Musing

The shuttle is a marvel, a technological wonder that has given the US great service. No, it's a flying deathtrap and we're lucky it's lasted this long and hasn't failed more.

I hear both sides of this, at work and away from work, from friends and from people I don't know.

Well, the shuttle is a compromise, and perhaps that's at the heart of the discontent. The shuttle should have been a vehicle built in one design cycle with appropriate test and safety parameters, built to explore low-earth orbit environs from a science and engineering point of view. What the shuttle turned out to be is a vehicle which went through many design iterations, not because the initial design was flawed, but because too many cooks forced a say in the issue. It's very difficult for NASA to pursue any program when it must go through the same budget battle each year and justify its existence and every thing it does. Of course the government has a right to know what NASA does and how it spends its money, but the people of government are not generally engineers. Yet they feel free to tell NASA how to run its programs and set the budget for how they think it should be done. Accordingly, NASA must do what it can with what it is given. Budget overruns? Well, yes, but see it from the inside. If one must redesign a vehicle at a lower performance level than the original design, then the money give to build the vehicle now must be spent to alter the design.

And let us not forget the military fingers that got in the pie. Mostly the Air Force since they view themselves as the rightful owners of the "air" space over this planet, but they were not the only ones who saw use of the shuttle for their own purposes, and compelled NASA into other design changes such that it would launch payloads suitable to military purposes, not scientific ones. And how fast did the military flee the program after the Challenger incident? No, they do not bear all the fault, but they do bear a cut of it for their input to an imperfect design, and when it gave way under the opposing pressures, the military bailed and never looked back.

Also there was the intelligence interests of the US. Spy satellites, another good use of the shuttle. No, this is not strictly the military again. Don't forget the civilian side to that...and their pressure for a vehicle size and payload capacity to serve them.

Where were all these other agencies and organizations when Challenger exploded, when Columbia broke up on re-entry? Most people forgot all these other pressures and demands and cuts and exigencies. NASA stood alone to answer for an imperfect design. Yes, and imperfect people making imperfect decisions, acknowledged. But how different would all that have been if NASA had not been forced into a corner of using solid rockets on a manned vehicle, something that had been anathema to NASA before.

And so, now that we have a flawed vehicle, consider what it has accomplished. Twenty-seven years of service. Satellites launched into earth orbit. Satellites picked up, repaired and released. Hubble launched, and re-gained to be repaired and put back into service. I haven't counted up the hours of EVA activity that has not only repaired satellites, looked closer at the shuttle, done experiments in zero g, built a space station. And what about that...built a space station. The shuttle has ferried up all those parts and brought astronauts to assemble them. The space station has been in service ten years now; something that would not exist, at least in this form, without the shuttle. How many hours of experiments? How many feet of photography of the earth , to better understand it? How many contingency situations which were solved in orbit and tasks complete, proving man's ability to work in space and to problem solve, making use of limited available materials to come up with a fix when unable to run down to Home Depot?

And I could go on and on, but I think the point is made. Whatever you want to say about the shuttle, it is what it is and it is what we have. It's too late to change it now; no amount of complaining or criticizing is going to make it better or different. So let's use it as we can, in its limitations, and celebrate what it is able to do...which is a great deal!