Doubt replaces the Shuttle
On April 14, 1981, after landing the first Space Shuttle, Astronaut
John Young spoke to the cheering crowd at Edwards AFB. In his speech he said “I
saw a newspaper headline that expressed it way better than I could. It showed a
Space Shuttle orbiter and it said The Dream Is Alive Again. Let’s keep it that
way.” Just over 30 years later the Space Shuttle program and that dream ended
as the orbiter Atlantis landed at the Kennedy Space Center in what the media repeatedly
called a “bitter-sweet moment.” My question is- where’s the sweet?
The date of the Atlantis’ landing was July 21, 2011, exactly one half
of a century after Gus Grissom flew a Mercury Redstone from Cape Canaveral on a
sub-orbital flight. He flew that sub-orbital mission because in 1961 the United
States did not yet have the capability to actually orbit a manned spacecraft.
Fifty years later to-the-day, with the wheels of the Atlantis coming to a stop,
the United States once again did not have the capability to orbit a manned
spacecraft. There is no man-rated launch vehicle in production, no man-rated
spacecraft in ready to fly anytime soon and NASA has not produced a complete
plan for any such hardware in the future. Instead all that we have are vaporous
circle speeches about undefined “path breaking” and “game changing”
technologies and assurances from NASA’s politically appointed administrators
that the future is bright and this is far from the end for NASA’s human
spaceflight program. We’re told that we will visit an asteroid… sometime, about
a decade and a half from now and that we’re going to Mars in a little more than
quarter of a century from now. Oh boy… that’s real inspirational.
What is really represented by the end of the Space Shuttle program is
not a pinnacle of technical success, but rather a failure of political
leadership. It is a demonstration that our so-called “leaders” in the 21st
Century have taken their lessons not from John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan,
but from Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter. Rather than leading us to a
challenging bright future of national excellence, they are concerned only with
leading us toward the ballot box and their own re-election.
NASA’s politically appointed “leadership” has joined in taking this sandwich
made of excrement and are calling it peanut butter. The man who likely will go
down in history as being the worst NASA administrator in history, Charlie
Bolden, repeatedly appears in front of Congress and in the media and assures
that “This is not the end of Americans flying in space.” and “We still have a
manned space program.” Indeed- Americans will be flying to the International
Space Station, by way of rented seats on Russian rockets and there is no date ever
mentioned as to when that rental space program will end.
It is time to tell the truth- such spaceflight is NOT an American
manned space program. To settle that point, simply ask yourself this question: Is
space tourist Dennis Tito a
country with a manned space program? He may have enough money to qualify as a
small country- but otherwise, the answer is “No.” Is space tourist (although
she prefers the term “participant”) Anousheh Ansari a country with her own
human spaceflight program? No? Well, both of these people went to the ISS on a
rented seat aboard a Russian Soyuz. That’s exactly what the United States will
now be forced to do- except for the fact that the space tourists paid about $40
million less for their seat than the United States will have to pay for each of
its. If we cannot call Mr. Tito and Ms. Ansari a nation with a human
spaceflight program, than we cannot call the United States a nation with a
human spaceflight program.
Additionally, Administrator Bolden has continually overseen and
perhaps directed the foot-dragging by NASA that is obstructing the development
of the Shuttle replacement vehicle- the Space Launch System, or SLS. Directed
by law to immediately begin and expedite the SLS back in 2010, NASA’s
Administrators delayed progress for nearly a full year. That forced to Congress
to go as far as to threaten to open an investigation into the administrator’s
foot-dragging. Charlie Bolden was finally subpoenaed by the Congress, and still
continued to delay. No other NASA administrator has been openly threatened by
Congress with such an investigation nor has one ever been subpoenaed by the
Congress. Of course Charlie probably does not care much about such issues- he was
often away on overseas junkets as his agency fell into ruin.
Charlie Bolden, it should be noted, serves “At the pleasure of the
President.” And Bolden himself recently testified in front of Congress that his
president is one of the most engaged and interested presidents in history when
it comes to spaceflight. Then he cited President Obama’s visit to KSC for the
STS-134 launch when he toured the space center with his family. Indeed, the
only President who spent a similar amount of time appearing in front of space
hardware was Richard Nixon- who, by the way, at the same time was working hard
behind the scenes to cancel the ENTIRE manned space program. History alone will
tell us what this president is doing behind the scenes while at the same time
posing in front of space hardware. Currently, as evidenced by his last three
budget proposals, President Obama appears to be working very hard to gut NASA’s
human spaceflight program. Each proposal sought to funnel most of the human
spaceflight dollars to “commercial” operators and his 2011 proposal defunded
the vehicles that were to replace the shuttle which also canceled our return to
the moon.
Yet we are told that there is always “commercial” spaceflight to bail
us out… right? Well, that is where Obama proposes that we spend our funds.
Although I am all for SpaceX, and the other “commercial” space start-ups, it is
about time we knock down to political facade of “commercial” that is being used
to prop-up a few companies that are Obama approved to do spaceflight. The best
filter here is to look through is Project Gemini. The Titan II booster was
built by Martin, a “commercial” company. The Gemini spacecraft was built by
McDonnell Aircraft Corp., a “commercial” company. Many other components were
made by other private “commercial” contractors and the entire program was run
by NASA. Government funds along with investments by those companies made Gemini
happen. This is the same basic formula that is being applied to the Obama
approved “commercial” operators such as SpaceX and Orbital. Yet, the SLS is not
considered as “commercial” by Obama even though the Orion spacecraft is being
made by Lockheed-Martin, the booster core tank is being made by Boeing and the
SRBs are made by ATK- all being private “commercial” companies. The difference?
These companies are apparently not Obama approved for taking us into the future
of spaceflight. So the production of the SLS is being delayed and stalled by,
not only NASA’s politically appointed upper administrators, but by the Office
of Management and Budget (OMB) which operates exclusively at the direction of
the office of the President.
There is no real need to end the Shuttle program at all. In fact, the
“retirement” and replacement of the Shuttle architecture was a recommendation
made by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board in the wake of the STS-107
accident. For the Bush administration it became a handy, politically acceptable
knee-jerk reaction to the accident. Additionally, it was supported in the
public eye by some commonly held myths about the Shuttle. First, the Shuttle is
too dangerous to continue to fly because in the event of a catastrophic failure
on takeoff- because it has no escape system. Indeed- that is correct, it has no
escape system to can be used in such a catastrophic failure… neither does ANY
modern jet airliner or corporate jet- yet we do not see them as too dangerous
to fly. Next- the Shuttle system as a whole is simply dangerous. Yes- IT’S A
ROCKET that flies into space! Of course it’s dangerous overall. Additionally,
the SRBs are dangerous to operate. The SRBs have made 270 flight cycles with
only one failure, which was caused when management elected to fly the unit
outside of its operational flight envelope. Also, we are told that the Shuttle
has an unacceptable loss rate. In fact, when the Shuttle was originally
proposed the Loss Of Crew (LOC) rate was calculated at 2%. With the end of the
135th flight, there have been two LOCs- that is a rate under the
original prediction of 2%. Finally, Charlie Bolden himself said, in front of Congress,
that every time NASA launched a Shuttle it was playing Russian roulette. This
was a slap in the face to all of the hundreds of people who worked meticulously
to ensure that every time the Shuttle played that game that Charlie called
Russian roulette- there were no bullets in the gun. Now, however, the Shuttles
will be totally safe forever… as museum pieces.
So here we are, left with no human rated flying space hardware, with
the standing army of spaceflight professionals devastated by lay-offs as the
shuttle replacement architecture is being slow-walked by political brats and we
have no choice other than paying whatever price the Russians wish to charge us
in order to get to the space station that we paid ~$80 billion to build.
Meanwhile our best hope depends on so-called “commercial” operators who have
yet to fly a single human-rated vehicle. Plus our so-called “leaders” seem to
believe that simply talking about doing fantastic things is just as good as
actually accomplishing them. As of the wheels-stop of the Atlantis and the end
of the STS-135 mission, we are left with nothing more to do other than to look
back at exciting videos of what we once accomplished in space and say “The
dream WAS alive.”
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