphere and europa, flown by all of the planets conducting scientific research and taking photos, left the solar system, landed on Mars and taken soil samples, and probed the Venusian atmosphere down to the surface. All of this was accomplished with relatively primitive technology.

If we were serious about space exploration, we could readily return to the Moon and Mars for more elaborate exploration using robots for a fraction of the cost of sending astronauts. The former might actually happen. The latter won't.

[Cincinatus]

Yours is a statement of faith, not fact. Of course robotic missions can accomplish great things, but they simply cannot do everything we want to accomplish on an exploration mission. For example, any machine can pick up a rock, but even a remotely controlled robot cannot select from a wide variety the rock with the most potential to unlock major secrets. This was shown conclusively during Apollo when you compare the carefully selected, geologically documented samples returned by the astronauts with the simple scoop of soil returned by the Soviet Luna 16, 20, and 24 missions. Apollo revolutionized our understanding of planetary processes; the Luna samples were just points on a data curve.

But more importantly, people in space have enormous inspirational power. Most people in the space business today got into it because of youthful dreams of walking on another world. No kid dreams of building a robot to walk on another world -- they settle for it.