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What We Lose With the End of the Shuttle Program
- ck2 15y agoI'm more horrified they canceled the James Webb telescope (or are just about to).
- garyrichardson 15y agoHoly shit! This just happened: http://appropriations.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=250023 http://appropriations.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?Doc... $4.5 billion for NASA Science programs, which is $431 million below last year’s level. The bill also terminates funding for the James Webb Space Telescope, which is billions of dollars over budget and plagued by poor management.
- nate_meurer 15y agoYep, especially shitty since the project is so far along. It needs to be said that JWST isn't primarily over-budget because of technical problems, but because they didn't do realistic cost and time estimates in the first place. Overall, the project has suffered very few technical surprises.
- TheCondor 15y agoSo what does this mean? We just shit can it? Or it sits on a shelf for a couple years or what? If we want to save money, shouldn't we kill something before we start it?
- nate_meurer 15y agoProjects of this complexity are difficult to mothball, and the costs of restarting are very high. We've seen that with the F-22 fighter. What we really need are politicians who can grasp the ROI of basic science (which is what I believe the JWST is) and have the will to prioritize it. Sadly, politicians with both brains and courage are a rare breed.
- jamesbritt 15y agoYou say that like politicians with either brains or courage is somehow not rare.
- mturmon 15y agoThanks for that link. People should know that there's a lot of turmoil in the astrophysics community about JWST. In current plans, JWST overruns have resulted in elimination or long-term postponement of all other NASA astrophysics missions in the next decade. Even non-flight-project research is being cut significantly.
- nate_meurer 15y agoI am utterly incapable of intelligently commenting on the cost effectiveness of this telescope, but I will note that all of NASA's current money problems could be solved by allocating it just a tiny fraction of what we instead wasted in Iraq and Afghanistan. I'm sorry to keep talking about these fucking wars, but it really does make me want to cry.
- T-hawk 15y agoExpanding NASA's budget by 2x or even 10x would not solve its problems. Parkinson's Law is as applicable to NASA as to any other organization. JWST and the other missions will overrun any amount of time and budget allocated to them.
- nate_meurer 15y agoI had that thought as I was writing the comment, which is why I added the word "current". But you're probably right to a large degree, and my only answer is that, to the extent that larger budgets don't decrease NASA'a fiscal discipline, the investment is better made there.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- sambeau 15y agoInteresting points from Prof. Brian Cox: * NASA costs less than 0.13% of GDP and provides 9x return on investment * The entire Shuttle Program cost approximately the same as the UK bank bailout * The Iraq conflict so far has cost significantly more than a manned mission to Mars Source: https://twitter.com/profbriancox/status/88955884390195202 https://twitter.com/profbriancox/status/88955884390195202 https://twitter.com/profbriancox/status/88956654539902976 https://twitter.com/profbriancox/status/88956654539902976 https://twitter.com/profbriancox/status/88957802281840640 https://twitter.com/profbriancox/status/88957802281840640
- praxeologist 15y agoI wonder how he comes to the conclusion of 9x return. I think that we ought to invest in dragons instead and that they would bring returns in orders of magnitude greater than any space program, plus they live longer. Source: http://blog.mises.org/6512/socialist-calculation-versus-magical-monsters/ http://blog.mises.org/6512/socialist-calculation-versus-magi...
- rbanffy 15y agoDownvoted for referring mises.org.
- michaelchisari 15y agoYour link isn't even about NASA, it's just an ideological discussion (and not a particularly coherent one). For reference, here's a list of NASA spin-offs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spin-off http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spin-off It's not hard to see the multiplier effect of our investment in NASA.
- rbanffy 15y agoLike I said in another related post, the Ludwig von Mises Institute is not the place you go for coherent discussions. The sooner we drop it as a source of discussion arguments, the better.
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- mcculley 15y agoAren't some of these things possible with the X-37B?
- gvb 15y agoSome, with limitations to most of the retained capabilities. The X-37B is substantially smaller and is not manned. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37 1. Gentle delivery of large modules for attachment to existing complexes. - Probably lost, the main reason the shuttle is gentle is because it carries fragile humans. 2. Bringing cargo down gently. - Partially lost: the cargo bay is much smaller. 3. Safe "proximity operations." - Lost or at least made much more challenging. 4. Temporary deployment of a workbench in orbit for experiments, repairs, and other assembly. - Lost. 5. High-precision research orbits with specialized instrumentation. - Likely not lost. 6. Flexibility of crew composition. - Lost.
- rbanffy 15y agoHow many times did we actually need those capabilities? edit: > 1. Gentle delivery of large modules for attachment to existing complexes. - Probably lost, the main reason the shuttle is gentle is because it carries fragile humans. I cannot imagine we don't have any launcher that can do that. Any launcher, when approaching its payload limit, should be very gentle (as in pull low G's). A Saturn V was much gentler than the SRBs in terms of vibration, BTW. > 2. Bringing cargo down gently. - Partially lost: the cargo bay is much smaller. How many times did we need that? We could keep one shuttle operational for that kind of mission or just build a bus-sized capsule that would go up empty and land on parachutes. > 3. Safe "proximity operations." - Lost or at least made much more challenging. I am not sure I see a scenario where we would need that. The arms attached to the station are adequate for manipulating objects close to it and capable of doing it very precisely. Automated cargo vehicles have been servicing space stations for decades. > 4. Temporary deployment of a workbench in orbit for experiments, repairs, and other assembly. - Lost. Do we really gain so much by bringing the workbench back? Why would "temporary" be an advantage here? Couldn't we just pack the supplies and leave the workbench there? > 6. Flexibility of crew composition. - Lost. We could have built a larger Apollo capable of launching 7 people. For a fraction of the price, most likely. If putting people in LEO were cheaper (a promise the shuttle never fulfilled) we would have far more diverse crews in space. And all of that negates the fact the shuttle is useless for anything beyond LEO. And LEO is costly because we have to take everything with us.
- chrismealy 15y ago7. Dead astronauts. The space shuttle was a bad idea and dangerous from the start. Bring on the robots!
- gaius 15y agoGoing outside was a bad idea and dangerous from the start. Bring on the pizza delivery and cable TV! See, that ain't no way to run a civilization. Without taking (calculated) risks, we're nothing.
- nate_meurer 15y agoExcept those risks must be evaluated against the reward. In this present day and age, what exactly do we gain from using humans instead of robots in space that justifies their expense?
- jules 15y agoThe fact that humans can do so many things that robots cannot yet do. Look at it the other way: what is the most robust and fault tolerant adaptive machine with the best motor skills, the best perception system, and quick decision making system that we have available? There are some tasks that robots are better at, but as a general purpose machine humans are still the best. A robot tumbles over or gets stuck behind a stone, and you've just lost your multi billion dollar project.
- mturmon 15y agoHumans are not "robust adaptive machines" in a space environment -- airless, zero-g, cosmic radiation.
- bdunbar 15y agoIt's not an either / or deal. Automation is good for rote tasks. People are good at improvising. During the mission to correct Hubble's lens problem, the supplied tools and procedure failed. The mission specialist utilized scissors and a plastic cover from a log book to correct the problem. Without that improvisation, the mission to fix Hubble's lens would have been a loss. What we gain from having people in space depends on what you want to _do_ in space. If it's all just drones mapping planets and space telescopes then investing in automation makes sense. If it's manufacturing, settlement, getting some of our eggs out of this basket, then we need people out there, learning how to live off-planet. The expense in either case, might possibly be the same. Automation isn't cheap, missions that have to be redone because the automation fails are costly.
- jerf 15y agoYes, when you pour money down the money hole, you do tend to get a few things in return. My real question, which we'll see answered hopefully over the next few years, isn't "Were the capabilities we got with the shuttle cool?" but "Was the shuttle a cost-effective way to obtain those capabilities?" And it's really hard to look at the Shuttle program and say yes. In general, we really need to get over whining about what we could have if only we could spend money we don't have.
- IanDrake 15y ago>we really need to get over whining about what we could have if only we could spend money we don't have. I don't think it could be said any better. What we do have now is a privatized space race which is priceless.
- jamesbritt 15y agoAnd it's really hard to look at the Shuttle program and say yes. How effective/efficient would a tax-payer supported version of Xerox PARC or the Golden Age Bell Labs be? Something more pleasant than DARPA, for example.
- protomyth 15y agoWhat is your problem with DARPA?
- jamesbritt 15y agoIt has a military focus. I'd like to see devlopment with a broader scope. Like how to teach more people to read. Or farming.
- protomyth 15y agoIn the US, USDA funds a lot of farming research and DoE has its own labs for energy research. Military and Space seem to have a lot of civilian offshoots. Probably because of focus and demanding environments / specs.
- protomyth 15y agoNASA has been screwed since someone made the decision that we needed to land on the Moon by the end of the 60's. We didn't build the infrastructure to go and stay in space. Being first should never have been a goal. Being there to stay should have been.
- InclinedPlane 15y agoThe Shuttle is inspiring, and compared to nothing it looks excellent. But on the whole it is not a good system. It has unique capabilities that it uses extremely rarely or not at all (such as the cross-range flight ability) but which impose tremendous compromises on the system's cost, reliability, and safety. All of this added up to the system falling far, far short of its design goals in payload cost and flight rate, by nearly 2 orders of magnitude. By any sound measure the Shuttle is a failed experiment that was left to run, and bleed NASA budgets dry, for far too long. On the whole each Shuttle mission cost $1.6 billion dollars. The alternative to not building the Shuttle was continuing with what we had before, which even at a reduced budget compared to the Shuttle would have resulted in larger space stations, moon bases, and perhaps manned Mars missions. The alternative now to not continuing the Shuttle is relying on commercial launch providers as the base of manned spaceflight, which looks to be both cheaper and more capable than the Shuttle.
- benihana 15y agoThe shuttle mission, which was to provide a safe, reusable, cheap spaceflight platform, failed on two of the three goals. It was reusable, but not cheap, and not safe. We need a better LEO platform, not more shuttle missions.
- InclinedPlane 15y ago3 of 3. The Shuttle is not reusable, it is at best refurbishable. In between launches the SRBs and the ET have to be replaced and the orbiter itself has to be processed including replacement of its main engines, draining of all consumables, and extensive inspection of each one of the thousands of thermal protective tiles. All in all the process takes months. This is not reusability in any meaningful sense of the word, it borders on a complete overhaul of the vehicle. Imagine if on landing a 747 it had to be drained of fuel, the engines replaced, the center fuel tank replaced. This is a major factor in why it is so expensive to operate the Shuttles. They are not truly reusable, and the refurbishment in between launches takes so long and requires such an extensive permanent staff and facilities that the per-launch cost is astronomical. If the Orbiters were truly reusable then they could easily quadruple or more the number of flights per year for little increased total cost.
- pnathan 15y agoWe lose a lot. We gain incentive to go out into space privately and commercialize spaceflight. Is living in a Futurama-esque commercialization of space worth it? I believe so, yes. Bring on the frontier!
- LordBodak 15y agoThe Shuttle fails in its primary objective, that of being a "reusable" vehicle. I attended a presentation by a NASA employee that explained the Shuttle process from landing to launch, and I was amazed at how much of the craft is replaced. I think we would have been far better off extending the Apollo program to new missions, similar to the Soyuz (which is still flying although much improved from the moon landing era).
- gamble 15y agoThe shuttle was the worst of both worlds. They replace enough parts to make each mission absurdly expensive, and keep enough components in place that it's extremely difficult to be sure they won't fail in flight.
- lcargill99 15y agoBlame Nixon. Or OPEC.
- maaku 15y agoInteresting that this is at the bottom; people who downvoted this probably don't know their NASA history... (EDIT: for context, most of trouble NASA has gotten itself into stem from commitments made for political reasons to appease the Nixon administration and a Congress dealing with fallout from the OPEC oil embargo in '73--when Apollo was winding down and Shuttle revving up.)