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The Shuttle program is coming to a hard stop because the program was a failure. The Shuttle is monstrously complex, killed astronauts on routine low orbit miss

The Shuttle program is coming to a hard stop because the program was a failure. The Shuttle is monstrously complex, killed astronauts on routine low orbit missions, and its runaway costs enveloped NASA's budget, crowding out any alternative manned platforms. There is no next-generation Shuttle or iteration of the Shuttle because simply running the current version of the Shuttle consumed NASA. After this last mission, the U.S. manned space program's capabilities will be back in the 1950s.

jordan0day 15y ago
While I have to agree with your overall point, I'm not ready to cede that the shuttle hurt manned space exploration more than it helped. Despite its' shortcomings, the Space Shuttle has been a point of national (and I would imagine international) pride, it's an incredible machine that has inspired the dreams of millions. Perhaps it did hurt more than it helped, in that it made the phrase you use, "routine low orbit missions" not sound ludicrous. Perhaps it was all just a massively expensive house of cards one gentle breeze away from failure, and on the occasions it did fail, people were surprised. We've only been sending people to space for fifty years, there's still nothing "routine" about low earth orbit, and every astronaut that has died in a shuttle knew exactly the risks they were taking. My greatest hope is that the retirement of the remaining shuttles won't be seen by Americans (and the world in general) as a failure or a "sign of the times", but will be a rallying point. It's time to move on to bigger and better things.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- tsotha 15y ago
  We've only been sending people to space for fifty years, there's still nothing "routine" about low earth orbit... That is the damaging legacy of STS. It's established the expectation that going to orbit can never be done at a reasonable price, that there will never be anything people can do in space worth the staggering cost of getting them there. Getting to orbit could be routine, but we been marinating in expensive failure for so long the engineering that needs to be done to make it happen will never get public support in the US.
  - jerf 15y ago
    Well, that's arguably one of the defining features of capitalism; the engineering doesn't need public support in the US. It just needs some investors with vision and eventual profitability. The way other socioeconomic systems tend to destroy that feature in passing (on their way to some other goal) is one of the major reasons they have been such overwhelming failures in practice. The last flight of the shuttle is a huge step in the right direction, historically so, not a regression. I respect it for what it did, but the best thing it could do now is retire with honor and dignity.
    - tsotha 15y ago
      ...the engineering doesn't need public support in the US. It just needs some investors with vision and eventual profitability. Where is that profit going to come from? Space tourism? I will be very surprised if there will be a big ongoing demand for spending a few days vomiting in an orbiting can.
      - astine 15y ago
        "few days vomiting in an orbiting can." You clearly underestimate the desire of the average American to make himself severely uncomfortable for the sake of a thrill. At the current level of expense, space tourism will never be more than a status symbol for the super rich, but get the cost bellow a few thousand dollars and add a few amenities to the experience and people will go hog wild for it.
        tsotha 15y ago
        You may be right, but I suspect interest will start to fade when the early customers get back and describe the experience. Inevitably one of the launches will go bad and kill the passengers. There will be calls for the government to make it safe, and that will be the end of space tourism.
      - jerf 15y ago
        "Where is that profit going to come from?" From providing services that are already being paid for, only for lower costs? Which generally has the effect of growing the economy in question? You are aware that there already is a space industry, right? Private companies paying real money to put real satellites up for various reasons? It doesn't take much Microeconomics 101 to think that dropping the cost to launch by a factor of four will tend to grow the already-existing economy. Skepticism about whether a viable space economy can exist at all is too late, that ship has sailed. Cheaper space access will enable more economic activity in existing domains, will enable new types of activities that aren't currently viable, and historically speaking, it's pretty safe to say that trying to guess in advance what will ultimately be the "killer app" is actually pretty hard, but given the existence of an already-viable economy it's more a matter of waiting and seeing than hoping.
- InclinedPlane 15y ago
  50 years. The wright brothers flew in 1903, by 1953 there had been tens (maybe even hundreds) of thousands of aircraft built, and millions of people had flown on them. Commercial jet aircraft and supersonic military aircraft were being introduced. Air travel was expensive but within the reach of even the middle class with some savings, 20 million people a year were flying. "Only fifty years", indeed.
  - Retric 15y ago
    Yet after another 50 years flying has not become all that much cheaper. Unlike flying reaching Mach 25 takes a ridiculous amount of energy and there is little reason to suspect it will become cheap in the next 50 years.
    - InclinedPlane 15y ago
      Commercial flights are cost-competitive with driving or just about any other form of travel over distances greater than several hundred miles. Tens of millions of people fly per year. An average ticket for a cross-continental trip is extremely affordable even for people in the lowest quintile of incomes. By what definitions has flying not become cheaper in the last 50 years? As far as manned spaceflight, it's certainly fundamentally more difficult than air travel but that doesn't explain the lack of progress the last 5 decades have seen under NASA leadership. Indeed, we're already seeing the first fruits of a properly open and competitive launch industry, something that hasn't generally been possible for most of the last half century, and it is already beginning to revolutionize manned spaceflight. In the next 50 years if the industry keeps advancing they will have developed streamlined mass produced launch vehicles (Iridium proved that such a thing was possible for satellites, at massive cost savings), single stage to orbit vehicles, and truly reusable launch vehicles, all of which will ultimately bring manned spaceflight into the reach of ordinary folks.
      - Retric 15y ago
        First off the Median income adjusted for inflation has just about doubled since 1950 so while it has become more affordable relative to income relative to wheat there is little real change. The only quote on cost I had was for 1960 but "A round trip ticket between Cleveland and Washington D.C. was about $75. That's over $400 in today's dollars!" And guess what you plenty of airlines are selling tickets 400$ or more. There are some low cost carriers that cost far less, but it's more a question of lost service and hidden fees than improved technology. (You can easily be flying in a 30+ year old aircraft with some minor upgrades.) As to reducing the cost to orbit. The shuttle could transport 50 people into orbit with some minor retrofitting in the cargo area. However, there is little reason to have done so because there is vary little demand to send people into orbit. When you get down to it much of the cost of the shuttle program is trying to maximize the utility of old hardware while minimizing risks. If you want cheap you need to set minor R&D improvements aside and focus on volume but there is just not enough demand to really reduce costs.
ceejayoz 15y ago
> The Shuttle is monstrously complex, killed astronauts on routine low orbit missions. Can you really call it "routine"? The first 135 plane/car trips were probably pretty dangerous, too.
szany 15y ago
More on said problems: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fo8v7juSgRw#t=54m55s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fo8v7juSgRw#t=54m55s "The machine is a beautiful, wonderful piece of hardware. The orbiter system, the most complex system ever built by man to fly has never [...] had a failure that would have prevented that machine from landing safely."

jordan0day 15y ago

While I have to agree with your overall point, I'm not ready to cede that the shuttle hurt manned space exploration more than it helped. Despite its' shortcomings, the Space Shuttle has been a point of national (and I would imagine international) pride, it's an incredible machine that has inspired the dreams of millions. Perhaps it did hurt more than it helped, in that it made the phrase you use, "routine low orbit missions" not sound ludicrous. Perhaps it was all just a massively expensive house of cards one gentle breeze away from failure, and on the occasions it did fail, people were surprised. We've only been sending people to space for fifty years, there's still nothing "routine" about low earth orbit, and every astronaut that has died in a shuttle knew exactly the risks they were taking. My greatest hope is that the retirement of the remaining shuttles won't be seen by Americans (and the world in general) as a failure or a "sign of the times", but will be a rallying point. It's time to move on to bigger and better things.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
tsotha 15y ago
We've only been sending people to space for fifty years, there's still nothing "routine" about low earth orbit... That is the damaging legacy of STS. It's established the expectation that going to orbit can never be done at a reasonable price, that there will never be anything people can do in space worth the staggering cost of getting them there. Getting to orbit could be routine, but we been marinating in expensive failure for so long the engineering that needs to be done to make it happen will never get public support in the US.
- jerf 15y ago
  Well, that's arguably one of the defining features of capitalism; the engineering doesn't need public support in the US. It just needs some investors with vision and eventual profitability. The way other socioeconomic systems tend to destroy that feature in passing (on their way to some other goal) is one of the major reasons they have been such overwhelming failures in practice. The last flight of the shuttle is a huge step in the right direction, historically so, not a regression. I respect it for what it did, but the best thing it could do now is retire with honor and dignity.
  - tsotha 15y ago
    ...the engineering doesn't need public support in the US. It just needs some investors with vision and eventual profitability. Where is that profit going to come from? Space tourism? I will be very surprised if there will be a big ongoing demand for spending a few days vomiting in an orbiting can.
    - astine 15y ago
      "few days vomiting in an orbiting can." You clearly underestimate the desire of the average American to make himself severely uncomfortable for the sake of a thrill. At the current level of expense, space tourism will never be more than a status symbol for the super rich, but get the cost bellow a few thousand dollars and add a few amenities to the experience and people will go hog wild for it.
      - tsotha 15y ago
        You may be right, but I suspect interest will start to fade when the early customers get back and describe the experience. Inevitably one of the launches will go bad and kill the passengers. There will be calls for the government to make it safe, and that will be the end of space tourism.
    - jerf 15y ago
      "Where is that profit going to come from?" From providing services that are already being paid for, only for lower costs? Which generally has the effect of growing the economy in question? You are aware that there already is a space industry, right? Private companies paying real money to put real satellites up for various reasons? It doesn't take much Microeconomics 101 to think that dropping the cost to launch by a factor of four will tend to grow the already-existing economy. Skepticism about whether a viable space economy can exist at all is too late, that ship has sailed. Cheaper space access will enable more economic activity in existing domains, will enable new types of activities that aren't currently viable, and historically speaking, it's pretty safe to say that trying to guess in advance what will ultimately be the "killer app" is actually pretty hard, but given the existence of an already-viable economy it's more a matter of waiting and seeing than hoping.
InclinedPlane 15y ago
50 years. The wright brothers flew in 1903, by 1953 there had been tens (maybe even hundreds) of thousands of aircraft built, and millions of people had flown on them. Commercial jet aircraft and supersonic military aircraft were being introduced. Air travel was expensive but within the reach of even the middle class with some savings, 20 million people a year were flying. "Only fifty years", indeed.
- Retric 15y ago
  Yet after another 50 years flying has not become all that much cheaper. Unlike flying reaching Mach 25 takes a ridiculous amount of energy and there is little reason to suspect it will become cheap in the next 50 years.
  - InclinedPlane 15y ago
    Commercial flights are cost-competitive with driving or just about any other form of travel over distances greater than several hundred miles. Tens of millions of people fly per year. An average ticket for a cross-continental trip is extremely affordable even for people in the lowest quintile of incomes. By what definitions has flying not become cheaper in the last 50 years? As far as manned spaceflight, it's certainly fundamentally more difficult than air travel but that doesn't explain the lack of progress the last 5 decades have seen under NASA leadership. Indeed, we're already seeing the first fruits of a properly open and competitive launch industry, something that hasn't generally been possible for most of the last half century, and it is already beginning to revolutionize manned spaceflight. In the next 50 years if the industry keeps advancing they will have developed streamlined mass produced launch vehicles (Iridium proved that such a thing was possible for satellites, at massive cost savings), single stage to orbit vehicles, and truly reusable launch vehicles, all of which will ultimately bring manned spaceflight into the reach of ordinary folks.
    - Retric 15y ago
      First off the Median income adjusted for inflation has just about doubled since 1950 so while it has become more affordable relative to income relative to wheat there is little real change. The only quote on cost I had was for 1960 but "A round trip ticket between Cleveland and Washington D.C. was about $75. That's over $400 in today's dollars!" And guess what you plenty of airlines are selling tickets 400$ or more. There are some low cost carriers that cost far less, but it's more a question of lost service and hidden fees than improved technology. (You can easily be flying in a 30+ year old aircraft with some minor upgrades.) As to reducing the cost to orbit. The shuttle could transport 50 people into orbit with some minor retrofitting in the cargo area. However, there is little reason to have done so because there is vary little demand to send people into orbit. When you get down to it much of the cost of the shuttle program is trying to maximize the utility of old hardware while minimizing risks. If you want cheap you need to set minor R&D improvements aside and focus on volume but there is just not enough demand to really reduce costs.

ceejayoz 15y ago

> The Shuttle is monstrously complex, killed astronauts on routine low orbit missions. Can you really call it "routine"? The first 135 plane/car trips were probably pretty dangerous, too.

szany 15y ago

More on said problems: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fo8v7juSgRw#t=54m55s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fo8v7juSgRw#t=54m55s "The machine is a beautiful, wonderful piece of hardware. The orbiter system, the most complex system ever built by man to fly has never [...] had a failure that would have prevented that machine from landing safely."