saving money, saving space shuttles, and saving the vision for space exploration

saving money, saving space shuttles, and saving the Vision for Space Exploration

In today's The Space Review, Taylor Dinerman looks at the number of shuttle flights required to finish the International Space Station and to fly the one last mission to the Hubble: 19 launches in all. With the next shuttle flight due no earlier than May of 2006, that leaves 55 or 56 months to do 19 launches: an average of one launch every three months.

Although 4 or 5 launches per year is about what NASA was flying in the years prior to the Columbia disaster, I don't think that this is a reasonable pace for shuttle launches anymore. The Discovery launch last year turned up more problems with the spray-on foam insulation on the external tank, pushing September's launch back to November, and again to next year. If NASA has any further problems with the SOFI, and they will, then further launches will also be pushed back. Any further delays in the launch schedule will mean that shuttles will have to be turned around even faster. If that is not possible, then that means that some launches will have to be dropped from the plan.

And given the number of remaining launches, the age of the remaining three shuttles, and the terrible, terrible shuttle design, there will be at least one more catastrophic failure. Suppose it is happens in 2006 or 2007 to Discovery; that means that rather than Atlantis and Endeavour each launching once every nine months, they would each have to launch once every six months to maintain the launch schedule - and that is assuming that there isn't another two-year gap between launches to study what went wrong. That increases the odds that one of the remaining two will also be destroyed, as maintenance is crammed into one-third less time. If however the next catastrophic failure occurs in 2008 or 2009, and there is another two-year gap to study what went wrong, then that would pretty much kill the shuttle program altogether.

Dinerman explores some alternative, cost-saving options. First he suggests going to single-shift operations and reducing the number of flights to two per year, or about 10 to 11 total, and possibly cutting back on flying the European and Japanese modules. This is a political non-starter. Second he suggests simply ending the shuttle program now and concentrating on the Crew Exploration Vehicle, Crew Launch Vehicle, and Heavy Lift Launch Vehicle (HLLV) to complete the station; this is also a non-starter, as the HLLV will not be able to loft some of the bigger modules. Finally he suggests not saving the costs at all, but counting on NASA receiving a bigger budget.

Although I would favor ending the shuttle program right now (hell, I would shut down the entire agency right now if I could), even a hardcore libertarian like myself can see that there is so much entrenched pork that it just isn't going to happen (but the calls to do both will be deafening after the next destroyed shuttle). What I would propose instead is a combination of Dinerman's first and second options: Accelerate the HLLV development, let that vehicle carry whatever it can launch to the station, and use the shuttle only for the Hubble servicing mission and to launch whatever modules to the station that are too big for the HLLV to carry. This would probably mean that it would take longer to complete the station, but would hopefully cut down enough on the remaining flights of the shuttle that my projected catastrophic failure doesn't occur. The station would still get finished, thus satisfying the international partners; it just would be done with fewer shuttle flights.

If there are only five modules (I'm guessing at the number) too big for the HLLV to carry, then that would mean a total of six more shuttle flights including the trip to Hubble. After the fourth flight, one-third of the current standing army doing maintenance on the shuttles could be laid off (as one shuttle would be retired), and after the fifth flight another third of the standing army would be let go. The remaining third would get the last shuttle flight prepped, and afterwards would be retained to prepare the HLLV flights. The layoff of 13000 out of a standing army of 20000 engineers and technicians, along with the elimination of their expense accounts, would give NASA the funds they need to accelerate HLLV development. The first HLLV could thus be launched much sooner than currently planned, and the HLLV fleet would finish the station.

Will it happen this way? Probably not. NASA isn't in the business of saving money (NASA isn't in business at all, but that's a rant for another day). I fully expect, after May of 2006, that NASA will attempt to launch once every three months. Concern over problems with the shuttle, and the desire to prevent my catastrophic-loss scenario, will likely cause some launches to be postponed, pushing the schedule so far back that the shuttles will not finish the station before the planned retirement date of 2010. The fleet operations would thus be extended beyond 2010, pushing the development of the CEV, CLV, and HLLV back further and further. The near-certain loss of another shuttle (the fleet won't be getting any younger) would mean another two-year gap between launches, and a commensurate pushback of the development of the Vision for Space Exploration. And the further the VSE gets pushed back, the less likely it will be to happen at all.

If President Bush is serious about the VSE, then it is essential to retire the shuttles as soon as possible, preferably before he leaves office. If the shuttles are still flying in 2014, then the VSE probably won't happen at all, and Mark Whittington will get an "I-told-you-so" moment as China sets up a base on the moon before NASA does.

Technorati Tags: Space, NASA, Space Shuttle