…and the state of the space agency. A pretty good story by Joel Achenbach. I wish that he hadn’t let this stand unchallenged, though:
“It’s sad. There’s a lot more left in them. The airframes are certified for 100 flights. This one had 39 flights,” said senior mechanical technician Bill Powers, 58, who works for United Space Alliance, the primary contractor for the shuttle. USA already has laid off thousands of shuttle workers across the country. On July 22, the contractor will lay off about 1,900 more people here in Florida.
“It’s not wore-out. It’s just broke-in,” said Tim Keyser, lead mechanic for the orbiters. “It could fly another 20 years. We get into the guts of this thing, it’s pristine.”
That’s not what the CAIB said. The notion that the orbiters were “certified” for a hundred flights is one of the canards of the program. That was a design specification, but it’s a matter of the highest conceit to think that NASA could really know how many flights they were good for. If it were really true, they wouldn’t have needed so much inspection and TLC every flight, which was a dominating factor in the operating costs.
Sorry about the jobs that are going to be lost. That said, the US cannot afford to operate in space the same way we did for the last 30 years. On to something better.
What does TLC mean?
Tender loving care.
As for the jobs, the federal government shouldn’t be in the business of keeping people employed with busywork.
Tender loving care.
Heh, there I was expecting technobabble. I’m sure there’s a lesson in there…
Lonely, Leiden, NL
IMHO the biggest lesson of the shuttle program is that making space a jobs program gives us both less access to space and fewer jobs, though spending countless billions to do it.
In some ways, I like the shuttle. It has capabilities that we shall not likely see again in our lifetimes (the ability to service satellites in space, the ability to bring bulky cargo or entire satellites back from orbit, etc)
For its primary mission, economical access to space, it was a failure.
I will always wonder if a second generation shuttle, one designed for minimal manhours and costs, with ease of service a design goal, might have been viable and affordable. My guess is it was possible, but not if NASA did it. I think any window of opportunity for a shuttle II is long since closed, but it’s interesting to think of what might have been, had the space program not been burdened by being a jobs program and pork.
I hit the button too soon…
Though I like the shuttle in some ways, I am not sorry to see the program end, due to the costs. If a private contractor could come up with a way to keep them flying for, say, a hundred million a launch or so, I’d totally support it, but I don’t think it’s possible. I also think that even if the 100 launches was accurate, that was supposed to be over a 20 year life. Anyone who does maintenance on a car or plane can tell you; it’s not just mileage, it’s age too that makes components fail.
I guess my thoughts on the closing of the shuttle program can be summed up with; retire them with honor, but don’t ever let such a boondoggle happen again.
Speaking of boondoggles, SLS seems to me to be the only thing worse than keeping the shuttles flying. It retains all the bad aspects of the program (horrific manpower costs, flawed design concept, obscene expenses) while losing most of the capabilities that Shuttle had. They aren’t tossing the baby out with the bathwater, they’re tossing the baby out and keeping the bathwater.
“If it were really true, they wouldn’t have need so much inspection and TLC every flight, which was a dominating factor in the operating costs.”
That’s one of the biggest questions about the whole shuttle program isn’t it? Just how much of that TLC was necessary, and how much was make-work and just following procedures and covering your own back?
Some people just can’t stop caring for a sacred White Elephant, even as they go bankrupt.
“What does TLC mean?”
“The Lost Continent.”
I’m not quite sure what that has to do with space, however.
[The Shuttle] has capabilities that we shall not likely see again in our lifetimes (the ability to service satellites in space, the ability to bring bulky cargo or entire satellites back from orbit, etc).
Except each time NASA lost one of those orbiters, it cut back on using those capabilities. Almost all of the satellite service, repair or rescue missions, other than Hubble, were in the first few years up until Challenger was lost. Then after Columbia, it was decided that it was too risky to use unless it was sent to one location only. Remember how the last Hubble service mission got cancelled in the panic and was only reinstated with all sorts of rescue contingencies (STS-200, etc.) and pressure from outside?
All that unused capability is just another reason to put the program out of its misery.
Yeah, the “100 flights” statistic always seemed a bit fishy to me. Sure, it was a specification…but so was a 6-8 week turnaround between missions. How’d that one work out for ya?
I’m not as contemptuous as some here of the Shuttle workers, though. People who work on a great machine are always going to be sad to see it pass and I think that’s only natural. I imagine the people who operated, say, the last clipper ship felt the same way. Of course, that’s not an argument to keep the Shuttles around any more than it would have been an argument to keep the clippers sailing.
Long ago and far away when I was a young spud, I got my first job out of grad school – on shuttle ground systems. Worked there 6 years until I got an opportunity to work payloads. So now that I’ve calibrated you all as to my level of experience in manned space flight, let me make a simple point.
It is WAY past time for something better than the shuttle. American companies are racing to find a better way – SpaceX to name one. The time for “hero” engineering programs is over – the fact that SpaceX launches for about a quarter the price of a comparable NASA mission ought to clue you in. You wouldn’t want to try to work with a first generation pc would you? I mean two floppy drives and all that? That’s the time the shuttle was designed guys.
@RKV: Perhaps it would be easier for some people to let it go if we kept referring to the Space Shuttle as “Nixon’s Legacy.”
@ Raoul Ortega
I fully agree the shuttles should be retired after the coming flight, and good point on many of the abilities that went unused after Challenger and Columbia.
I suppose what I’m feeling is a lament for what might have been, had things been different.
Well, that, and a lament that the SLS seems to be focused on saving the worst of the shuttle program, while discarding its good points.
Source: John Noble Wilford, We Reach the Moon (you know, that New York Times/Bantam Books account of the first moon landing that everyone went out and bought), p 67:
Apollo spent 8 billion (1969 dollars, I presume) on Spacecraft and another 8 billion on Launch Vehicles. What were there, about 10 Apollo missions (this list was reported in 1969, but was it forward looking to the remaining missions “in the pipeline”)?
This means that each Apollo mission ran something like 1.6 billion in 1969 dollars, which would mean 16 billion dollars a piece in today’s money.
Gemini ran something like 800 million for the Spacecraft category, 400 million for the Launch Vehicles, and what were there, about 10 Gemini missions? That means Gemini was a bargain at 120 million per mission, but that would be 1.2 billion in today’s money.
Mercury ran 135 million for the Spacecraft, 83 million for the Launch Vehicles. What were there, about 10 Mercury missions if you count the Apes in Space? That would be 200 million per mission in today’s money. And Mercury was Spam in a Can — a not very capable spacecraft.
So maybe, a Shuttle mission costs in today’s dollars about the same as a Gemini mission. Much as Gemini was my favorite part of the space program, achieving so much with so little in so short a time, the Shuttle is much more capable than a Gemini.
I liken NASA to Amtrak in Spaaaace! In other words, a cool billion per crewed Earth orbit mission is about what it costs the gummint to operate, then as now, much as it costs a billion and a half per year in subsidies for Amtrak to service one tenth of one percent of total U.S. passenger miles.
The Elon Musks and Bigelows of the world may achieve the Libertarian dream of private enterprise human space travel and at much lower cost; a private charter bus operator has much more favorable economics than Amtrak, and yes, that bus operator pays for the use of the roads through fuel tax.
As to whether NASA or a Higher Level in Government pulled the plug on Shuttle too soon, I don’t see how a second generation anything out of NASA will be any more cost effective, much as I don’t see any Shiny New Train as changing Amtrak’s bottom line.
The one knock I see on Shuttle is the accidents. Was the SRB O-ring thing ever solved? After Challenger, they supposedly changed the O-ring design, and we have never since heard of the O-rings as a concern. Right?
After Columbia, I don’t think they ever solved the thing of stuff coming off the ET and hitting the Orbiter. So I guess in that way, Shuttle is like Concorde. That one accident in Paris essentially put an end to Concorde because 1) supersonic passenger transport was uneconomic to begin with and 2) the accident revealed that there were no design margins in the thing, especially with its high-angle-of-attack afterburner-assisted way-behind-the-power-curve-on-a-draggy-delta-wing after takeoff climbout.
So I suppose the fact that the stuff-hitting-the-heat-times problem was never solved and is perhaps insolvable is reason enough to end Shuttle. But if you want to gummint (NASA) in the business of flying people to space, I don’t see how any successor will be any more cost effective.
What good points should they be saving?
My annoyance with the SLS is that NASA is supposed to be focusing on beyond LEO exploration. In the 21st century, you don’t start a beyond LEO exploration program from the surface of the Earth, so why are they building a launch vehicle at all?
NASA should be working on large solar electric propulsion systems to take infrastructure to L1 and L2. What sort of infrastructure? A station, a propellant depot and an assembly hangar. They should be planning to build lunar landers and chemical propulsion stages for deep space exploration. They should be testing artificial gravity systems.
The NASA of the 1960s would have wet their pants to hear about the capable, reliable, and cheap access to space that the US has today in the EELV program, SpaceX and other US boosters, and international partners.
While I agree with you 100%, Trent, the biggest problem I see is that we have to overcome how “operationalized” NASA HSF culture has become over the past 30 years of Shuttle operations. Our leaders simply didn’t do a good job preparing for that transition and I think that’s why we’re seeing more laments than focus on the future.
For decades NASA has been “waiting for Congress to tell us what to do next”. Well, they got an answer.. just keep doing more of the same, whatever.
NASA needs to tell Congress what to do next – with one voice. The robotic spaceflight side of the house figured this out long ago. Sure, they get the NSF to lend their name to the decision making process, but the decadal surveys are really about the community promising to do their horse trading amongst themselves rather than leaving it to the inept political class.
On the human spaceflight side you just have chaos. In a sane world, Bob Zubrin would be trying to win converts in the engineering community to contribute to a decision making process where objective analysis wins over entrenched dogma. In our world, he wins his converts in the advocate community who desperately try to get uninterested political representatives to act against their own self interest.
I don’t disagree, Trent. I’ve been saying as much to those who will listen.
I agree Trent, HSF needs it’s own version of the Decadal Survey. One would think it a no-brainer!
Everything else should derive from that.
Quite so. The Shuttle program turned into a long, slow, painful experimental test-flight. The vehicle was never “broken-in” in any way imaginable. Even today it’s routine for a Shuttle to roll to the pad only to sit there for weeks while one or another new or old malfunctions crops up and has to be hunted down.
Besides which even if the orbiters were capable of 100 or 1,000 flights it would be monumentally idiotic to spend a billion dollars a launch continuing to fly them.
I agree with Rand about the 100 missions. In fact, there are many critical components that were redesigned and not re-“certified” to the 100
missioncycle limit. So there is an unknown of how many missions are left.However, there is a certainty that some missions are left in each vehicle. And why I wouldn’t call the vehicles “broken-in”, I’d say the process of preparing them and flying them is “broken-in”. Much of that will be lost in the next few years and will have to be relearned. Relearned at least by NASA.
NASA could fly the Shuttle longer, but it’s major mistake isn’t ending the Shuttle too early or too late. NASA simplied failed too many times over the past two decades to make an alternative. From what I know from the mid 90’s: OSP, DC-XA, X-38, X-33, X-34, X-37 (although USAF got it to work), and now even Ares/CEV (though it was both the most advanced design in terms of development and probably the worse). Losing the shuttle program is hardly NASA’s biggest problem. SLS?, good luck with that.
Meanwhile, others will benefit from NASA’s loss. I suspect most of us will benefit. The thing about market cycles is it moves people from inefficient systems to efficient ones. I personally know very good people that got no where with NASA’s bureaucracy now working for SpaceX, Bigelow, and Virgin Galatic. And I’m sure some of the other companys like Armadillo and Blue Origin are also benefitting.
Leland Said:
“Much of that will be lost in the next few years and will have to be relearned. Relearned at least by NASA.”
Lost maybe, but not missed. We’ve lost most of our expertise in steam locomotives, but it hasn’t slowed us down from using diesel ones.
No one is going to make another vehicle like the Shuttle orbiters that use fragile heat tiles, so there is nothing to relearn there. And no one is likely to build such a general purpose spacecraft, so there is nothing to relearn there either.
And likely the entity that will build and operate our future space transportation systems for cargo and crew won’t be NASA, since that’s not their charter. It will be commercial companies.
So I guess the lesson that NASA should be learning from operating the Shuttle for 30 years is that they shouldn’t be operating any transportation systems. Exploration systems, sure, but the every day movers of people and cargo, no.
Steam was replaced by diesel and electric. Steam was for the most part ‘dirty’, both diesel and electric use fossil fuels – in electric’s case for generation (don’t include wind, hydroelectric or nuclear as they still require the input of fossil at some point, LOL!).
Shuttle is 30 y/o, X37 program is heading in the right direction as will SpaceX, Blue Origin and others. Its materials science that will drive us forward, along with computing. Now, if we could get away from those pesky switchboxes and the ‘tinning’ wiring…
Many of the decisions surrounding the Shuttle just prior to the ALT period were made with the context of enabling the completion of the project, so we could begin to fly it, and then refine it, and certainly replace it within a few decades at most.
The idea was that it would get easier once it was flying and delivering on its promises, that then the budget would be present to rationalize the situation. This was horribly naive – yes there were improvements(Al Li etc), but not on the scale of revision needed / expected. The reasons were 1) Shuttle had already overspent / overcomplicated, 2) none wanted to risk again “redeveloping” key systems like TPS, 3) the scope of the Shuttle’s defects like crew escape were so large that it was hard to argue for any incremental improvement given that massive warts would remain, and 4) the cult of “operational” started by Chris Kraft made innovation a dirty word where you seemed to be injuring things in the attempt to make them better.
Anything generates nostalgia – that’s what we’re seeing during the wind down. Keep in mind those we lost on Challenger / Columbia – I do.
They knew the risks, but I think we let them down because we didn’t “evolve” things as we should have – either improving the Shuttle in place, doing a “Shuttle 2” massively revised concept, a replacement like HL-20 (or … or … or Orion), or … a Dragon or DreamChaser. We needed to move things down th path faster than we did, to “stay ahead of ourselves”. Congress failed completely to recognize this. NASA failed to keep pushing back to Congress this need. The aerospace industry’s K street whores were too greedy to keep the gravy train running. And this charade of irrational Shuttle follow-on to favor political / prime’s interests further exacerbates the situation – no one should be anti-commercial, none should have messed with things like the X-38 earlier either.
America has been going through an ugly period for quite a while – all of which did nothing but rob from its greatness.
-nooneofconsequence.
NASA should be restricted to research for business use. It is already economically viable today for someone to put a general purpose spaceship in earth orbit.
Once in orbit they will have customers (govt. and non.) Before leaving orbit they are a paid destination in themselves. Once in orbit they are a customer for fuel and a possible depot for others.
A cost of less than $2b to put an unfueled general purpose ship (aprox. 7km/s delta V) in orbit is within the reach of private industry using already tested in orbit components. Operating cost and profit would easily be covered by paying passengers. We’re just waiting for the person or group willing to spend the $2b for that rather than other profitable investments. I expect it’s coming fairly soon.
Once the first demonstrates economic viability it would not take much for other companies to compete with similar designs of varying capacities. Transportation is a private enterprise. General purpose ships are themselves depots and will build the infrastructure for going anywhere in the solar system.
SpaceX, for $800M (not B) has built F1, F9, Dragon, Launched F1 5 times, F9 twice, Dragon once, developed 5 engines, 3 launch pads. and built a business with a manifest over $3B.
They have been profitable for 4 years.
$2B seems more than enough to build a space business.
Apollo spent 8 billion (1969 dollars, I presume) on Spacecraft and another 8 billion on Launch Vehicles. What were there, about 10 Apollo missions (this list was reported in 1969, but was it forward looking to the remaining missions “in the pipeline”)?
This means that each Apollo mission ran something like 1.6 billion in 1969 dollars, which would mean 16 billion dollars a piece in today’s money.
First, your numbers are off significantly. There were quite a few Apollo missions including several that were unmanned. You can find a listing of them here. Even this listing from a NASA source is incomplete because it doesn’t include the Skylab launch and the 3 missions to carry crews to Skylab nor does it mention the Apollo-Soyuz mission.
Do keep in mind that many of the expenses were R&D related because no one had ever done any of that stuff before and a lot of things had to be invented. The Shuttle flew over 100 missions. Once past the initial R&D and the post-accident reengineering, there shouldn’t have been a lot of R&D for each Shuttle mission. By way of analogy, Boeing is spending billions of dollars on R&D for the 787 but once the plane enters service, the R&D per additional flight is quite low. The Shuttle was sold as providing cheap, reliable access to space. It didn’t. As they gained more experience with the Shuttle, the cost per mission should’ve decreased. It never did.
Another point is that your inflation number is off significantly. Using the Bureau of Labor Statistics Inflation Calculator, a dollar in 1967 (peak year for Apollo spending) was equal to 6.77 today, not the factor of 10 that you used.
Gemini ran something like 800 million for the Spacecraft category, 400 million for the Launch Vehicles, and what were there, about 10 Gemini missions? That means Gemini was a bargain at 120 million per mission, but that would be 1.2 billion in today’s money.>
There were 12 Gemini missions (two unmanned) and the inflation multiplier for 1965 is 7.17. Does the Gemini costs include the Atlas-Agena launches to perform the first orbital rendezvous and docking missions?
Mercury ran 135 million for the Spacecraft, 83 million for the Launch Vehicles. What were there, about 10 Mercury missions if you count the Apes in Space? That would be 200 million per mission in today’s money. And Mercury was Spam in a Can — a not very capable spacecraft.
$2B seems more than enough to build a space business.
I did say less than $2b. A BA330 cost $100m and another $100m to put it in orbit. A upper stage of an F9 gives you a vacuum engine and tanks to feed it for a cost of under $60m. That’s 90% of your spaceship (add gravity feed fuel bags, electronics and a bit of structure.) For that configuration $500m would be more than enough and all the parts have already been to orbit.
Considering what NASA or others would pay for a ticket to anywhere, every use after the first is pure profit (customer pays for consumables.) It’s a no brainer for the right investor wanting to get into the space transportation (cargo or passenger) business.
Bezos could do it as an afterthought. Bigelow and Elon could agree to do it together for less.