Former astronaut Don Peterson had a misguided op-ed the other day opposing the Orbital Space Plane.

While I'm no fan of the OSP, and think that it should be stillborn (and perhaps in fact is, though it will cost us billions and years to realize it), he opposes it for all the wrong reasons. He's too much blinded by his Shuttle experience. I was going to comment on it, but now I don't have to, because the Marsblogger has, at least as well as I would or could have.

Yep, imagine where we'd be if we'd kept Saturn/Apollo technology instead of scrapping it all for the (unkept) promise of the Shuttle. If we had kept even just Apollo CSM and Saturn 1B assets in production, incrementally improving them over the years (like the Russians and Soyuz), how would the US space program be less 'advanced' than it is today?

Replacing the multi-tank S-1B stage with a mono-tank and modifying the CM for land landings would have certainly been much cheaper than the billions spent on Shuttle development. And except for bringing big stuff back form orbit, what capability would it not have that the Shuttle has? Not reusable, ok, but reusability hasn't been the magic cost reducer NASA thought it was.

Walter McDougall once said our biggest mistake was scrapping the Saturns and thereby losing the opportunity to launch a series of Skylabs. He was right.

Yep, imagine where we'd be if we'd kept Saturn/Apollo technology instead of scrapping it all for the (unkept) promise of the Shuttle. If we had kept even just Apollo CSM and Saturn 1B assets in production, incrementally improving them over the years (like the Russians and Soyuz), how would the US space program be less 'advanced' than it is today?

Replacing the multi-tank S-1B stage with a mono-tank and modifying the CM for land landings would have certainly been much cheaper than the billions spent on Shuttle development. And except for bringing big stuff back form orbit, what capability would it not have that the Shuttle has? Not reusable, ok, but reusability hasn't been the magic cost reducer NASA thought it was.

Walter McDougall once said our biggest mistake was scrapping the Saturns and thereby losing the opportunity to launch a series of Skylabs. He was right.

Quoting from the article:

The NASA workforce is the most talented, dedicated, ingenuous, industrious group of people I have ever known in my 43 years of aerospace experience.

43 years of experience? Doesn't that sound like he's spent his entire working career in aerospace?

Just what is he comparing this workforce to?

I have only 9 years of aerospace experience. My views on NASA personnel aren't nearly as complimentary. Yes, I met some damned fine people in the field. But there are quite a few untalented bureaucratic jerks as well.

Do read the comments at the "Marsblogger." They're right with most of my biggest complaints about the too common NASA attitude - instead of building for a mission (reliable, reasonable transportation based on appropriate technology), try (and usually fail) to build something with all new technology, bigger and more complex than needed, that can do things that can be better done elsewhere. For instance, this Peterson complains it wouldn't have the room to do "research" - which is one of the key purposes for the space station, and something that is NOT being done now because of the lack of reliable transportation.