Kathy Sawyer has an article in the WaPo today about the fundamental problem with the shuttle (though one would think from the title of the piece–“Panel Decries View of Spaceflight as Routine”–that it’s one intrinsic to spaceflight itself).

The Shuttle has always been a development program, and many of us thought it absurd back in 1982 when it was declared “operational” by President Reagan in a ceremony at Edwards (which I attended). As the article points out, the Shuttle has had fewer total flights than an aircraft undergoing certification.

While I agree that as long as NASA continues to fly the Shuttle, they should do it in much more of an R&D mode, I fear that such criticism will make it harder to persuade people that space transports don’t have to be like the Shuttle.

The Shuttle was doomed to remain a vehicle forever in development back when it was being…well…developed, back in the 1970s. Once the fatal compromises of SRBs and non-flyback boosters, and aluminum skin and tiles, among others, were made, there was little hope of getting the low costs and fast turnaround necessary to get the high flight rates needed not only to prove out the concept, but to reduce per-flight costs.

To save a few billion dollars in that decade, we have since spent many billions in increased operations costs and lost vehicles, not to mention the tragedy of our myopically limited space program, relative to the much more vibrant one we might have had with a more robust low-cost design.