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Read these about Shuttle, US WASTES BILLIONS–PUTS SHUTTLE IN MUSEUM
Posted on January 17, 2012 by Bob
Commercially operated shuttle for 1/3 cost
NASA knew right answer– operate shuttle commercially–wanted to spend more
Posted by keeptheshuttleflying.com at 8:52 PM 0 comments There was a solution and NASA knew it. That solution was to commercialize the STS Space Shuttles and use them in conjunction with a new Shuttle Derived Heavy Lift Launch vehicle, such a Shuttle-C. Shuttle-C could have been built for about $10 billion or about the same money wasted on Constellation before it got cancelled. A Shuttle-C could have lifted some 70,000kg into space. Sharing resources, facilities, and even missions would have reduced the cost for both the Commercial Shuttles and the Shuttle-C. NASA demonstrated the ability to operate the Shuttles at reduced cost when it started shifting people from the bloated Shuttle program to Constellation because this reduce Shutle flight costs from about $1.3 billion to only $750 million. Something NASA kept sayind couldn’t be done. The simple fact is the Shuttles died because NASA and the Aerospace Industry didn’t want a couple of billion dollars a year flying the Shuttles, they wanted the $200 Billion + building Constellation. At the price you could have flown the Shuttles on over 200 missions. So the Shuttles died and our manned space program was slaughterd for pork. Now they are promoting SLS, which is a vehicle with no mission other than pork.
What kind of people are leading US Space Program? Are they Brain Dead?
What kind of people are leading US Space Program?? Are they Brain Dead?
Posted on January 15, 2012 by Bob
We have a capable, reliable vehicle in a museum on which we have spent 100 of billions. We depend on this capability to service systems in orbit (HST, ISS, unknown national security assets) on which we have invested 100 or more billions. Replacement vehicles are 10 years or more away and none of them have the capability of the shuttle such as payload, use of arm, EVA capability, runway landing. We are spending 60 million 6 times a year for Russian transport to the station on a vehicle which does not meet NASA’s manned rating requirements ( read ASAP minutes on this subject, read NASA analysis of Soyus & Hale blog).
Also, we are subject to the discretion of the Russians for their service.
Doesn’t it make just plain horse sense to use shuttle until we get a replacement of equivalent capability??
I say YES. This site is filled with articles supporting that conclusion.
Read NASA plan puts America at Risk.
Are our space leaders in Congress and NASA brain dead?
Are they out of their minds?
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?
SECRET Plan to, OR Just Sheer STUPIDITY in the DESTRUCTION of the US Space Program??
The shuttle provided the USA with the capability to place a large payload in earth orbit, repair systems in orbit, repair tps on the orbiter, docking capability, ISS repair and upgrade. The Canadian arm provided much of this capability.
The orbiter can return a payload to earth to a runway vs. Ocean landing(very expensive).
If you want to go to an astroid, modules for the vehicle can be put in orbit or same for moon ,etc.
You have the arm for repairs to satellites , airlock for docking. Seems to me we need this capability. This approach allows for earth orbit operations and other exploration. Makes sense to do both.
There are those who want vehicles for mars or moon , shuttle has more flexibility.
The shuttle is a very capable vehicle, and it is operational (was a few months ago).
However, it had its problems. A few of the most significant are listed.
1. Expensive to operate—500 million /flight
2. TPS turnaround expensive
3. SSME turnaround expensive
NASA knew right answer– operate shuttle commercially–wanted to spend more
Posted by keeptheshuttleflying.com at 8:52 PM 0 comments There was a solution and NASA knew it. That solution was to commercialize the STS Space Shuttles and use them in conjunction with a new Shuttle Derived Heavy Lift Launch vehicle, such a Shuttle-C. Shuttle-C could have been built for about $10 billion or about the same money wasted on Constellation before it got cancelled. A Shuttle-C could have lifted some 70,000kg into space. Sharing resources, facilities, and even missions would have reduced the cost for both the Commercial Shuttles and the Shuttle-C. NASA demonstrated the ability to operate the Shuttles at reduced cost when it started shifting people from the bloated Shuttle program to Constellation because this reduce Shutle flight costs from about $1.3 billion to only $750 million. Something NASA kept sayind couldn’t be done. The simple fact is the Shuttles died because NASA and the Aerospace Industry didn’t want a couple of billion dollars a year flying the Shuttles, they wanted the $200
Billion + building Constellation. At the price you could have flown the Shuttles on over 200 missions. So the Shuttles died and our manned space program was slaughterd for pork. Now they are promoting SLS, which is a vehicle with no mission other than pork.
Ed note–read Evolve and Use Shuttle.
It can still be done if those fools in Congress/NASA/adm would implement the common sense approach rather than wasting time on which museum to place the orbiters in.
This was written by someone who understood what should have been done. What a waste!!
As Mr. Shupp indicates the shuttle was a compromise, yet very capable.
You’re misreading me. I didn’t say Rockwell had proposed a VTOL 2-stage version of the shuttle to NASA. As you note, it wasn’t what NASA wanted, and as I noted, it couldn’t have been built. VTO with Horizontal Land … that was doable, and if memory serves that’s what everybody bidding on the shuttle contract proposed.
I wasn’t there for that part of things. I started at Rockwell (still North American Rockwell, not yet Rockwell International, as I recall) in May of 1973. I was a college dropout, or maybe a flunkout, and even at the time it wasn’t clear exactly which was the case. So I wasn’t a “real engineer”; I was hired as an Engineering Aide II, an extra set of hands for a real engineer, to deal with scut work, and a week after I was hired I got shipped off to Tennessee for two weeks to help record the results from some wind tunnel tests at the Arnold Engineering Development Center — a little bit of the 21st century dropped down for some reason in the mid 20th century, in the midst of communities where most of the the technicians lived amongst farmers and people distilling whiskey and producing baseball bats from lengths of hickory…. Which was educational in a way, to learn I lived in such a country, never all one thing, but mixed up this way and that. And eventually I did become a Real Engineer, with a promotion to Member of the Technical Staff, a couple of years later when I was on the B-1 development program, and got a real college degree in Physics at West Coast University, which ain’t famous but has served me well enough, along with GRE scores, to be considered for grad school, Which is another story.
My boss was a thin intense man named Mark Harthun. His boss was a genial hefty sort named John Lundgren, and I feel privileged in retrospect to havbe known them both. Harthun was a supervisor, he had two lead engineers and about a dozen other people, most of them new college grads. Lundgren had three groups, with about thirty people among them, and he was a manager — second rung on a ladder of 8 or 9 management rungs leading up to Vice President, if I remember correctly. Anyhow, we were the Aeroheating Group, and our job was to keep the shuttle from melting during ascent and reentry.
Chief problem on a VTOL system: re-entry and landing. You’ve got 25,000 fps of velocity to kill off, at a minimum, which takes a whole lot of fuel if you don’t get aerodynamic braking. Which means wings or a wide fuselage, like a lifting body. Re-entry from the moon or planets, outside earth’s orbit, gives you 35,000 fps or more velocity to deal with — twice the energy, twice the problem.
So Rockwell proposed a VTOHL system. The original design was a rwo-stage system: the booster was about the size of a football field, with a rather flattened oval cross-section; it had a two-man crew, if memory serves. The orbiter sat on the back of the booster, much as the real one did, but the proposal orbiter looked like an X-1, with small rectangular wings pretty much perpendicular to the fuselage at about 2/3?s the fuselage length. Think of a brick sitting on a one-foot ruler and you’ve got the idea. It was small, with maybe 15000 pounds of payload capability.
“And the air flow over it never goes turbulent,” Joe Haney, one of the lead engineers said my first day, showing me a 6-inch wind tunnel model of the orbiter. “No matter what we test at, it doesn’t go turbulent.” Which didn’t mean nearly as much then as it would later ….
What with this and that going on in Washington, some “improvements” were ordered. I think the flyback booster died first; the shuttle would be mounted to big expendable tanks instead — easier to design and cheaper to build, since a tank didn’t need a human crew or engines or
much else. This was supposed to be “temporary,” and NASA would get around to building a real flyback booster as soon as funding was available. There was a war going on, and the government was running an unprecedented deficit, largely because of the cradle-to-grave socialism of the previous Democratic administration, which just about all the guys around me despised …. I’m sure you’ll find this inconceivable.
Then NASA and the Air Force made an agreement, and the X1-like orbiter went away. The vehicle suddenly needed five times the crossrange (from 1250 miles to 6250 miles); it needed to carry 65,000 pounds of payload. Roughly speaking the cargo bay went from pickup truck sized to railroad car sized. So, bigger fuselage, wider and longer. Bigger wings to increase the vehicle’s range — to slow down descent faster, to allow more steering during rentry. And bigger wings yet again, to deal with the orbiter’s increasing size and weight…
And since the wings are larger, during reentry the boundary layer (the region where air goes from flowing “free” to not moving relative to the vehicle, and becomes hot as kinetic energy
is transformed to thermal) is going to get thicker, and finally at last we did get turbulent flow on wind tunnels, implying we’d have turbulent flow in real flights….
Which was not good news, because a turbulent boundary layer is thinner than a laminar one. Air flow becomes chaotic. There’s buffeting. And there’s a lot more heat transfer to the aircraft structure. People write books about this stuff — the basic text on boundary layer theory was by a guy named Schlichting and for all I know it’s still in print, there’s not a lot of folks competing for fame in his corner of the churchyard.
Anyhow. The increased heating required bigger, tougher wings, which mweant more weight. It required some structural changes in the main fuselage, generally meaning more weight. All meaning changes in the vehicle’s aerodynamics, meaning different return trajectories had to evaluated, and so on.
But of course the real fun thing that in was a tile-based Thermal Proctection System. People could write books about the TPS I rather think — really thick ones, like Russian novels, with
— in the end –similar amounts of tragedy. Shuttle TPS was an absolutely insane kludge in my humble opinion == and because it took so large a workforce to maintain it was the single most important factor in destroying shuttle’s economic rationale.
What would have been better? I always thought some sort of “boil-off” system to transfer cool air from the topside of shuttle to the bottom would have worked. But I wasn’t asked, and long afterwards it strikes me a boil-off system would have needed some hefty internal ducting, which would have weighed a whole bunch. Shuttle just wasn’t big enough for that. So, maybe some sort of liquid sodium heat transfer, as with nuclear reactors… but those transfer heat to water, rather than air. Better materials… well some titanium got substituted for aluminum, but basically the aeroheating would have overwhelmed the titanium as well. So the tile TPS won the day. (Remember, this was to be a _reusable_ system. The Mercury-Gemini-Apollo tactic of ablating heat shields wasn’t open.) For what it’s worth, Chuck Blumer and Serge Waiter, the high powered science guys in my group, never proposed any radical alternative in my hearing, though they did grumble about what had to work with.
Also, the TPS was fragile, about like chalk. “What’s going to happen if a bird hits this?” I asked an older friend one day, after looking at a blueprint. The TPS over the front edge of the wing was about two inches thick at the most, and there was a gap of about a foot between it and the actual metal of the wing. “This’ll break.” Not a problem, he said to reassure me. The air flow around the wing would be thick enough and fast enough that anything a bird would be swept aside. “But even so,” I said, persisting. “What if? What about a flock of birds.” “For that, we keep our fingers crossed,” he said wryly. And you might guess how well that worked out.
The TPS system was reasonably heavy. Not quite as bad as rock or steel, but the tiles weigh about as much as an equal volume of … Lava hand soap, I wrote originally, but that’s too heavy, say that the tiles weigh about the same as dog poop, and you’ll have a better idea … and they cover a great amount of area. Which increased weight.
I’ve said “increased weight” a lot, you may have noticed. And guess what, another improvement got ordained: A pair of nice bulky solid rocket boosters to be used on each shuttle flight. Two boosters collectively weighing 4.4 million pounds, which would generate 4.5 miilion pounds of thrust, and hopefully get this ungainly mother of a system off the launch pad at about the speed of a dying sparrow…
Well, that was the last of it. There were refinements to be made, of course. New trajectories to evaluate, new thicknesses of the TPS to consider, new structuraL changes in the fuselage, and so on. But that’s how the basic system evolved. And it was all a horrible kludge as I well remember and you can now see. But it did work, well enough. Despite OMB’s adding a couple years of delay to the program, despite losing about a third of the initial development budget, shuttle got built.
So yeah, it was seriously compromised, and it wasn’t as rugged as we’dd all hoped and it killed 14 good men and women during its brief (138 flights!) lifetime. And the economics
sucked.
So, should we not have built it? Should we have done The Honorable Thing, and walked away from the job? Or kept secret diaries to reveal the Waste & Corruption when it got bad enough to justify whistle blowing? Well, nobody did, and along the way those who hadn’t been aware of how life departed from textbook examples got some education in real world engineering.
Engineering involves compromises. The world’s complex, the customer’s stupid, the money coming in isn’t what was budgeted, and even your coworkers will make the occasional wee error. You had in mind making something glorious, and you have to settle. Other hand, you learn mistakes to watch out for, you learn tactics that do work, you get experience, and with it an idea of what kinds of problems are serious and what kind minor, and so on. Everything will be better when we get to version 2.0 of the software!
Most of us working on shuttle saw it as a temporary thing. No, it wasn’t perfect, but it filled the time, it kept people busy till Washington loosened up and got back to funding space
programs properly again. Which, in the worst world anyone could concieve of, would be the later 1970?s. Meanwhile, shuttle was a start toward the reusuable spacecraft of the future, far from perfect given the constraints, but a start. In five years or maybe ten, Shuttle 2 would take its place, and in the decades after, Shuttle 3 and Shuttle 4 and …. That’s how it goes in the aerospace business, my friend.
And 40 years after the Space Shuttle started development, we are all still waiting for Shuttle 2.
And that’s the “dream world” in which in which shuttle got built, shuttle got compromised, and shuttle went to hell and gone. Nobody got together and purposefully designed from the start exactly as it turned out. It was the best we could do at the time, with the technology and the money we had, and no one expected it to be perfect, or to last so long that anyone coming later would think that we had though it perfect.
Now mr. Karma sums it up.
Robert Karma
5 hours ago
The problem with have had with HSF since the heyday of Apollo has been the lack of political and national will to pursue an aggressive manned space program with definite goals like returning to the moon, establishing a moonbase with scientific and economic missions, a manned mission to Mars, etc. Once we successfully reached the moon and returned our astronauts safely to the earth the American people started to tune out and the Nixon Administration and Congress had other priorities. We lost Apollo 18, 19 & 20 due to budget cuts. It was one hell of a fight to even secure the Shuttle program and it was subject to numerous changes and compromises to finally get it approved and budgeted. Both political parties during their time in the White House and control of Congress have failed to follow through on several post-Shuttle plans for our manned space program which has led us to our current dilemma. Until the American people speak up and inform their government representatives in Washington that we demand a vigorous and assertive manned space program we should not be surprised that we will continue to flounder in the backwash of space exploration. Given the extreme partisan
bickering in Congress we cannot trust them to function in any positive degree for the benefit of our manned space program. It is up to the citizens of this country to demand that our representatives step up and support our leadership in space with adequate long-term funding that doesn’t get cut on a whim from budget year to budget year. Until then all of the brilliant proposals for NASA to explore and exploit space is just an exercise in futility.
Impacts resulting from shuttle premature retirement.
Shuttle retirement impact
1. Put 40,000 out of work
2. Depend on foreign country for manned acess to ISS
2a. Hubble can not be supported.
3. Waste millions in transport to ISS
4. Put ISS in danger , put 100 billion investment in jeopardy
5. Disbanded shuttle team and workforce–take years to reassemble
6. Impact negatively scientific research
7. Adversely affect our children’s goals in scientific fields
8. Surrender the high ground to China
9. Significant national security impact.
10. American astronauts in danger in vehicles not manned rated
11. Eliminates America Preeminence in space for decades.
12. Wastes hundreds of billions used to develop and test shuttle and years of work by
thousands of aerospace workers.
13. Wastes billions on facilities at KSC, JSC, MSFC, and at hundred of contractor/suppliers facilities.
14. Resulted in commercial crew programs not close to shuttle capability that will not end well.
15. Eliminates USA ‘s manned space capability.
16. Can’t support Hubble
Now, consider all the knowledgable people who have supported the shuttle extension–re article on site. There is quite a list.
It is very difficult to understand why NASA would not propose an extension since it makes lots of sense and all the experts recommended that course of action. Additionally the head of NASA is a former astronaut with years of military fighter aircraft service who surely must know the importance of the shuttle capability to the USA considering our responsibilities in orbit and to USA security.
This whole situation makes you wonder about what is really going on.
Is there a secret plan to destroy the USA space capability?
What about the space committee leaders in Congress?
Also, during the last effort to save the shuttle NASA essentially sabotaged the effort saying that certain facilities had been “repurposed”.
This is a “CROCK of —” NASA does not want the shuttle flying PERIOD and nary a word from a single rep. Or senator.
THE AMERICAN TAXPAYER is being scammed in a very big way with the shuttle retirement.
China will control space and the planet if things continue as they are.
ASAP public comment–Sums up need for Shuttle–page 2
read
Americans, the choice is yours, we can continue to be preeminent, or we can sit back and waste what we have achieved, and let China and Russia take control. Grounding of shuttle will set the USA back 40 years. Please get your friends and their friends to contact their lawmakers, media, talk shows, etc to get the shuttle back flying again. America needs your help. Contact me at bobbygmartin1938@gmail.com would like to discuss this with anyone.
These new programs do not have shuttle capability such as arm, airlocks, runway landing and will take years to develop. They will suffer similar delays as other complex programs with resultant delays in operational system. Meanwhile, shuttle in museum, facilities vacant, work force disbanded. I ask you, does this make sense?
Political obstruction to shuttle–United Space Alliance–DeCastro
Posted on December 31, 2011 by Bob
As I indicated in the Shuttle is safe, it makes no sense and is totally irrational to retire the shuttle. Look at the number of experts who recommended against the shuttle retirement.
Read This Risk Assessment used on shuttle, illustrates the total ineptness of the ASAP and the CAIB, both concluded shuttle unsafe. Bolden nor Garver nor Gustamaier took issue with this totally unscientific conclusion. Look at the record after corrective actions taken after Columbia.
These people, Bolden, Garver, Gustamaier,and Obama do not want a successful American space program. They know these new underfunded efforts will not likely be successful, and if they are with all the delays that will likely occur, a reliable vehicle will not be available for many years therefore leaving America with a 10 to 20 years ” shuttle capability” gap. Maybe longer, since new efforts will not meet the shuttle’s capability.
America, don’t let this ADM, NASA,and Congress kill America’s preeminence in space.
For experts opposing shuttle retirement, read Famous Personalities…. Page
The Case to Save the Shuttle
By Allen J. RichardsonPosted 10.14.08NOVA
In August of 2003 the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) issued its report and concluded, among other things, that the space shuttles were aging, old technology, and too risky. Shortly thereafter President Bush initiated the Constellation program to retire the space shuttles and to replace them with the Ares Launch Vehicles and the Orion Spacecraft, patterned after the Apollo Program. As it stands, the space shuttles are to be retired during 2010, and the Constellation Project is well under way. This is a severe under-utilization of a valuable and still-usable national asset.
SHUTTLE ADVOCATES: SAVE THE SHUTTLE
To alert the public, my colleagues and I formed the Shuttle Advocates Team (SAT), an informal group of mostly retired Rockwell and Boeing engineers, with many years of experience working on the space shuttle Orbiter vehicle, from contract initiation through mission operation. We represent a cross section of space shuttle engineering and provideauthoritative information regarding space shuttle performance and future capability. Many of us were also deeply involved in the Apollo Project and are therefore qualified to make comparisons between the space shuttle approach and the Constellation approach to space exploration. We call our team the Shuttle Advocates Team because our mission is to extend the use of the space shuttle system beyond the current end date of 2010. Much of the following information is drawn from material supplied to this writer by SAT engineers.
SPACE SHUTTLE HISTORY AND ITS CURRENT CAPABILITY
To clarify a point, what everyone commonly calls the shuttle or the space shuttle is what our team calls the Orbiter vehicle, that stubby-looking, winged spacecraft that holds the crew and payload. It is this unique United States vehicle that America and the world have come to identify with manned space travel, our “space truck,” so to speak. The total space shuttle system consists of four major components: two Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs), one External Tank (ET), and the Orbiter. The SRBs and the ET are necessary to enable the Orbiter to achieve Earth orbit. Our comments and statements primarily concern the Orbiter vehicles.
The Orbiter named Challenger was lost due to a problem with the SRB circumferential field joint seals (“O-rings”) losing their resiliency during a cold winter launch. The improved SRB joint seal has solved that problem. The Columbia spacecraft was lost when a large piece of the ET’s external insulation inexplicably detached from a critical area on the tank surface. The critical area is a 15-foot-wide area opposite the Orbiter, which extends aft about five feet from the forward attach point of the Orbiter. The piece of foam struck the Orbiter on the lower surface of the left wing’s leading edge, causing a mortal hole that resulted in the loss of the vehicle and crew from reentry overheating. Extensive corrective actions by the ET Project have restored confidence, and successful spaceflights have resumed.
We cite these two accidents to make the point that they were caused by the other shuttle components used during ascent to orbit. The Orbiter spacecraft has never been the cause of any failures. The Orbiter has a perfect record of 123 consecutive successful missions, and we are confident that this record number will grow. We also have a dedicated team of new engineers trained by their mentors, thus insuring that the Orbiter can continue to be operated correctly.
The Orbiters are, of course, aging but have two thirds of their 100 mission design lives (per vehicle) still ahead of them. Sean O’Keefe, a former head of NASA, states in the NOVA documentary that prior to theColumbia accident NASA was planning to keep the space shuttles in operation till 2020. One of the members of SAT recently delivered a technical paper on the built-in space shuttle longevity and compared it to the Douglas DC-3, an aircraft that has been flying for over 70 years and is known for its reliability and ruggedness. The vehicles are well maintained and to this day remain pristine. If you look inside one of the Orbiters today, for example, it looks very similar to the first Orbiter on its maiden voyage back in 1981.
Each of the Orbiters was designed and qualified by tests and analysis for a minimum of 100 space missions. Many of the component test programs were extended to 400 missions to flush out any hidden or unexpected failure modes. The most-used Orbiter in the fleet has only performed 35 missions, so today there is plenty of useful life remaining for additional space missions.
Furthermore, the space shuttles are not old technology. The Orbiter is very similar to military and commercial airplanes, and only evolutionary changes have occurred in airplanes over the last 27 years, as opposed to radical redesigns. Furthermore, those changes are mostly in the avionics, which are readily updated. The more familiar examples of this are the Boeing B-52 and B-1 bombers and the Boeing 747 airliner, all of which are still flying after a longer period, and in the latter case the plane is still in production. The fact is if a spacecraft were designed today to do all the things the space shuttle can do, it would be virtually no different from the existing proven hardware.
A former Orbiter Chief Engineer and VP of Engineering reports, “Many people are unaware that NASA has long maintained an upgrade process to provide current technology to the Orbiter. Starting with the early space missions, many upgrades were installed to improve performance, enhance system reliability, and improve operational safety. More than $1 billion was spent after the Challenger accident on the SRBs, the ET, and the Orbiter. The successful flights after the Columbia accident also show that NASA keeps these shuttle components operating with technology that can meet the mission requirements, consistent with the available funding for modification kits and their installation. Over the years of shuttle operations, these upgrades have received lots of attention as recorded in Reference (1).” (The reference is to a 1999 National Research Council Report entitled “Upgrading the Space Shuttle,” published by the National Academy Press.)
As summarized by a former Chief Engineer at Kennedy Space Center, “The Orbiter is the most fantastic flying machine built by man. Its retirement in 2010 is premature and shortsighted. What a waste of unique hardware and all the associated infrastructure and people skills that have been developed at Kennedy Space Center. (This applies as well to the other NASA Centers and to the Corporate Suppliers.) The knowledge base and support for complex space launches take a significant time to establish, and now we’re planning to dismantle the talented workforce at that site, together with the software and procedures established over 123 flights, to begin a new program. Skills will be lost as we wait on the Constellation hardware to materialize—a situation very similar to the tough six years between the last Apollo launch (Apollo Soyuz) in 1975 and the drawn-out buildup for the shuttle that finally culminated in its first launch in 1981. Such an extended development with the Constellation elements in these days of budget shortfalls could seriously impact the first scheduled launch of Orion in 2015.
MANNED SPACE VEHICLE EXPLORATION UTILIZING THE SPACE SHUTTLE
The space shuttles, used in concert with the International Space Station (ISS), could provide a viable means of launching manned space vehicles to destinations in our solar system, such as the moon, Mars, or an asteroid. In a single launch, the space shuttle can orbit a 50,000 lb payload, a capability that has allowed us to construct and operate the ISS, which weighs one million lbs. By designing the interplanetary vehicles in modular form and assembling them in orbit utilizing the ISS, we can assemble vehicles of enormous size, if required. This capability would be of indispensable value in the case of a Trans Mars vehicle, which would require the transport of considerable energy to power the vehicle there and back. Should additional single payload launch capability (either in weight or size) be required, a Space Shuttle-C (an unmanned space shuttle variant with increased payload capability) could be built. An additional benefit of this approach is that the ISS could serve as a mission return stopping point, followed by space shuttle transport of astronauts to Earth. This could provide an extra margin of safety for astronauts with unforeseen needs.
The specific advantages of continuing the space shuttle approach to solar system exploration discussed above, as opposed to the current Constellation “space shuttle replacement” approach, are numerous:
1) The space shuttle is a proven and predictable system. In contrast, the Ares-1 Launch Vehicle (ALV) is already beset with technical uncertaintiesregarding weight limitations and excessive vibration.
2) The space shuttle system is a combination of launch vehicle and spacecraft. The space shuttle Orbiter’s on-orbit capabilities include a remote arm capable of manipulating and repairing satellites. The Orbiter also includes an airlock to support extravehicular activities such as space repairs and component assembly. The Constellation system (the shuttle replacement) is a combination of the ALV and the Orion spacecraft. The Orion spacecraft does not have the above capability.
3) The space shuttle system can return both payloads and astronauts from orbit to Earth via a runway landing, while the Constellation approach will revert to parachuting a capsule and the returning astronauts into the ocean, as was the case with the Apollo system.
4) The space shuttle will provide uninterrupted U.S. support to the ISS. Pursuing the Constellation approach will result in a gap of five years or more, when the U.S. will have no capability of delivering supplies to the ISS or of delivering astronauts to the ISS and returning them. Relying on the Russians to fill this gap has become more problematic with the controversy over the Russian invasion of Georgia and the reluctance of the U.S. Congress to renew the legislative exemption that enables NASA to continue to purchase Soyuz spacecraft services as a backup to the space shuttle. The current exemption expires in 2011. Therefore, Congress will need to extend the exemption till the ALV/Orion system is operational.
5) The space shuttle approach will insure ongoing utilization of the ISS, a space colony that humankind should keep in place and operating for the foreseeable future.
6) With the space shuttle system, both the Orbiter and the SRBs are reusable. With Constellation, a relatively larger part of the system, the ALV, is a single-use component.
7) The space shuttle and supporting facilities are paid for!
The advantages of the Constellation approach over the space shuttle approach appear to be nil, the switch to the Constellation approach being predicated primarily on the unwarranted fear of another shuttle “accident” as put forward by the President’s CAIB. Fortunately, there is time to reconsider. Even though the dismantling of the space shuttle system has begun, it probably would be more advantageous to stay with this system than to design and construct a whole new system to support the Constellation program. At a minimum, the shuttle system should be extended till its replacement is operational.
The next President and his NASA administrator should also consider a change in the next goal of the U.S. manned space program as well as a change in the hardware to achieve that goal. Scientific interest now centers on Mars rather than on the moon. Four of the five elements of a manned mission to Mars are already in place:
1) The space shuttle (the launch vehicle)
2) The International Space Station, or ISS (the assembly and launch platform for the Trans Mars vehicle)
3) Extensive experience with on-orbit assembly
4) Numerous unmanned precursor missions to Mars
The only missing element is the Mars Aerobraker Vehicle (MAV) to transport the expected three astronauts to and from Mars. Conceptual designs already exist for this vehicle. At an estimated departure weight of 400,000 pounds, a dozen shuttle flights could deliver all needed modules of the MAV to the ISS over a period of years at a cost of perhaps $10 billion. This would leave most of $200 billion (the amount currently contemplated for lunar exploration) to design, build, and assemble the MAV. This redirection would focus the attention and resources of NASA and the aerospace community on the MAV, and would sharpen skills valuable to the nation for further exploration of our solar system. With the manned space program thus redirected, the goal of landing humans on Mars within the next decade appears to be feasible.
My e-mail address is alrichardson2@aol.com
On behalf of the members of SAT, thank you for your interest.
Allen J. Richardson,
Former Orbiter Stress Analysis Supervisor
Editor’s Note:
As documented in Space Shuttle Disaster, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board’s report makes a strong case for the shuttle’s retirement, based on the design and safety issues laid bare by the loss of both Columbia, in 2003, and Challenger, 17 years earlier. Fourteen astronauts died in those accidents. The Bush administration accepted the board’s recommendations and announced that the shuttle would be retired in 2010. NASA was ordered to develop new spacecraft that could take astronauts back to the moon and beyond, and many in the space community are excited by the new vision.
But there are dissenters who fervently believe that retiring the shuttle is a mistake. The movement to delay the shuttle’s retirement picked up steam in September 2008, as both John McCain and Barack Obama voiced support for extending the shuttle’s operation, and a leaked e-mail written by NASA’s top administrator revealed that the space agency was studying the feasibility of extending shuttle missions past 2010. It’s no surprise that engineers who have worked on the shuttle and its development are among the most passionate advocates for keeping it flying. One of those engineers, Allen Richardson, who appears in the NOVA documentary as well as assisted with technical questions during the film’s production, requested the opportunity to express his viewpoint.—Arun Rath, one of the producers of “Space Shuttle Disaster”
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