At the dawn of the twenty-first century, Americans are coddled, and take many things for granted.

We get into our cars, and we drive out in the country, or up into the mountains, and we expect to find gasoline, and food at the grocery or general store, and a motel that will have indoor plumbing and bedding for our biological needs. If we're really adventurous, we'll not take a car, but instead a motor home, so that we can stock up on food and supplies, and rough it out in the woods for a while.

But when our country was young, out on the frontier, there were no groceries. There were no conveniences. Sometimes, if one went too far over the verge, there weren't even the basic things that we needed to live, like water. Yet many went out into the wilderness, risking life and happiness, often for no reason than to see what was over the next mountain.

Let's move back into the twenty first, or even the twentieth century, for a moment, and change the subject slightly (but only slightly, as we will see in a few paragraphs).

When a pilot takes off in an airplane, one of the fundamental things he does before spinning up the propellor and becoming airborne is to check out the aircraft. He walks around it, examining the control surfaces, the pressure in the tires, the fasteners that hold vital wings to critical fuselage. He tests the controls, and verifies that his manual activities result in aircraft response--rudder, aileron, elevator.

Then, he knows that the aircraft is ready for flight, and so is he.

Prior to each flight, the space shuttle undergoes the same procedure, except instead of a simple brief walk around by the pilot, it spends months under the tender ministrations of a division of troops, dedicated engineers and technicians, the "standing army" that claims so much of the cost of the system, to ensure that it is ready for its mission.

But consider: there are three phases to a space shuttle's mission.

The first is the launch phase, in which it is thrust out into the universe on a huge flaming tail of fire, briefly generating more power than the entire electrical output of the nation. We lost a shuttle during this phase seventeen years ago, and everyone assumed that it was the most dangerous part of the flight.

The second phase is on orbit, in which the astronauts float, ethereally, accomplishing their mission, and the sense of danger is almost nonexistent, and palliated by the serenity of weightlessness and silence of the emptiness of space, and beauty of the earth passing below, once every hour and a half.

The third phase is actually the most dangerous.

In this phase, the vehicle must reenter earth's atmosphere, and it must slow down by using the friction of that hypersonic air to drag it to almost the halt necessary for it to make final approach to the runway and land. It has an unimaginable amount of energy in orbit, and almost all of it must be dissipated into the thin gases at tens of miles of altitude, and (at least momentarily, until it can cool off) into insulating and heat-absorbing tiles on the hottest portions of the structure, particularly the nose and leading edge of the wings.

The ascent environment, assuming that there are no catastrophic disassemblies of the stressed propulsion systems (as occurred on the final Challenger flight in 1986) is a cake walk compared to the entry, at least as far as the orbiter is concerned.

Yet prior to ascent, engineer spend months refurbishing and inspecting the vehicle, preparing it for launch. In contrast, prior to the much more strenuous descent, after having gone through the rigor of ascent, almost nothing is done, unless there's an obvious problem indicated by sensors. It is simply assumed that the ground preparation readied the vehicle for the entire mission, and that nothing will occur on orbit to make the return problematic.

Why? Because there's no capability in the system to do otherwise. There are no facilities in space to inspect, or repair a shuttle orbiter. There are no tow trucks to rescue it if it has a propulsion failure. There are no motels to spend the night if they can't return on schedule. There are no general stores to purchase additional supplies of food--or air.

Every flight of a space shuttle (at least those that don't go to ISS) is a flight deep into the wilderness of space, in the equivalent of a motor home on which everything has to go right, because there's no other way home, and delay is ultimately death, and "ultimately" isn't very far off.

I've written before about the fragility, and brittleness of our space transportation infrastructure. I was referring to the systems that get us into space, and the ground systems that support them.

But we have an even bigger problem, that was highlighted by the loss of the Columbia on Saturday. Our orbital infrastructure isn't just fragile--it's essentially nonexistent, with the exception of a single space station at a high inclination, which was utterly unreachable by the Columbia on that mission.

Imagine the options that Mission Control and the crew would have had, if they'd known they had a problem, and there was an emergency rescue hut (or even a Motel 6 for space tourists) in their orbit, with supplies to buy time until a rescue mission could be deployed. Or if we had a responsive launch system that could have gotten cargo up to them quickly.

As it was, even if they'd known that the ship couldn't safely enter, there was nothing they could do. And in fact, the knowledge that there were no solutions may have subtly influenced their assessment that there wasn't a problem.

The lesson we must take from the most recent Shuttle disaster is that we can no longer rely on a single vehicle for our access to the new frontier, and that we must start to build the needed orbital infrastructure in low earth orbit, and farther out, to the Moon, so that, in the words of the late Congressman George Brown, "greater metropolitan earth" is no longer a wilderness, in which a technical failure means death or destruction.

NASA's problem hasn't been too much vision, even for near-earth activities, but much too little. But it's a job not just for NASA--to create that infrastructure, we will have to set new policies in place that harness private enterprise, just as we did with the railroads in the nineteenth century. That is the policy challenge that will come out of the latest setback--to begin to tame the harsh wilderness only two hundred miles above our heads.

Of the proposed measures NASA might have taken to rescue the doomed Columbia (had NASA known its fate), the only one that strikes me as having even the slimmest chance for success is the "send another Orbiter to rescue the astronauts" scenario. But the risk associated with such a mission would have been too great. The only way to launch the rescue craft in time to successfully perform its mission would have been for NASA to toss its preflight prep procedures out the window -- which very likely would have resulted in the loss of a second craft and crew. I'm certain the response of any two astronauts asked to fly that mission would have been "How soon do we leave?" -- that's who they are -- but the risk was too great to take.

The concept of a support infrastructure for space wayfarers makes perfect sense. Not only would it greatly increase the safety of space travel, it would create an entirely new industry, one with potentially limitless growth potential. As long as we avoid an Alien/"The Company" scenario, that is...

Here's a thought: Assuming NASA had known about the damaged tiles soon enough, would there have been anyway to provide the astronauts with rescue supplies via the Russian launch which recently provided supplies to the ISS?

The Russians don't have the capability to get to that inclination. That's why ISS is at 52 degrees.

Is there something disturbing in realizing so late that the shuttle is designed triply redundant inside, yet depends so much on tiles that have to work perfectly every time?

Good post, Rand, especially the metaphor of the shuttle as a pioneering expedition.

What might be far more useful than a "what if Columbia" speculation would be to consider more options for future shuttle launches. For instance, would it be worthwhile to design future launches so that a shuttle in trouble could access the ISS even if it didn't intend to go there? Would it be considered useful to restore the rescue spheres? And what about the mini-belt (I think it's called the SAFER, according to the documentation I've read) that would allow astronauts to maneuver around the shuttle?

If we're going to depend on the remaining shuttle fleet for years to come, how can we plan to prevent future Columbias?

Shuttle C HLLV, a concept, IMO, whose time has finally come.

Dear Mr. Simberg,

First of all, I want to thank you for your excellent column, I look forward to your insight every week. I must wonder aloud, as Mr. O'Keefe considers our options in the days and weeks ahead, is knowledgeable of the existance of the concept commonly known as 'Shuttle C', the cargo only Shuttle Derived Heavy Lift Launch Vehicle.

Right now, we set a a unique crossroads and recent circumstance places several questions before us. I believe the only practical answer to these questions are SDHLLV.

1) Any manned deep space mission beyond low earth orbit is going to require some type of launcher capable of placing 80 to 150 tons into LEO first unless we want to spend vast sums assembling the craft tinkertoy style with a dozen or so complex, expensive shuttle missions and place compounding complexities and untenable burdens upon the mission.

2) Imagine the ability to launch in one whack 20 Progress freighters worth of fuel and supplies to the international space station. This configuration could be also used to launch the Orbital Space Plane on top of a massive cargo pod to the ISS. This gives us far more capability that the current shuttle with the exception of the downmass issue which I feel can be solved by other means.

3) SDHLLV provides an ideal platform for the launching of Orbital Laser Cannons in support of what the Bush administration envisions in future of SDI. The large cargo carrying ability of the SDHLLV gives the designers the ability to armor the vehicle, add larger, more powerful engines for rapid orbital plane changes for defensive evasive actions as well as the ability to carry more lasing fuel and more thrust propellant The vehicle could also incorporate more redundant systems and be made more user friendly for on-orbit servicing of this expensive asset. This beats trying to cram everything but the kitchen sink into the current planned laser satellite vehicle which is constrained by the 40 ton lifting capacity of the heavy EELV.

4) SDHLLV provides the opportunity to launch heavily shielded Nuclear Space Vehicles and it's extra muscle provides us with the ability to make the reactor vessels even more crash worthy and also add redundant safety systems.

5) The components of the SDHLLV are largely already existing within the current shuttle program, very little new hardware need be developed. The version of SDHLLV I propose would use the RS-68 from the Delta IV EELV Program instead of the RS-24 SSME. The RS-68 does provide more thrust than the SSME but has a somewhat lower Isp. This lessened efficiency would be compensated by the lessened vehicle weight and complexity due to the ability to throw away the relatively cheap RS-68 as opposed to an elaborate re-entry and recovery system for the SSME. Plus you would derive increased economy of scale as these components are already produced for the current Shuttle and EELV programs.

6) SDHLLV and the OSP provides us with an off-ramp for the expensive, labor intensive abort limited Shuttle Orbiter. Most of the expense of the Shuttle Program is the vast army of technicians that must prepare the orbiter for it's next flight. SDHLLV and the OSP combined would give us the ability to place more cargo and more people into space more often for greatly lessened sums of money. I feel that the SDHLLV program can be implemented for approximately the same cost as a replacement orbiter, perhaps less.

I feel that SDHLLV is the only feasible answer to the current and future challenges and limitations facing human space flight. If we are to progress beyond earth orbit, a true heavy lift capacity is essential. This is our opportunity to procure that capacity.

Sincerely,

Michael Puckett

Given NASA's track record, why should we let them develop either of those technologies? There are perfectly good private companies that can build equivalents for much less money. But they never will if their investors see that their direct competitor is government subsidized.

These comments are from a self-confessed "space" newbie, so pardon my ignorance.

First, I greatly appreciated this post, which was very informative.

The first thought that came to mind was -- I'm so ashamed that our space program seems to be in such a state of infancy given our decades of reaching for the stars. That is not to belittle the technological and human mastery that is necessary to reach the level of success that we HAVE attained. It is simply a regret that we humans have not made such endeavors more of a priority -- politically and economically. I believe the "exploration of space" currently represents the pinnancle of human endeavor. Unfortunately, until a tragedy happens, space programs don't appear to be on the radar of the general populace. That is a shame. I wish we had a JFK-type to challenge us, to "rally the troops" so to speak -- to keep the programs and funding, the pros and cons, on the front burner. Absent the recent Columbia disaster, how much "air time" have space programs received? Damn little, unfortunately. Unfortunately, because I think mankind is better served by such calls to our most sublime qualities. There is so much energy and talent and humanity that is wasted on ugliness --- urgent, important ugliness, yes, but still so much less than what we could strive for as humans.

Well, this is a long post that doesn't really say much. Except, I personally, will write my senators and newspapers; will attempt at every opportunity to keep NASA and space programs at the fore of interest, be it in academic curricula, federal policy or funding initiatives; will instill in my children the love for exploration of the latest frontiers. In that way, I will pay homage to the astronauts who gave their lives and the unsung thousands who stay on the ground supporting our exploration of the universe.

There is so much more that needs to be done, that could be done, if we as a nation paid as much attention to NASA as we paid to Michael Jackson. Here's to finding a political leader who will prioritize space exploration!