Shuttle had lots of capability--threw away--where are our leaders?

Two essays in this week’s Space Review, by Justin Kugler and by Mary Lynn Ditmar, really focus on pretty much the same thing. That is, we for a long time, spent a lot of money on putting people in space. Now, quite suddenly, we terminate a major portion of the program with no substantive plan of what is to come, and people within and outside of the program wonder why the investment so far and how do we use that investment in the future, or do we just throw it all away.

Fact is, while ISS will likely continue for some time, it is not the dynamic and pressure-filled environment that Shuttle was. Shuttle was a show ever time it launched. It was a dynamic vehicle with a range of capabilities that is unmatched. ISS, by comparison, operates in a relatively benign environment, at a relatively leisurely pace providing a pretty restricted set of functions.

ISS may be of value. Most significantly, it is providing a lab for studying the effects of weightlessness on the human organism, and a test bed for many of the systems that could be required in future decades or centuries to carry people to the planets and the stars. There was also the experiment of large scale assembly in earth orbit-the first time something like that was ever done. ISS might also be a useful lab for studying the effect of lack of gravity on a variety of materials and organisms. But its not like this latter part is something dramatically new; we’ve been doing experiments in micro-G for 40 years.

Both Kugler and Ditmar appear to be asking, ‘OK, so what is the great benefit of a human space program. What have we learned through our investment of 50 years and something like $400 billion? What were the important parts? Where do they lead in the future? How should we be focusing that learning process? What is the value?’ We really should have figured that out before shutting Shuttle down, because Shuttle had a lot of things, required a lot of expertise, was supported by a lot of trades and specialists, that we have now let go, even before we’ve figured out whether we may have needed them in the future.

Yes, we still have a couple Americans in orbit, but to be sure a large piece of the space program was shut down in the last month and the last couple of years. Was it never needed? Did we outgrow it? What is the future about?

Where are the nation’s leaders who ought to be figuring this out before we decide to throw it all away?