Yesterday marked a thousand days since July 8, 2011, the day the final mission of the Space Shuttle program launched.
There’s no doubt in my mind that mothballing the Space Shuttle fleet when we did was a colossal error. A thousand days later, that opinion has only grown stronger.
Shutting down the shuttle program has meant that US, European, and Japanese astronauts have all had to ride to and from the International Space Station on Russian rockets, paying through the nose for the privilege. Note that I don’t blame the Russians at all for increasing what they charge. We foolishly handed them a monopoly — they’re just doing any monopolist would or should do.
I won’t argue that the shuttle program needed to be shut down due to how much it cost.
I would argue that it shouldn’t have cost nearly as much as it did. I would argue that from the beginning, the program was never bold enough. It was a program run by bureaucrats and politicians, not astronauts and engineers. For an example of what people outside of NASA were proposing, look at some of the early proposals from David Brin and others for taking the shuttle’s external tanks to orbit and using them to build a much bigger (and earlier) space station than ISS. But I’ll save those arguments for another time, it’s just a lot of “coulda, woulda, shoulda” now.
Reality check — in the early 2000’s the shuttle was expensive and had safety issues. Instead of addressing or fixing those issues, President Bush (the second one) decided that the program would be shut down as soon as construction on ISS was finished. That was the situation that President Obama inherited, and while he could have changed direction, he’s actually made it worse.
If you believe that a human space program is a useless waste of money, I hope that you’ve stopped reading and moved on by this point. I’m of the opposite mind, believing that it’s a critical part of our future if our grandchildren and their grandchildren and their grandchildren are to survive. I also believe that NASA’s budget, which is a fraction of 1% of the federal budget, should be doubled or tripled or more, immediately if not sooner. (I don’t remember the exact figure, but the ballpark figure is that the interest on the national debt for a few hours is more than NASA’s budget for the entire year.)
That goes for the unmanned planetary exploration as well. We should be sending orbiters, landers, rovers, flyers, and swimmers to Titan, Enceladus, and Europa. But that’s a rant for another day as well.
So, having spent thirteen years and something like $150 billion to build an incredible space station and having it finally ready to start doing full-time scientific research, our big vision, our big plan, the course our “leadership” set was…
…to shut down the only way we had to get there, other than buying a limited number of Soyuz seats from the Russians.
Now that relations with the Russians are turning sour, plenty of folks at NASA and in Congress are noticing that the only way our next crew gets up there is on a Russian rocket, and the only way the current crew on orbit gets down is in a Russian Soyuz capsule landing in Russia. They are all saying that it won’t be a problem, they’re not worried, the problems we have with the Russians will never get so bad that they refuse to take our astronauts up.
Yeah, probably. We hope. God help us if they’re wrong.
But of course, a thousand days ago, the successor to the shuttle must have been on the drawing boards and ready to go any day, right? Otherwise, that was a decision that absolutely defies any kind of logic or common sense. It would have been almost criminally shortsighted. Right?
Currently, the US successor to the shuttle is Orion and the SLS. “SLS” stands for “Space Launch System,” a heavy-lift vehicle designed to take us past low Earth orbit. It’s more commonly referred to as the “Senate Launch System” because politicians with NASA jobs in their home districts and states are the ones who keep insisting on SLS being built, when the program is turning into an incredibly expensive dead end. It’s also referred to as “The Rocket To Nowhere.”
It would be a fantastic vehicle, a worthy follow-up to the Saturn V — if it were ready now, if it cost a quarter or a tenth of what it does, if it could be launched four or five or six times a year. But it’s not ready now, nor was it ready a thousand days ago. The first test launch (non-crewed) is currently scheduled for 2017, three years from now, far more than another thousand days from now, almost 2,500 days from the final Space Shuttle launch.
I only wish those figures were typos.
It gets better. Assuming the first test flight goes well, the second flight, which will carry a crew, is scheduled for 2021.
2021. If there aren’t any problems. If there aren’t any funding issues or cuts. If there’s isn’t another ninety degree change in course.
Four full years after the first test flight, they’re (maybe) going to have the second test flight.
When we were learning to go to moon in the 1960’s, through Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo, figuring out how to build rockets from scratch (yes, it was rocket science) we were launching as many as five or six manned missions per year, even on brand new rockets. Now, with over fifty years of experience, we’re hopeful that maybe we’ll be able to launch once every four years.
Can you tell that I’m less than impressed?
Then there’s Orion, the space vehicle that SLS will launch into deep space. It will carry up to seven astronauts to low Earth orbit, like to the ISS, or four astronauts on long (several weeks) trips beyond the moon to an asteroid or other target. It’s not revolutionary, it’s not a huge leap forward, it’s actually a huge leap backwards. It’s an oversize Apollo capsule, upgraded with better computers and digital displays instead of 1960’s computers that were a thousand times less powerful than your average smart phone.
Fine. Form follows function. It will get the job done. Was it ready a thousand days ago? Nope, not even close. But unlike the SLS, the first Orion (non-crewed) test launch is actually scheduled for later this year, although the smart money says it will slip into 2015.
So, next year we’ll be able to take an Orion capsule and launch it to ISS on one of our existing rockets, like a Delta or Atlas, right? We’ve launched hundreds and hundreds of those, we’ve got factories building dozens and hundreds more to come. Right?
Nope. As far as I can tell, the Orion will only be able to be launched on the SLS. Originally President Bush had proposed the Constellation program, which included Orion and a family of rockets called Ares. An Ares I could take an Orion to low earth orbit, an Ares V could take one to the moon or beyond.
But the Constellation program was killed by President Obama, and he came pretty close to shutting down NASA’s human space program completely. You don’t have a human space program if you don’t have any crewed spacecraft or any rockets to launch them. Some compromises with Congress led to the Orion being kept, the SLS put on the drawing boards to carry it to some very unspecific “asteroid missions” in the very unspecific “sometime in someone else’s Administration” time frame in which to do it.
Now can you tell that I’m not impressed?
Our salvation at this point lies with the private sector and companies like SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, Xcor, Sierra Nevada, Orbital Sciences, and Boeing. SpaceX and Orbital Sciences are currently sending non-crewed cargo vehicles to ISS.
SpaceX is well along the way to building and testing a crewed vehicle, with abort system tests scheduled for later this year and in 2015. If all goes well, it might be possible for the first crewed Dragon flight to be in late 2015. Boeing is also working on a private, crewed capsule, the CTS-100, which will launch on an upgraded Delta IV or Atlas V rocket.
Late 2015 or early 2016 is an awful lot sooner than 2021. Can you tell that I’m impressed?
Back to the original point.
A thousand days ago, the last Space Shuttle flight took off. With absolutely nothing anywhere near being flight-ready to follow it. That’s got to be one of the greatest failures of vision and leadership in our country’s history.
It’s not like we don’t go through the exact same process with other government programs. So the shuttle was expensive and getting outdated? In an analogous situation, the military periodically has fighters, tanks, and ships that are outdated and getting too expensive to maintain. What do we do then?
We loved the F-14 fighters (Top Gun!), but they got replaced by the F-16, which in turn is being replaced with the F-18, which in turn will be phased out for the F-35 in the next decade or so.
BUT… We didn’t scrap the F-14s until the F-16s were in service and flying. We won’t scrap the F-18s until the F-35s are in service and flying. The programs will overlap and compliment each other for decades.
The older conventional-fuel aircraft carriers were outdated? They were replaced by the nuclear powered ones, which in turn are now being replaced by the next generation of aircraft carriers. Guess what? We didn’t scrap one generation until it had served side by side for decades with the next generation of ships.
Tanks? Ditto. Submarines? Ditto. Cargo planes? Jeeps? Destroyers and guided missile frigates? Guns? Bombs? Artillery? You get the picture.
But not spacecraft! We took all four shuttles, all four of which were flying like champions, all four of which were perfectly functional and capable, and even though we knew that there was nothing to replace them for at least six or seven (or twelve, or fifteen) years…we gutted them and put them into museums.
Strike one. If that’s not freakin’ stupid, I don’t know what is.
And let’s look at that analogy with military vehicles in another way. Do we make one single type of airplane? Nope, we have fighters, cargo planes, refueling planes, attack helicopters, troop carrying helicopters, tank killers, scout planes, bombers — an array different vehicles for different jobs.
Do we have one kind of Navy ship? Nope, we have aircraft carriers, destroyers, guided missile frigates, cargo ships, fuel ships, small attack submarines, big ballistic missile launching submarines…
So why are we building one and only one kind of rocket?
Wouldn’t it make more sense to have crew-rated rockets in a range of sizes and capabilities? Smaller ones for putting spacecraft in low Earth orbit, bigger ones for putting big payloads (like space station pieces) into low earth orbit, even bigger ones for sending crews and ships to the moon and beyond? For that matter, why don’t we also have orbital craft that are never designed to land or come down to Earth, but act permanently in space as tugs, fuel depots, shuttles between the Earth and Moon, shuttles from the lunar surface to lunar orbit, shuttles from Earth orbit to the L5 and L4 points, shuttles between Earth and Mars…
Strike two. If that’s not freakin’ stupid, I don’t know what is.
I’m rooting hard for SpaceX, Orbital, Boeing, Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin, and Sierra Nevada. We need some success and some innovation and we need it soon. As important as I believe human space flight to be, it’s been proven to be too important to leave to the bureaucrats and politicians.
The last thousand days have proven that.
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 