Save the Shuttles!

I personally think it is a mistake to end the shuttle before its replacement is built and tested.

If we rely on Russia for 5 years to get our crews back and forth to the space station, what if we have an all American crew up there and Russia refuses to bring them back? Or, holds them hostage for political gain? Not a good stratigy?

In 1989 or so I wrote representative Pat Schroeder of Colorado a suggestion that the shuttle should be removed from the flight program and a program such as the Apollo, which is now Orion take its place. This was done for safety reasons because the shuttle launch vehicle was complex and unsafe. This recent failure, I have offered to assist with the modifications, and I am certain a new configuration is possible for the fuel sensors, but I am not happy with a winter launch. If my services are wanted it is best NASA use them now because I am not in good heath. Former High Reliability

I would not be opposed to leaving one shuttle parked next to the space station for emergency use, or so its remote arm, or other features could be used.

As usual there is that nagging question from Ned, should we or could we keep them flying?. Aything to stir up the comment board and controversy.
The obvious thing is that it's just plain bad policy to end one program before starting another. And it doesn't take a Rocket Scientist to figure that one out! To depend on another government for any space related activities is asinine.
The very idea of "parking" an Orbiter at the ISS shows a complete lack of knowledge of the shuttle's systems requirements. Keep the vehicles flying until the Orion comes on line! It's not emotional, it's common sense.

Better to spend money on the space program than the bomb program.

If NASA was smart (and they are not) they would buy about 12 of the very reliable and fairly inexpensive Soyuz launchers and use them for the period of 2010 to 2015. The big trouble with the shuttle is its bound to crash again and NASA just can't afford another wrecked ship with a dead crew. Also, it would mean that over half the fleet crashed and NASA would have to endure the shouts of people who said "we told you so".

No, the Shuttle was a good idea. But at four billion per year and only three flights then by any imagination it was an expensive boondoggle. Oh, the residents of Florida loved it. However, the Northern states were left with just the bill and a nearly semi-annual shot of a shuttle. Perhaps that "love triangle" is something that NASA could sell tickets for the public to watch. At a price of $4 billion for three flights then the big question is why are not some administratiors going to jail for miss appropriation of funds.

Last, some very rotten poster owes me a big apology.

Keep the shuttle flying until Orion is ready to lift off.

The larger question has not been asked and certainly not answered: why, exactly, do we need a mega-expensive space program? To what end do we devote billions of dollars every year in national treasure - is it for the purpose of our national interest or is it just to keep NASA program personnel and contractors employed? I'd argue that the mission of NASA, if indeed it was ever a necessity, is entirely superfluous and the entire organization a boondoggle of the worst sort.

If space exploration is of any economic value, let private industry take a crack at it - without public subsidy. I think we'll find there is no national economic value, and the only "value" to be had is the benefit to the state of Florida by means of enormous federal spending.

Kill NASA. Kill it now.

Anyone who has trouble seeing a use for NASA and it's benefits clearly is enourmously short sighted and has no anchor in the knowledge of the things they have done for the world as a whole, not just this nation. In other words, just plain unread and ignorant.

You know a nation, or a school, or empire is on it's decline when they can no longer fund their art or their science. I agree we should not stop funding and running shuttles until we have the replacement built and running. As someone who has worked on subsystems for NASA I can tell you that countless techonolgies were founded on NASA developments that made their ways into commercial products with patents in US companies and industries. Temperature sensors that are now in cars, GPS, high temperature composite materials, high efficiency insulators, every conceivable product that has any techonological breakthrough invented by an American company I guarrentee you benefitted from grants and the push from either DOD or NASA. When you kill NASA you kill R&D in the US and thati s a bad bad bad sign. our R&D and innovation is one of the last bastions of our economy that still flourishes. If you think it's all market economy and free enterprise that fuels it, you are sorely out of touch. Look up the grants, see who gets them, see what companies have the innovations that spur the new products that helps our economy, it's all fueled from NASA or DOD. you cannot kill NASA without killing many many US companies' futures.

since the railroads were fist put across the country business and government have been in bed together. Private industry will go where they are funded to go. Government leads innovation by providing funds to answer problems they see in the form of grants in hundreds if not thousands of solitations they make every year. This has been t he way we have always run since WWII and before that, government and big business have been in bed since the industrial revolution to give big business what they need in form of legislation and laws to allow them to grow and manipulate as they saw fit to keep business profitable. if you think 'free enterprise' and "private industry" have ever been the inventors of nay new techonology: the theinternet, the personalcomputer, CD's, high density memory, random access memory, programmable IC's, microprocessors...all grant based. you talk about killing NASA you talk about gutting our entire way of economic stimuli that has kept us in the forefront of technology for the past 80s years.

One who assumes that we should "buy about 12 of the very reliable and fairly inexpensive Soyuz launchers and use them for the period of 2010 to 2015" knows little and assumes a lot about the Russian space craft reliability. All one need do is to go on line and study the reliability factors of the Soyuz. There have been crews lost and injured and nearly lost (many times) over it's history. The croakings of doom posted in the "predictions" of another lost crew and ship are not statistically sound based upon the number of remaining Shuttle flights even with a program extension. You are speaking without clear facts and baseing it solely upon bad assumption.

BigT. First off I have totally identified myself and am open for full review. The shuttle might not be available for parking at the space station, but then again maybe it is, this is a question that does not require immediate discussion but could be placed on the table for review as we start the transition phase. The transition may and may not begin this year, Orion may be pushed up, or slowed down. Politically I have zero idea what is going to happen and on the horizon of events anything that can go wrong, will. This I do know, the space station has no immediate life-boat which includes a return to earth capability of its own. . Finally, you have no idea what I have thought of in re-configuring the fuel system, and it is original and should be sufficient but would require the acceptance NASA. I would think there should be 12 or more future launches of the shuttle. In the next generation of the flight program I would like to see a variety of launch vehicles being utilized by our nation within the next two decades. We should be on the moon before 2020, and on our way to Mars by 2022. As a nation of explorers we turned into wasteland experts and do nothings who scavenged off the stock market and now you are suffering . . . Opportunities, now instead of a window your entry is a crack and a lot of cooperation before the economics fails. Former High Reliability

they should end it, you can't prolong something like that, just because you want to, its not a political decision, its an engineering one. if the nasa engineers have determined that they can no longer operate the space shuttles safely after a certain date, then that's that. they could build a new space shuttle, but that would cost money, to keep a new solution in the works and build a new shuttle. they should have never dumped their rockets from the 60s and early 70s, my understanding is they destroyed the plans to force themselves to transition to the shuttle program. if they go beyond the current shuttles' lifespan, they are at greater risk of another catastrophic failure, which would be devastating to our space program, and national pride, especially when we have new nations pushing ahead into space, leaving us behind.

Here is a sad but I think a true fact, for the last week a re-load of the tank the sensors did not function properly. For years I have been trying to get NASA to fix this problem and pointed out that this specific problem I believed might have caused shuttle Challenger’s mishap. Now I have offered to go to Florida and fix this problem, and if I do fix it, then therein rests a large problem for NASA engineers, and my credibility. I would inform you all here how to fix the problem, but they could easily start the arguments that become unending and the shuttle would not be fixed, and this then is a political circus.

Vizorsdn, how is it going? When do I get my apology for your many posts against me?

Did you read that the poor taxpayer spent $4 billion for just three lift offs this year?

Yep, hide behind your engineering degree. However, if our government worked then a few program managers would be going to jail for mismanagement. The taxpayers spent 4 billion dollars this year on shuttle flights. That is $1.33 billion per launch and that does not include the sunk costs of the launch vehicle.

Anybody with any accounting back ground knows many of the engineers and project managers at NASA squander billions of dollars.

The shuttle is getting shut down. Conventional wisdom is the shuttle is dangerous (2 wrecks and 14 dead out of less than 140 flights), expensive (4 billion for 3 launches), and pointless.

History will harshly judge the space program when the shuttle came on line.

Spin that engineering spin all you want, vizorsdn. The bottom line is your side lost.

Shortly following the Columbia disaster, I wrote to NASA asking why the Shuttle was not configured as one of it's early designs had it: placing the orbiter ABOVE the fuel tank and boosters?
The answer is economics: it was "slightly cheaper" to strap it to the side (if you take "costs of accident" out of the equation).
Neither accident would have happened had the orbiter been on the top of the stack.
Challenger's momentum would have easily carried it undamaged above the explosion (watch the video).
Columbia would never have been hit and damaged by falling debris from fuel tank pieces above it, since IT would have been above the fuel tank.
NASA wrote back and told me that they'd considered and discarded that idea because it would take over a year to "reconfigure the flight mold line".
Shortly after, more insulation strikes caused that very one-year delay in flights anyhow, but instead we remain stuck with the unsafe version.

yes1fan I asked that question in 1986 while at Teledyne, and was informed it was a question of flight integrity that a shuttle had to fly under the tank for safety reason in the case of immediate break away or tank’s fiery mishap and shuttle survival. If that was a correct reasoning and rational I have zero idea. My source then was the engineers within Teledyne.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't there work going on in the late 90's for a new-generation shuttle? One that would be 1/10th the cost to operate and still be reusable? If memory serves, that was canceled because the technology just wasn't available at the time (I think it specifically had to do with the composition of the internal fuel tanks, and perhaps a few other things). I wonder if maybe it might be possible now to build it, being 5-7 years later. The Aries will be a nice vehicle to be sure, but to replace a mostly reusable vehicle with one that isn't, just strikes me as going in the wrong direction. Why can't we have both: the Aries AND a new-generation shuttle? (Yes, I know the "usual" answer: money; if I had my way, NASA's budget would be doubled.)