What We Lose With the End of the Shuttle Program(spectrum.ieee.org) |
What We Lose With the End of the Shuttle Program(spectrum.ieee.org) |
* NASA costs less than 0.13% of GDP
and provides 9x return on investment
* The entire Shuttle Program cost approximately
the same as the UK bank bailout
* The Iraq conflict so far has cost significantly
more than a manned mission to Mars
https://twitter.com/profbriancox/status/88955884390195202
Fucking politicians.
http://www.npr.org/2011/06/25/137414737/among-the-costs-of-w...
Edit: I understand that the 20 billion figure includes the cost of infrastructure needed to put that air conditioning in place -- fuel for transport, roads that will be unmaintained or actively destroyed soon after the U.S. leaves, etc. Each piece is more frustrating than the last.
Source: http://blog.mises.org/6512/socialist-calculation-versus-magi...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spin-off
It's not hard to see the multiplier effect of our investment in NASA.
And it's really hard to look at the Shuttle program and say yes.
In general, we really need to get over whining about what we could have if only we could spend money we don't have.
How effective/efficient would a tax-payer supported version of Xerox PARC or the Golden Age Bell Labs be?
Something more pleasant than DARPA, for example.
NASA is a research and development organization. they products that are used in real life.
Usually development and deployment cost much more than pure research.
I don't think it could be said any better. What we do have now is a privatized space race which is priceless.
http://appropriations.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?Doc...
$4.5 billion for NASA Science programs, which is $431 million
below last year’s level. The bill also terminates funding for
the James Webb Space Telescope, which is billions of dollars
over budget and plagued by poor management.People should know that there's a lot of turmoil in the astrophysics community about JWST. In current plans, JWST overruns have resulted in elimination or long-term postponement of all other NASA astrophysics missions in the next decade. Even non-flight-project research is being cut significantly.
It needs to be said that JWST isn't primarily over-budget because of technical problems, but because they didn't do realistic cost and time estimates in the first place. Overall, the project has suffered very few technical surprises.
All of this added up to the system falling far, far short of its design goals in payload cost and flight rate, by nearly 2 orders of magnitude. By any sound measure the Shuttle is a failed experiment that was left to run, and bleed NASA budgets dry, for far too long. On the whole each Shuttle mission cost $1.6 billion dollars.
The alternative to not building the Shuttle was continuing with what we had before, which even at a reduced budget compared to the Shuttle would have resulted in larger space stations, moon bases, and perhaps manned Mars missions. The alternative now to not continuing the Shuttle is relying on commercial launch providers as the base of manned spaceflight, which looks to be both cheaper and more capable than the Shuttle.
This is a major factor in why it is so expensive to operate the Shuttles. They are not truly reusable, and the refurbishment in between launches takes so long and requires such an extensive permanent staff and facilities that the per-launch cost is astronomical. If the Orbiters were truly reusable then they could easily quadruple or more the number of flights per year for little increased total cost.
The space shuttle was a bad idea and dangerous from the start. Bring on the robots!
See, that ain't no way to run a civilization. Without taking (calculated) risks, we're nothing.
The shuttle program was an unmitigated disaster that set back space exploration a generation. By trying to build a "reusable" space plane we ended up with the most complex machine ever built-- and complexity is dangerous-- that does nothing especially well.
Is living in a Futurama-esque commercialization of space worth it?
I believe so, yes. Bring on the frontier!
1. Gentle delivery of large modules for attachment to existing complexes. - Probably lost, the main reason the shuttle is gentle is because it carries fragile humans.
2. Bringing cargo down gently. - Partially lost: the cargo bay is much smaller.
3. Safe "proximity operations." - Lost or at least made much more challenging.
4. Temporary deployment of a workbench in orbit for experiments, repairs, and other assembly. - Lost.
5. High-precision research orbits with specialized instrumentation. - Likely not lost.
6. Flexibility of crew composition. - Lost.
edit:
> 1. Gentle delivery of large modules for attachment to existing complexes. - Probably lost, the main reason the shuttle is gentle is because it carries fragile humans.
I cannot imagine we don't have any launcher that can do that. Any launcher, when approaching its payload limit, should be very gentle (as in pull low G's). A Saturn V was much gentler than the SRBs in terms of vibration, BTW.
> 2. Bringing cargo down gently. - Partially lost: the cargo bay is much smaller.
How many times did we need that? We could keep one shuttle operational for that kind of mission or just build a bus-sized capsule that would go up empty and land on parachutes.
> 3. Safe "proximity operations." - Lost or at least made much more challenging.
I am not sure I see a scenario where we would need that. The arms attached to the station are adequate for manipulating objects close to it and capable of doing it very precisely. Automated cargo vehicles have been servicing space stations for decades.
> 4. Temporary deployment of a workbench in orbit for experiments, repairs, and other assembly. - Lost.
Do we really gain so much by bringing the workbench back? Why would "temporary" be an advantage here? Couldn't we just pack the supplies and leave the workbench there?
> 6. Flexibility of crew composition. - Lost.
We could have built a larger Apollo capable of launching 7 people. For a fraction of the price, most likely. If putting people in LEO were cheaper (a promise the shuttle never fulfilled) we would have far more diverse crews in space.
And all of that negates the fact the shuttle is useless for anything beyond LEO. And LEO is costly because we have to take everything with us.
(EDIT: for context, most of trouble NASA has gotten itself into stem from commitments made for political reasons to appease the Nixon administration and a Congress dealing with fallout from the OPEC oil embargo in '73--when Apollo was winding down and Shuttle revving up.)
Before anyone jumps on me, I'm absolutely not saying those lives are not valuable. Of course they are, I regret their loss, and I wish that those accidents did not happen. But pushing the envelope is a risky business, and every astronaut knows the odds but gets in the capsule/cockpit anyway. Because if we are not losing lives now and then for reasons unknowable at that time, then we are no longer pushing the envelope and that would be cause for concern.
The execution was flawed.
http://www.spacex.com/press.php?page=20110304
The time of NASA-monopoly (DARPA) is fading, and the time of commercial space (Xerox PARC/Bell Labs) is just beginning. But it really shouldn't be anything for anyone should get worked up over--Xerox PARC/Bell Labs ushered in golden age of innovation and wealth creation, and DARPA still exists and still does amazing things.
Military and Space seem to have a lot of civilian offshoots. Probably because of focus and demanding environments / specs.
Too complex, too expensive, not best at any one thing.
But a sight to see.
I'm sorry to keep talking about these fucking wars, but it really does make me want to cry.
Or it sits on a shelf for a couple years or what? If we want to save money, shouldn't we kill something before we start it?
What we really need are politicians who can grasp the ROI of basic science (which is what I believe the JWST is) and have the will to prioritize it.
Sadly, politicians with both brains and courage are a rare breed.
Shuttle had wings thanks to the Air Force joining the project, then the Air Force dropped out, but Shuttle still had wings.
Of all the problems with Shuttle the wings bother me the most.
Or at least in the last forty years.
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/North_America...
First prototype completed 100 days after the contract signed. In contrast it took decades to build the Eurofighter. Granted a more complex aircraft, but they didn't have CAD back then either.
The most important, I think, is that Mustang wasn't a government project, but one designed and built by a private company to meet an existing wartime need.
Eurofighter by contrast was a government job start to finish, built by three companies in three countries. Starting with a DNA like that delays and cost overruns are baked into the process.
Automation is good for rote tasks. People are good at improvising.
During the mission to correct Hubble's lens problem, the supplied tools and procedure failed. The mission specialist utilized scissors and a plastic cover from a log book to correct the problem.
Without that improvisation, the mission to fix Hubble's lens would have been a loss.
What we gain from having people in space depends on what you want to _do_ in space.
If it's all just drones mapping planets and space telescopes then investing in automation makes sense.
If it's manufacturing, settlement, getting some of our eggs out of this basket, then we need people out there, learning how to live off-planet.
The expense in either case, might possibly be the same.
Automation isn't cheap, missions that have to be redone because the automation fails are costly.
I think the example of Hubble actually works in my favor on this point. Hubble is a relic of an old technological age. Earth-based telescopes surpassed Hubble's capabilities not too long after it was launched, and have now pretty much left it in the dust. At a fraction of the cost.
Hubble's replacement (James Webb) is quite a leap ahead, and as an IR scope it really does need to be in space, unlike Hubble. But you'll note that its location will be off-limits to humans, and it is accordingly designed to be remotely maintained.
In short, the age of low-earth-orbit, high-maintenance space telescopes is, and should be, over. I argue that other space-based platforms that require human intervention should likewise be curtailed for similar reasons.
>"Automation isn't cheap, missions that have to be redone because the automation fails are costly."
It is still orders of magnitude cheaper than sending people, and the cost of a "failed" space endeavour with people on board is infinitely greater. In cases where it's not currently feasible to use robots, it would be worth our while to wait until it is, instead of trying to use humans now.
I feel that Mars is another example in my favor. Cost estimates for sending humans to Mars are so high and so speculative that they're essentially useless outside of the insight that we cannot afford it. Compare that with the cost of robotic exploration, which is both quite affordable and spectacularly successful so far.
As far as I am concerned, I want human uploads in space. Durr.
Philosophy and art do indeed require lots of human intervention. Thankfully, they are cheap, as is much of the basic science research that we should be prioritizing ahead of, say, super sexy space stations.
Kidney dialysis machines for example. And basic research on bone loss which has been a huge help for Osteoperosis patients.
I think the issue here isn't that we know that putting humans in space is expensive, it is, in time as well as resources. I think the issue is that if we don't put humans in space we'll never know what advances we could have made by doing it.
Your two examples are instructive. I guarantee you that these medical advances would have been made in the absence of a space program. It's not a matter of if, but when. The best that be said about the scientific contribution of human bodies in orbit is that it has provided some acceleration of progress -- I know of no evidence to the contrary.
The crucial question is, what are we willing to pay for that acceleration?