Just how long a mistake was the Space Shuttle? It’s ironic how much flak Mike Griffin caught for arguing that both Shuttle and Station were mistakes, considering how his terrible design decisions seem to have helped keep both going.
10 thoughts on “Twenty Years Or Thirty Years?”
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It depends on your opinion of Rube Goldberg contraptions. If you think they are a waste of time then the Shuttle was a mistake from day one. If you think of them as art, artisanship and engineering combined then the shuttle was never a mistake; it was the greatest Rube Goldberg machine ever built!
The problem is when NASA tries to save money in the design phase, so the machine ends up being more expensive to operate. As it is currently designed, it should have been a stepping stone to a more re-usable spacecraft. Unfortunately, this is where NASA as a jobs program began, and that became more important to certain politicians than pushing the envelope on re-useable spacecraft.
I thought it was a cock-up 30 years ago.
You could blame President Reagan for not replacing the Shuttle after Challenger, as many suggested it should be, instead of pushing for a space station.
The station decision was made a year and a half before Challenger. And he did attempt a Shuttle replacement. It was the abortion called the X-30.
I don’t think the Shuttle was “a” mistake, but rather a series of mistakes. Going with the design in the first place was a big mistake since the design produced required all of the US’s then current payloads (public and private) in order to generate the desired launch rate without putting in a lot more funding. Second was the decision to continue flying the Shuttle after Challenger, when the early promises were shown bankrupt. It could have been phased out in the 90s. Finally, there’s the decision to require the Shuttle in order to build the ISS (which appears to be a deliberate scheme to protect Shuttle’s existence and funding).
Both were incomplete. Incomplete thinking, and incomplete implementation. Space going bling with no real purpose other than to show off America’s technological supremacy. They violated the first law of big projects, to have a clearly defined, clearly delineated purpose.
The shuttle failed because it led to nothing. Nothing substantial; nothing, no improvement on the basic model, no attempt to continue on to other worlds, new opportunities and new projects.
The station? An empty shell full of empty, make work experiments with no real aim but showing off, showing how special we are.
Both shuttle and station violated the first rule of scientific experimentation, to have a reason for being, a goal to attain. Lacking a goal neither could live up to the promises made all those years ago. So now we see the end of the shuttle program coming, and soon we’ll start hearing talk about abandoning the station.
That which has no purpose soon loses whatever support it once had. It becomes a toy to be discarded, a piece of bling with no reason to be beyond mere decoration. In a few days a trinket will take flight for the last time, to service a bauble that has no purpose beyond providing an inadequate platform for experiments that in truth would be better done in a larger, more adequate facility.
So I say farewell to the shuttle program, such a disappointment you have turned out to be. And I say farewell to the International Space Station, such a waste of resources and hopes you turned out to be.
(Also posted to Mythusmage Opines)
Rand,
A rational replacement, not a fantasy one. And the station hadn’t gone very far then, so there was plenty of opportunity to pull the plug on it.
I don’t think the Shuttle was “a” mistake, but rather a series of mistakes. Going with the design in the first place was a big mistake since the design produced required all of the US’s then current payloads (public and private) in order to generate the desired launch rate without putting in a lot more funding.
This is actually the reverse of what happened. In order to sell the Shuttle, it was mandated that it be able to carry all US payloads including those honking big NRO ISR birds out of Vandyland. That constraint along with the funding contraints drove the Shuttle design. Had it been designed to carry a small number of passengers along with a reasonable payload, say 10,000 pounds, the vehicle would’ve been much smaller and less expensive.
The Shuttle is a mixed legacy of American success and failure combined. Our limitation in improving this ratio, which is again what we are currently up against with SLS vs commercial yet again, is in our lack of skill in open discussion and objective, provable truths dispelling elements of failure and allowing the emergence of more success.
The problem of ideological / bastion thinking is that it predetermines the definitions of success/failure way too narrowly. Cynicism then of actual success/failure denies its relevance. So we make bad trades and alliances, irrespective of our technical/engineering prowess.
You should distrust all political groups, especially the most ardent ones for the Cernan/Trump effect destroys our ability to “get it right” – they argue for a false advantage. Nor are arbitrary consensus builders to be trusted – you get SLS camels from that as well. The process is to take a broad swath of advocates and be sincere in proving what is good/bad about the alternatives … and make it obvious that political ignorance means inheritance of immediate and terminal “blame” when policy makers make the US less effective.
Please note that in the current NASA budget didn’t fund certain aviation activities with obvious GDP provably – the US has been injured unnecessarily. All political “sides” sell out the US way too easily. They need to be opposed as their “deals” selectively attempt to do an “unfair advantage” when really they disadvantage the US in the end. When we attempt to deceive, we are actually are self-deceptive.
So if you fear “commercial” the response is not just “SLS” but a way of conclusively securing what you fear about “commercial”. If you fear “SLS”, then you put it under conditions that require it to meet requirements that likewise secure it. This was never done with Constellation nor built into SLS, and that is why they do not serve US well. They are by definition then “un American” by obvious tests no matter the political hubris used to “sell them”. Wake up and don’t drink the kool aid – any brand.