Amos Zeeberg, over at Discover, says it was a flop, and that we deluded ourselves about it for far too long. It’s actually worse than he says, though. Not sure where he gets these numbers:
The shuttle was billed as a reusable craft that could frequently, safely, and cheaply bring people and payloads to low Earth orbit. NASA originally said the shuttles could handle 65 launches per year; the most launches it actually did in a year was nine; over the life of the program, it averaged five per year. NASA predicted each shuttle launch would cost $50 million; they actually averaged $450 million. NASA administrators said the risk of catastrophic failure was around one in 100,000; NASA engineers put the number closer to one in a hundred; a more recent report from NASA said the risk on early flights was one in nine. The failure rate was two out of 135 in the tests that matter most.
It’s actually a lot worse than that. If you include development costs, we now know that it was about a billion and a half per flight (~$200B in life-cycle costs over 135 flights, in current-year dollars). Even on an annualized basis, it was probably never as low as $450M (again, current-year dollars).
This isn’t quite right, though:
Tellingly, the U.S. space program is abandoning spaceplanes and going back to Apollo-style rockets.
That depends on what you mean by “the U.S. space program.” Yes, Mike Griffin retrogressed down that road, until it became unaffordable, and Congress continues to insist on it for now (until the fiscal situation truly implodes in the coming years, if not months), but the private people aren’t all doing that. For instance, Dreamchaser isn’t an “Apollo-style rocket,” and none of the suborbital people are, so if any of them graduate to orbit in the future, they will be distinctly un-Apollo like.
There are valuable lessons to be learned from the Shuttle, but as I wrote a couple weeks ago, we have to make sure that we learn the right, and not the wrong ones.
Razib has further comments over at Discover.
[Via commenter Paul Dietz]
[Update a few minutes later]
Will McLean makes a good point in comments — the Air Force continues to support X-37B, which is hardly “Apollo like.”
[Mid-morning update]
Mike Griffin: The Shuttle program was oversold.
Nowhere near as much as Constellation was.
Also, the US government is still operating the X-37b.
I wished I lived in the alternate universe where the X-37b was our first spaceplane, and we used it to figure out how much the AShuttle would cost to operate, and didn’t build it.
Or a universe where MCD principles were applied to booster design in the late 1960s.
I will be vastly amused if NASA comes back to SLS with Sea Dragon-like design.
Had the now retired shuttle met projected flight rates with the same ground facilities and crew the per flight cost would have been much closer to projections. But the projected flight rates were completely unrealistic for a vehicle that needs extensive inspection and refit between flights.
While many of the details in this article are technically correct (if you can pick through the subjective ridicule), I could tell what kind of article this was going to be from the title itself. I always cringe when I see articles like this, because they seem to derive their content from anger, and thus subjectivity, and the point the author is trying to make gets lost on a lot of people, who are turned off by the “armchair quarterback” tone. Hindsight is so clear. While the program did not deliver on some of the promises and plans, it did on others. The author’s glass-is-half-empty bitterness about the shuttle is also a slap in the face to all of those who worked so hard to make it work as well as it did – many of whom are out of a job now. No mention is made of the things the shuttle did well, no comprehension is shown of the lessons we learned, processes that were tried and tested and improved. We learned a lot along this journey by trial and error, and future programs will be the better for it. The shuttle program is what it is – or was what it was. Let’s learn from it and move on.
Like what?
I guess the shuttle program pioneered strategically dividing production into various congressional districts to make it harder to cut, despite the engineering compromises that that required.
I have no sympathy for the people who worked on the shuttle. They have no more right to get paid for wasteful, unproductive work than your average welfare bum or ADM.
The problem with Shuttle is that it was a prototype but was not treated as such. There should have been a spiral development program which lead to a reusable but there was not enough political will or market will to do such a program.
The Shuttle was an evolutionary dead end. However many of its technologies could and probably will be revisited.
Engineer in Houston: the taxpayers are entitled to their anger. Billions of dollars worth of anger. Customers are often like that when they are lied to and betrayed.
As for those who worked so hard on it: they’ve been paid. And they participated in a fundamentally dishonest enterprise. I have respect for those who decided their integrity was too high a price to pay for a career on that program. I don’t have much respect for those who decided otherwise, or who managed to delude themselves about the ultimate value of what they were doing.
I guess I don’t really understand why capsules are so “backwards” and why the shuttle is so “forwards”. To me it just looks like trying to use a solution to a different problem, which generally doesn’t end well.
At least in my line of work, in general the simpler solution with the least failure modes is usually the best. Unless there is some other overriding reason (customer really wants more features), the simpler choice is better. Whenever a more complicated solution is chosen when a simpler one would have sufficed, in almost all cases it turned out to be the more expensive, more fragile, least robust, more troublesome solution.
Sounds exactly like shuttle.
So, I don’t understand why everybody thinks capsules are backwards. They actually seem like the better solution.
It’s not about simple versus complex, it’s about affordable versus not. A NASA capsule, on a NASA launch vehicle, is going to cost as much to operate as Shuttle, with much less capability. In that regard, it’s a step backwards.
pdb and Paul – I understand your position (and partially disagree), but the point is that we only have control over the future. Frustration ought to be channeled into constructive efforts going forward. Whining about some unfulfilled past vision of the future is worthless. Right now those who don’t want to see what they lament as past mistakes being repeated need to join forces with those who want to see the right thing being done going forward, and speak loudly together. We can each individually contact our representatives, but I am concerned that decisions are already being made that are not consistent with what taxpayers really want – or would really want if the picture was made clear to them.
Paul D:
“As for those who worked so hard on it: they’ve been paid. And they participated in a fundamentally dishonest enterprise. I have respect for those who decided their integrity was too high a price to pay for a career on that program. I don’t have much respect for those who decided otherwise, or who managed to delude themselves about the ultimate value of what they were doing.”
Now I’ve read some rubbish in the past few weeks, but this just about tops it off. You have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about – seriously. Utter claptrap.
HMP: how can one argue with such a well justified rebuttal? My hat is off to your devastating logical skills.
“…what taxpayers really want – or would really want if the picture was made clear to them.”
Ah, yes, them gooks will understand if we just talk louder.
You and many others need to come home from your vacation on Lake Victoria. Further up the Egyptian river you cannot go.
You’ve worked hard trying to make something work that didn’t and couldn’t work. The rest of us are now trying to cut our losses, and you, unfortunately, are a sunk cost that now has to be abandoned. I’m sorry for you, but my sympathy is limited by the fact that you’ve kept that fat paycheck over the years. If you are really a competent engineer, the private-space companies will be hiring if the money doesn’t get pissed away.
It’s 1961, and we get to continue Dyna-Soar (X37) and other programs where they got interrupted by the world’s biggest, most expensive PR stunt ever. Which is an idea: perhaps you should go talk to Ed Wynn. Building extravagant show-machinery for casinos may not be what you envisioned yourself doing, but it has for all practical purposes been what you were doing these past years.
Paul D:
I won’t deny that the Shuttle failed in terms of economics, but there was much more to Shuttle than that, such as its technical and engineering achievements. That’s what those who worked on Shuttle believed in.
Hey guys, Engineer in Houston is one of the good guys, who has been trying for years to fix things from within. Spare the angst and anger for someone more deserving.
I’ll take your word for it, Rand, but the real tragedy of Sysiphus is that he didn’t just slope off to the pub for a brew.
In his article Mike Griffin said: “So, if we can have only one space transportation system at a time—and I wish wholeheartedly that it were otherwise…”
Hmm. There’s just something about willfully ignoring the Aldridge commission recommendations, and then going ahead and wasting ten billion dollars on a single space transportation system of his own design, then expressing the wholehearted wish that it could be otherwise, which strikes me as lacking any sort of imagination or self-awareness. He had the best chance available to ensure that the situation was otherwise, yet chose to go with the status quo. He could have spent that ten billion over many years doing things like retiring the risk on orbital propellant depots – and by now ULA and others would be filling those tanks. Instead we got Ares.
but the real tragedy of [Sisyphus] is that he didn’t just slope off to the pub for a brew.
http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1947#comic
we only have control over the future
Without qualifications this is a delusional statement. Humans are always trying to control things they can’t, especially other humans.
Of course we learned things from the shuttle besides how awful its cost.
However, big picture, shuttle is not the issue. The problem is we are hobbled by the infrastructure from the cold war ‘beat the Russians to the moon and damn the costs’ mentality. Nothing they do can succeed as long as we inherit that mentality and infrastructure.
We need a bigger vision. The free and brave has become a minority (in political power at least) in the home of the free and the brave. Space is a chance to correct that. We need to promote freedom. That example will in turn help us back here at home.
We have an opportunity to do that. Claim our freedom before government can clamp down on it. Establish a precedent of individual ownership. Get boots on the ground and just do it before the lawyers figure out how to stop it. Individual ownership is the single most important element of freedom.
It may be the only element since all others are derived from it. We must stubbornly and single mindedly promote and defend the concept.
ken anthony – You forgot part of the mentality. “Spread the pork over as many Congressional districts as possible” ought to be included, too.
How much of the money wasted in the entire space programme was due to shipping major components all over the USA (in some cases using specially built aircraft) and duplication of facilities? For example, why is there any space infrastructure in Texas at all?
Ken – then call me deluded. 😉 Both individually and collectively we do have some power to make things happen. I’ve seen things change myself. I was surprised – and perhaps you would be too – at how many people in the JSC community listened to Jeff Greason’s ISDC 2011 speech and were in violent agreement with it. Perhaps you would like it better if I had written, “We only have influence over the future.” That’s probably more correct. If Greason, Simberg, and you and I and so many more keep speaking out at work, in pubs, on Facebook, etc. then maybe we’ll get what we want. We’re on the same team, really.
I should have included, “If Greason, Simberg, and you and I and so many more keep speaking out at work, in pubs, on Facebook, etc. asking people to contact their representatives, and contacting our own, then maybe we’ll get what we want.”
I’m guilty of hyperbole for emphasis as much as anyone. I agree that we and most others here are on the same team. Part of why the shuttle became what it did was, as Jerry Pournelle points out, we wanted to believe so the team became even more important. While we all have our individual visions we all share a vision as well. Go Team Freedom!
I understand your position (and partially disagree), but the point is that we only have control over the future. Frustration ought to be channeled into constructive efforts going forward.
While true, we aren’t blind as to the cultural shortcomings of NASA as they affect the future. We can look to the recent past to see the debacle of Ares/Orion and we can look at the James Web Space Telescope. We can look at program after program that has ran late and over budget (often massively so). Given that track record, it’s hard to have any confidence in NASA as an institution when it comes to future efforts. The agency is broken, perhaps so badly that it needs to be taken apart or dissolved altogether.
I think most of the shortcomings of NASA were inevitable over time, given the agency’s mission, structure, budget, and goals. If history could be run several times, shuffling directors, projects, and key politicians, I’d bet NASA would end up with most of the same shortcomings. It’s a government bureaucracy with lots of clients and special interests, and eventually any such organization ends up existing primarily to continue its own existence.
Perhaps the most fundamental error of the Space Shuttle wasn’t in its complexity, lack of full reusability, operational cost, or any other engineering parameter, but the whole concept of building one type of very capable craft and then using it over and over until the cost savings materialized. That boils down to “we will design one good rocket and then stop designing rockets.” NASA started acting like a proud rocket owner instead of an organization of rocket designers who aren’t satisfied with anything, always disparaging their last rocket as inadequate to the task, suboptimal, and in need of replacement.
We don’t need a perfect system, or an incredibly capable system. We need a system we can use until our next system is ready, and we always need to be rolling out that next system, and we need to be using different systems for different missions. At this point I don’t think NASA or Washington can think about it in those terms.
Rand, I disagree on your last statement that the Shuttle program was not oversold as much as constellation. Yes, every big NASA manned spaceflight program proposal since about 1990 has been nothing more than pork barrel jobs programs with little chance of success. However, there is more to these things than just money. Remember that the Shuttle program was sold, and bought, so hard that it effectively shut down all other orbital launch development for nearly 2 full decades. That was far, far worse for both manned and unmanned spaceflight than any mere misappropriate of a few tens of billions of dollars.
Anywho, spaceplanes, ELVs, RLVs, sub-orbital, orbital, light, heavy, these distinctions are not as important as many people seem to think they are. What’s more important is the development of strong engineering cultures and teams, and the development of profitable companies properly incented toward increasing access and decreasing costs for access to space. Yes, it’s a big jump from sub-orbital to orbital, for example, but SpaceX showed that it’s not such a big jump from nothing to orbital, so the jump for a company with sub-orbital launch capabilities AND a space access based revenue stream is actually far less than even that.
Healthy competition, sufficiently large markets, iterative development cycles, that’s all we need. We’ll end up getting whatever is the best option with that combination, regardless of whether it’s space planes or multi-stage expendables or something else.
How much of the money wasted in the entire space programme was due to shipping major components all over the USA (in some cases using specially built aircraft) and duplication of facilities? For example, why is there any space infrastructure in Texas at all?
Let me suggest the major cost isn’t physical, but organizational. If different parts of the effort are done by different organizations, there’s a potentially sgnificant cost increment at the interface. SpaceX saves much money keeping work in-house instead of outsourcing.