Why I'm Glad the Shuttle is Retiring
STS-133 - Shuttle Before Launch (NASA)
Good Riddance...
It has been 30 years since the first Space Shuttle was launched, and this year the shuttle program will be at an end. Although I worry about the future of NASA, I do not mourn the loss of this program. To be honest, I do not pay much attention to Space Shuttle launches, what the Astronauts are doing, or how many more launches we have left. I am a fan of the future of space travel, and that is why it is hard to enjoy the Space Shuttle, and the current manned work at NASA. The courage and spirit NASA had years ago to really push boundaries was stifled, regulated, and destroyed by ignorant politicians who believe space exploration yields nothing of great importance. The Space Shuttle, although a symbol of national pride to some, also represents a poorly made decision 30 years ago to destroy our chances of a post-apollo era. This was done by extremely limiting NASA's budget, and forcing NASA to pour their efforts into a semi-reusable vehicle that never was intended to be NASA's center of attention.
In this post, we will discuss the rocky history of the Space Shuttle, why NASA was forced to build it, and the promises this "Shuttle" could never keep.
The Space Shuttle: NASA's Last Chance Option...
North American Rockwell Shuttle design, winning the primary NASA contract in 1972 (NASA)A great history of the origin and initiation of the Space Shuttle project is given by T.A. Heppenheimer, in his book "The Space Shuttle Decision." This book is free to view on NASA's website, and provides tons of detail on how the Shuttle came to be. I have written a summary below of what this book reveals...
1969: Nixon is newly elected president, and Neil Armstrong walks the moon this year. NASA Administrator Thomas Paine sets ambitious goals after first successful moonwalk, which included piloted expeditions to Mars, space stations, space bases, and a space shuttle for low cost access to space. Unfortunately, Paine was the Administrator under a president who had no real interest in an ambitious space program, although his rhetoric in this 1970 speech might suggest otherwise:
"By no means should we allow our space program to stagnate. But-with the entire future and the entire universe before us-we should not try to do everything at once. Our approach to space must continue to be bold-but it must also be balanced..."
Unfortunately for NASA, this "balance" that Nixon sought killed the bold dreams of the post-Apollo era. While preparing the 1970 federal budget, Nixon and his budget director Robert Mayo agreed to cut a billion dollars of NASA funding, when Paine was hoping for an increase. There were no more future manned missions to Mars, no nuclear rocket engines, and no interplanetary space bases.
Gee, thanks Dick....
However, still lingering as an inexpensive option was building the space shuttle and space station as a joint project. When NASA approached with this plan, the congress said no. Because of this, NASA was forced to cut the space station from the equation (for the time being) and seek support for the Space Shuttle. The Shuttle became NASA's final hope to continue a space program.
NASA fights to have the Shuttle program approved due to a continued lack of interest from congress. NASA luckily finds support for the Shuttle through the Department of Defense. The Air Force sees an opportunity to use the Space Shuttle as a way to launch reconnaisance satellites and military spacecraft for a low cost. Not only does the Air Force recognize that the Shuttle can be used for their purposes, NASA is so desperate for funding that the whole Shuttle can be designed almost exclusively for Air Force purposes. To top it all off, the whole cost of design and development will be funded under NASA's budget, not the Air Force.
With the support of the Air Force, NASA survived congress, and was approved to pursue the shuttle project. Although NASA was saved from almost certain death, it would become clear that any ambitious goals they had set for the Shuttle would be destroyed by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
The original design of the shuttle asked for 2 fully reusable stages, which gave the booster the ability to glide back down to earth and land on a runway just like the orbiter. The OMB told NASA that the design and operational cost was too high, and would not provide the cost benefit they are looking for. They asked NASA to cut the Shuttle price in half, NASA did, and the OMB responded by asking them to cut more. It was finally decided that the Orbiter would be reusable, the solid rocket boosters woud be partly reusable, and the external fuel tank would be expendable.
Although development began with various aerospace contractors between 1972-1973, we would not see the first Space Shuttle Launch until April 12th, 1981.
So after 30 years of flying, how did it do? Great question! Let's take a look.
What the space shuttle promised, and could not deliver...
In 1992, a study was done by Roger A. Pielke Jr., and Radford Byerly Jr. entitled "The Space Shuttle Program: Performance Versus Promise." They estimated the actual cost of the Space Shuttle program between 1972-1990, and compared it to what was originally promised in 1972 when the program was begun. Here are some things that were discovered:
1972 promise on annual cost of program
Between 1972 and 1978, the annual cost of the program will be at its highest due to shuttle development costs. As the shuttle starts to fly, this annual cost will begin to fall steadily to more manageable levels.
1990 reality
The annual cost never fell below the developmental cost level, and was only rising.
1972 promise on total cost of program
Total cost of the program between 1972-1990 will be around 50.7 billion (1990 dollars), and the shuttle will fly 580 times, at a rate of 48 times per year (This would also mean that the shuttle would be flying by 1978).
1990 Reality
Total cost of the program between 1972-1990 was approximately 65 billion (1990 dollars), the shuttle was not ready until 1981, and it only flew 38 times!
Ultimately, for all the cost-cutting that NASA had to do to please elected officials, and for all the promises on reliable and frequent access to space, the Space Shuttle failed for its first 9 years of operation. Does it get any better for the next 21 years? not really...
They released their final cost study on the Shuttle in April of this year, entitled Shuttle Programme Lifetime Costs. Here is a quote from that study:
"The US Congress and NASA spent more than US$192 billion (in 2010 dollars) on the shuttle from 1971 to 2010 (see 'A costly enterprise'). The agency launched 131 flights; two ended in tragedy with the loss of Challenger in 1986 and Columbia in 2003. During the operational years from 1982 to 2010, the average cost per launch was about $1.2 billion. Over the life of the programme, this increases to about $1.5 billion per launch ( Space Policy 10, 78–80; 1994).
For the period 1991–2010, we originally projected an average cost per flight of about $800 million. The actual cost was about $1 billion. We overestimated both the flight rate during this time (8 predicted flights versus 4.7 actual) and the annual costs (about $6.2 billion predicted versus $4.7 billion actual)."
A Shuttle? Really?
I think we have collectively forgotten what the word shuttle means, so let me reintroduce you to it:
"Shuttle |ˈ sh ətl| - noun - a form of transportation that travels regularly between two places"
30 years, and the Shuttle had 131 flights, which puts an average of about 4 flights per year. After all this time, is the name "Shuttle" appropriate for something that flew on average every 3 months at best? If you look at this last decade between 2000-2010, the Shuttle flew 35 times (Source: FAA Year in Review). Now, maybe you could call it a "Shuttle" in comparison to every other rocket that flew, but heres the thing...you can't! The Russian Soyuz rocket launched 101 times during this same decade. I hate to say it, but the only country that has developed something close to an actual shuttle, is the Russians.
Flawed culture. Flawed System
1986 Challenger Disaster
In a recent TEDX talk given by Jeff Greason, a founder of XCOR Aerospace, he recounts the moments that damaged his belief in NASA and the Shuttle:
"By 1981, when it finally flew, it was already clear that that promise was not going to be fulfilled. And only a few years later in 1986 I lost my faith that NASA was going to pave our way into the frontier. Some of you will remember watching over and over and over again as they replayed the tape of challenger explode on live national television. A lot of people in this business has some sort of challenger story, mines pretty simple. As a student at Cal Tech, with obviously interest in space and no special knowledge or expertise, I had known about the o-ring problem that doomed Challenger, a lot of people had, it was no secret. And I remember saying on the morning of the accident, "That looks like an O-ring! but that can't be, they already found that problem," because it had never occurred to me in my wildest nightmares that you would have found something like that and not fixed it. One of my professors was on the accident investigation comittee for challenger, and what he found was that if it hadn't been the o-rings it would have just been something else, the shuttle was riddled with problems like that, and the culture at NASA at that time was not one of fixing them, it was one of explaining why they weren't that serious. And that's when I knew that no matter how great the accomplishments of NASA had been or would be, and no matter how much money congress gave them or didn't give them, they were never going to put me and people like me into Space, they were not going to open the frontier."
The culture, which equates to a major disconnect between NASA management and its engineers, led to horrible decisions which costed Astronauts their lives. We were reminded again about NASA's flawed culture in 2003 when Space Shuttle Columbia burned up during re-entry. This problem again was caused by NASA management refusing the requests of its engineers to look at damage that may have been caused to the shuttle during its launch.
I don't know if I can sum up my thoughts any better on the Shuttle, than a statement I found at the end of chapter one of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board Report:
"Although an engineering marvel that enables a wide-variety of on-orbit operations, including the assembly of the International Space Station, the Shuttle has few of the mission capabilities that NASA originally promised. It cannot be launched on demand, does not recoup its costs, no longer carries national security payloads, and is not cost-effective enough, nor allowed by law, to carry commercial satellites. Despite efforts to improve its safety, the Shuttle remains a complex and risky system that remains central to U.S. ambitions in space. Columbiaʼs failure to return home is a harsh reminder that the Space Shuttle is a developmental vehicle that operates not in routine flight but in the realm of dangerous exploration."
A Final Word: For all you die hard NASA fans, a personal word with you...
If you are not a die hard NASA fan, please leave the room, or close your browser, this is between me and them...(waiting for people to close their browser...)...Ok great, now that they are gone, listen.
I want something better for you, because you deserve better. I know there are many of you out there that LOVE the Shuttle, the ISS, and the Astronauts who visit it. It is amazing to watch, and I understand how it can be fun to watch the amazing sight of the Shuttle blasting off its pad towards space. I have never seen the Shuttle launch in person, but I totally get it. I know we can both agree on the fact that after the Shuttle program is done, we don't want NASA to stagnate, we want something better, better than you and I both can imagine. Unfortunately, most elected officials who make decisions for agencies like NASA don't think the way we do. While we think space is the next step to our evolution as a species, to them, space is "neat." Elected officials do not grant billions of dollars to things they think are just "neat." NASA means nothing to them, and as long as they are there to determine NASA's direction and budget, you cannot hope for anything greater than what you aready have. Because of this frustration with stagnation, many companies have decided to pave their own way to space, with merely a fraction of the budget that NASA has. They have that same spirit that NASA used to have, and they are not subject to the same amount of bureacracy. They also have the ability to do what NASA does not have permission to do, which is innovate, and develop new systems on smaller budgets and time tables. A recent study by Christopher Chyba suggests that for NASA to do the same job SpaceX did on its Falcon 9 rocket for 390 million, it would cost NASA between 1.7 - 4 billion! Something great and exciting is happening in the commercial rocket industry, and it is about time they start being taken seriously by our government.
I hope that this post has provided some information that was informative, and helped you understand how difficult it was for NASA to build a Shuttle, even during its greatest moments of achievement. I did my best to provide mostly factual evidence, and tried to leave out my opinion (yeah...nice "try" Derek...).
This is not a matter of if we can trust NASA to do amazing things, because it's obvious they can.
The question is, how long are you willing to wait for a government to give you that space program you have always deserved?
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3 Comments
Reader Comments (3)
Exactly. The Shuttle is nice to see, but it's not the only option out there and we want something better. I remember hearing or reading that one reason it was so expensive was due to the delta wings that the air force insisted it have in order to be able to make the tight turns necessary to guarantee a landing on US soil if something ever went wrong. The argument against this was that the Shuttle didn't have any secret technology and also even without the delta wings it could still land in friendly territory anyway, just not necessarily the US. Don't take my word on this though as I don't remember where I heard/read it.
I don't think anyone, anywhere will deny that the Shuttle didn't meet its original hype to fly once every two weeks, etc. But one can't simply disregard the engineering marvel that the Shuttle is, as well as the ISS. And that's what we need to remember it for.
These commercial companies talk about business cases, and how the Shuttle is useless because it doesn't have one, but I'd like to see commercial build something as complex as the ISS, and do it as flawlessly as NASA did. I'd be willing to bet that they'd have a lot more respect for the Shuttle once they actually tried doing some of this stuff, as opposed to discussing the business case of doing it.
Pmh, look up some info on Bigelow Aerospace. Before the end of the decade they very well may have a space station with as much habitable volume as ths ISS. They already have two test modules in orbit. The whole point is that a commercial entity would never build something with a design similar to the ISS because it's needlessly complex. Using Bigelow modules one can gain far more habitable volume per launch, doing away with the need for expensive space infrastructure like he shuttle.