The expensive failure that was the space shuttle.

[laconicsax]

Since the conclusion of the final shuttle mission, two articles have been published which draw attention to an uncomfortable fact: that by its own criteria, the space shuttle program was an expensive failure:

The first, http://www.discovermagazine.com/2011/jul-aug/22-how-to-avoid-repeating-debacle-of-space-shuttle">How to Avoid Repeating the Debacle That Was the Space Shuttle by Amos Zeeberg:

The most important thing to realize about the space shuttle program is that it is objectively a failure. The shuttle was billed as a reusable craft that could frequently, safely, and cheaply bring people and payloads to low Earth orbit. NASA originally said the shuttles could handle 65 launches per year; the most launches it actually did in a year was nine; over the life of the program, it averaged five per year. NASA predicted each shuttle launch would cost $50 million; they actually averaged $450 million. NASA administrators said the risk of catastrophic failure was around one in 100,000; NASA engineers put the number closer to one in a hundred; http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2011/02/gannett-nasa-report-says-shuttle-dangers-underestimated-021311w/">a more recent report from NASA said the risk on early flights was one in nine. The failure rate was two out of 135 in the tests that matter most.

It seems likely, in retrospect, http://idlewords.com/2005/08/a_rocket_to_nowhere.htm">that the project was doomed for a variety of reasons, including the challenging reusable spaceplane design and the huge range of often conflicting demands on the craft. Tellingly, the U.S. space program is abandoning spaceplanes and going back to Apollo-style rockets. The Russians have always relied on cheaper and more reliable disposable rockets; China plans to do the same. But hindsight is 20/20, and there may well be no way NASA could have known that the shuttle would flop back in the ‘70s when it was being planned and built, or possibly even while it was flying in the early ‘80s, before its bubble of innocence was pricked by disaster. But it would soon become clear to anyone that the shuttle program was deeply troubled—at least, to anyone who bothered to look.

According to reports after the Challenger disaster, the ship exploded because of a faulty joint that included an O-ring hardened by especially cold conditions before launch. More importantly, this was far from an isolated problem, as illustrated by http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/missions/51-l/docs/rogers-commission/Appendix-F.txt">a report by Richard Feynman. Feynman slammed not only the O-ring error but the entire process of building and testing the shuttle, plus the management style and decision-making of NASA, for good measure. When he wrote, “Let us make recommendations to ensure that NASA officials deal in a world of reality,” and, “They must live in reality in comparing the costs and utility of the Shuttle to other methods of entering space,” he meant they were at the time not living in reality, which is generally the place engineers ought to live. NASA’s recent report on shuttle safety found that the chance of making it through first 25 flights (#25 being Challenger’s last flight) was only 6%, and the chance of 88 safe flights between the Challenger and Columbia disasters was just 7%. If the study is accurate, then Challenger and Columbia weren’t freak accidents—the flights before them were freak successes.

So it was clear, as far back as 1986, that the shuttle was an objective failure judged by its own goals. The launches were already way over budget and behind schedule; now a Nobel physicist was http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1993-12-15/news/1993349207_1_russian-roulette-shuttle-feynman">comparing its safety standards to Russian roulette’s.

The second, http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/jul/21/space-shuttle-programme?cat=science&type=article">The space shuttle programme has been a multi-billion-dollar failure by the better known Lawrence Krauss, reaches a similar conclusion, but is less reserved in its condemnation, has a lead paragraph of

Atlantis and the other space shuttles have been a colossal waste of American resources, time and creative energy. The real science done by Nasa has not involved humans

Krauss continues,

With Atlantis's touchdown on Thursday bringing down the final curtain on the http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/jul/08/space-shuttle-final-countdown-florida?intcmp=239">space shuttle programme, there is much hand-wringing over the end of an era. For the first time in 30 years http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/nasa">Nasa has http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/jul/07/space-shuttle-retirement-human-spaceflight?intcmp=239">no immediate programme for human space travel in place. While many are mourning this loss, the last flight of http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/space-shuttle">the space shuttle instead provides an opportunity to rethink http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/space">space exploration and a time to cut our losses from a failed programme that has been a colossal waste of resources, time and creative energy.

The space shuttle failed to live up to its primary goal of providing relatively cheap and efficient human space travel. There is a good reason for this. As the engineers made it clear to the physicist Richard Feynman when he was investigating the cause of the link:http://history.nasa.gov/sts51l.html|Challenger explosion], human space travel is risky. While Nasa managers had estimated the odds of a shuttle disaster to be microscopic, engineers estimated the loss rate at about 1 in 100 flights, which is close to the actual disaster rate.

Moreover, Krauss writes that instead of being the exciting start of a new era of vacationing in space and new manned explorations,

we were treated to regular images of the shuttle visiting a $100bn boondoggle orbiting in space closer to Earth than Washington DC is to New York. No one except a billionaire or two has ever vacationed in space, and their "hotel" was a cramped, stuffy and at times smelly white elephant.

[FSogol]

1. Un-rec. IMO none of the money NASA has ever spend has been a failure. The Pentagon on the other

hand?

[Sherman A1]

3. Agreed

[caraher]

7. This is crazy

I'd agree that I'd rather "waste" money with NASA than DoD, but it's absurd to contend NASA never wasted money. They did. And the Shuttle is an excellent example - and it's not NASA-bashing to say so. Plenty of blame for its ultimate failure resides outside NASA. It was shaped less by the needs of space science than the combination of NASA's PR need to fly astronauts, compromises required to get the funding through Congress and specifications laid down by DoD for their missions. Its failure in no way implies that NASA scientists, engineers and technicians were anything but the most competent and dedicated professionals one could ask for; they were just saddled with the wrong set of requirements.

The shuttle was a mistake, and imagining that NASA never wastes money is as silly as drooling at every shiny piece of electronics Steve Jobs announces onstage simply because it has an Apple logo.

[Sherman A1]

8. You are absolutely correct and I am completely wrong.

However, I have my Opinion and you have your Opinion.

I am considering a different context than you seem to be, nevertheless You are absolutely correct and I am completely wrong... In Your Opinion.

[caraher]

15. I don't know about My Opinion

But I do know http://www.theonion.com/articles/ussr-wins-space-race-as-us-shuts-down-shuttle-prog,21007/">The Onion...

Joking aside, what is the context you have in mind?

[Sherman A1]

20. My context is simple

the quest for knowledge while not a straight line (hence what you might consider to include waste) is worth every penny and more. Certainly some things could have been done better, but even in failure or tracks that do not always take the most direct path, we as a people (and human race) gain. Sometimes those gains take time to materialize, but the mere effort is worth it.

And far superior to creating new & interesting means to drop bombs on other inhabitants of this planet.

[caraher]

21. I agree that the quest for knowledge is not linear

However, I also know that, for the amount of funding devoted to developing a not-so-reliable space truck, we could have funded thousands of projects that would have resulted in far more peer-reviewed science than will ever come out of ISS and Shuttle (not counting robotic instruments like Hubble that simply happened to be delivered by Shuttles but could more cheaply have been delivered by expendable rockets).

I guess there are two kinds of choices we're talking about here, both of which have serious political constraints. I'm imagining we spend $X on science; how do we split it between manned space flight and other science? By virtually any clear measure, the scientific return manned space flight has been essentially negligible in the Shuttle era. (This is why it gets sold as adventure, exploration and romance - only these intangibles can possibly justify an effort whose chief scientific product doesn't go much beyond looking at survival in near-Earth orbit.) But in a way that choice doesn't exist, because realistically subtracting manned spaceflight will never leave $X for science but rather $X minus the cost of sending astronauts into space.

But the other kind of choice you seem to be talking about is equally unrealistic, in that we could spend $X on bombs + science, but politically we're very far from a condition where a dollar not spent on bombs will go to basic research (these days, of course, it will go to pay for tax breaks for billionaires).

Maybe ferrying astronauts is a more satisfying way to waste money than many of the alternatives (more bombs, more cash for fat cats). But the program has killed 14 astronauts and produced precious little science, and ended with no clear direction for what comes next. It was sold as a cheap "space truck" but proved anything but cheap - and the whole premise of the program was that what space science needed to blossom was a cheap ride into space. I'm less convinced that's true than I was when I was a teen and the shuttle program was getting underway, but either way it's fallen far short of what was promised - and what needed to be achieved to justify the expense.

[krispos42]

12. And the building and maintenance of the shuttle program...

...was spread through a lot of states and congressional districts, meaning it was a jobs program that was hard to kill, politically speaking.

[laconicsax]

6. This isn't a zero-sum game.

The shuttle was supposed to be good for 65 launches per year at about $50 million each and a failure rate of 1 in 100,000. Instead, we got 9 launches a year at $450 million each and a significanly higher failure rate. Do the math--that's a projected $3.25 billion annually for 65 launches vs. $4 billion annually for 9.

It may have been more intrinsically valuable than a DoD project, but the cost-overruns look the same.

BTW: I'd say the Mars Climate Orbiter was a failure, wouldn't you? What about the six other Mars missions that failed?

[MineralMan]

2. Hubble Space Telescope.

Enough said. There are many other things the Shuttle did, but that one is my favorite example. These articles are bogus.

[Kolesar]

4. HST could have been placed in orbit with an unmanned booster

That repair mission could have proceeded with an expendable spacecraft. For that matter, we could have just replaced the HST for cheaper than maintaining this $5 billion/year program.

[laconicsax]

5. Krauss addresses that too.

Yes, there have been highlights, such as the Hubble Space Telescope launch and repair missions, which were not only exciting but useful. However, the real question is whether they were necessary to achieve the science goals. The initial HST repair mission was required because of poor engineering on the ground, which may even have resulted from the daunting requirement of creating a device that had to be designed to be deployed from the space shuttle.

[Fumesucker]

9. That's a hell of a stretch..

That the HST mirror was flawed because it was designed to launch in the Shuttle.

Kodak and Itek both ground perfectly figured backup mirrors for the Perkin-Elmer one that was flawed.

[bananas]

22. The Hubble Telescopes that were pointed down had their mirrors tested before launch.

NASA's wasn't tested to save money.
It isn't even a secret anymore.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_Kennan
http://www.fas.org/spp/military/program/imint/kh-12.htm

[TheMadMonk]

10. And if the same attitudes were applied to flight....

Yes the Shuttle was sold as something it was not. However, the bigger part of the problem is that was no real attempt to actually develop the concept beyond the traditional cross Berring Strait dick waving.

Just some simple measures could have given us Mark 2, 3, 4 shuttles and beyond.

Remove the miles of wiring harness and replace with a few power runs, and a redundant LAN. -- Would improve turnaround time on the ground and lower the deadweight of the vehicle, thereby increasing cargo capacity.

Substitute titanium for aluminium. Similarly introduce other advanced materials. -- A stronger, lighter airframe with perhaps at least the aerodynamic qualities of a paver, rather than a housebrick, perhaps even a wall tile. (One can dream.)

A switch to a stack launch format with an entirely separate primary thrust module. -- Improved safety. Allows for a return of the Shuttle-C (cargo) concept and a 100 ton plus increase in lift capacity.

Retractable wingtips for extended glide time and land anywhere capacity.

Tank to orbit would have given us enough orbital real-estate to acommodate a moderate sized town by now. Tanks refuribished as habitats could be flung on ahead to Mars and the asteroids.

A "bus" module for the cargo bay could move 50-100 passengers at a time.

And to borrow a cliche, onwards and upwards to the stars.

[laconicsax]

11. If only.

It's hard to understand why, after 30 years and obvious shortcomings, no serious attempt was made to upgrade the shuttle.

[Orsino]

13. The shuttle program was amazingly successful...

...given budget constraints. That initial estimates seemed to promise safer, more frequent and cheaper flights doesn't make the program a "failure."

If we had really wanted 65 shuttle launches per year, we would have staffed for and constructed a larger fleet with more launch facilities and deeper oversight. We simply didn't. The shuttle program was done on the cheap...because it wasn't sexy.

[phantom power]

14. 65 launches a year to do... what?

I think that is a systemic problem with manned space exploration. What is the business case for that many manned flights? To achieve what goal?

[bananas]

28. The shuttle was supposed to bring manufactured goods back from orbiting factories

Low cost to orbit was one goal, the other was being able to gently bring stuff back to earth,
softly gliding down to a smooth runway landing.
The zero-g, zero atmosphere, and temperature insulation were supposed to allow for new manufacturing techniques that would be difficult on earth.
Pharmaceuticals, precision equipment, nano manufacturing, were some of the areas expected to use this.
A parachute landing has the jarring of the parachute opening, and a parachute landing isn't as soft as gliding onto a runway.

[cpwm17]

34. The goal is to put men in space

and to build the Space Station which allows men to spend time in space.

Soon they will have to destroy the Space Station so the US needs to create the next generation space transportation to create the next generation space station to allow men to continue spending time in space.

There is little need to put men in space. It is very expensive, and most of what men can do unmanned rockets and robots can do much cheaper.

[laconicsax]

17. By those criteria, the shuttle was a failure.

It was promised to get the job done for $50 million per flight and wound up costing $450 million. If you're going to talk about success given budget constraints, it was a total failure.

Really. If you get a contract to do a job for a specific budget and when it's all said and done, you've only done 1/7 of the job for $725 million more than promised, you failed.

[Orsino]

23. Those standards don't make as much sense when you're pioneering technology...

...and constantly reinventing a mission. That the shuttle got the job done at all makes it a success, an unparalleled one, even.

Hell, even Apollo's final tally was triple the initial estimate, the program included some spectacular and fatal disasters, and the last three planned flights were canceled in favor of Skylab. "Total failure" is not a term that leaps to mind in that case, either.

We might as well deride deride European explorers for accidentally running into the Americas when looking for trade routes to the Orient.

[laconicsax]

25. It stopped being "pioneering technology" in the early 80s

One of the things that went wrong in the Challenger disaster was that shuttle flights were already seen by NASA as routine.

As soon as it was realized that the shuttle couldn't even come close to delivering on its original goal of being a cheap way to go to space 5 times a month, a replacement program should have been started. Instead, we're left bumming rides into space with no plan. I don't know about you, but it makes me mad to think about how 40 years after putting astronauts on the moon, we can't even get astronauts into Low-Earth orbit without help.

If we'd started plans to replace the shuttle with something cheaper and more dependable 20 years ago, we wouldn't be in this mess.

[Orsino]

26. By which time we were learning that initial cost estimates were way off.

I don't think that our current lack of manned space flight capacity is in any way the fault of the shuttle. If we'd really wanted a replacement, it would already have been built, would be flying, and nay-sayers would already be labeling it a failure, too.

Seriously, what is it we so badly want to do in LEO that we paradoxically refuse to do? I'm afraid we've simply hit our civilization's Hadrian's Wall, and aren't going to be flying back to the Moon or to Mars and beyond.

[laconicsax]

27. And yet we continued paying more for less with no other plans.

The shuttle was a money pit that tied up resources that could have been better used. The Challenger disaster was a moment when we could have stepped back and said, "hey, this shuttle thing might not be the best choice" and decided to go a different route. It's entirely possible that had we decided to go with a cheaper, more dependable alternative, we could have spent the more on developing the technologies needed to go to Mars, setting up shop on the Moon, or even improving existing human spaceflight technologies beyond what we have.

[bananas]

30. Reagan put the money into Star Wars instead

in an attempt to win the cold war by out-borrowing the Russians.
We won!

[pokerfan]

31. The real problem with the shuttle

was that it had to launch 100 (metric) tons to LEO in order to deliver 25s payload to LEO.

[Orsino]

33. Yes!

Unfortunately, any other plan would have had huge development costs, ad would have consumed personnel NASA was already using. Changing courses means big outlays, and though the result could be more efficient surface-to-LEO (second-generation efforts can indeed learn from the pioneers), any savings in the short term would also be offset to some degree by reduced focus on needed shuttle missions. I think we were in the position of not being able to afford to work on a redundant plan (even an improved one) for manned service to and from Earth orbit.

That's our failure, IMO, and not the shuttle program's.

[bananas]

29. self delete nt

[ZombieHorde]

16. I don't know why, but I have an emotional attachment to the space program.

At least NASA will still be around. Perhaps they can develop better telescopes now that they won't be focusing on the space shuttles, or is 100% of the space shuttle money going away?

I understand the cuts, but...sigh.

[laconicsax]

18. I think the money is going away.

The James Webb Space Telescope is on the chopping block and costs over ten years what the shuttle cost for one. I'd think that if they were simply redirecting the funds, the JWST wouldn't be at risk.

[ZombieHorde]

19. Bummer. nt

[Orsino]

24. Yes. Very much so.

If space travel had uncovered easy profitability, it would be expanding rather than shrinking--though there would of course be even an even greater outcry for privatization.

[sofa king]

32. For me, it was the safety issue.

Fourteen of the very best and brightest people on Earth died in those pieces of shit, exactly as a shouted-down minority warned while William Proxmire and his spiritual heirs stripped the safety margin into negative territory.

That's the real lesson of space travel: once you've de-funded a manned space project past a certain point, the money has to be pumped into survival, and even the chances of that are reduced to completely unacceptable levels.

The safety of the Orbiter program was completely unacceptable, an embarrassment to a nation that enjoyed an embarrassment of riches at the time. Shame on us.

[scubadude]

35. We've disscussed this before on DU.

I came to the same conclusion before the shuttle was fully built. Many folks who were fans of the space program were talking about it's negative impact on science. I recall an article in the Interplanetary Society magazine which discussed how many advanced science programs were canceled due to the space shuttle program and it's cost overruns. While I can't remember the exact number, I do remember there were quite a few. Dozens. I also feel that the cost overruns may have led at least in part to the cancellation of the Superconducting Super Collider in Texas. Right now we have the Tevatron in Illinois dieing a slow death due to the lack of a couple hundred million for an entire years operation, way less that the cost of a single shuttle flight.

While I agree that the shuttle program was instructive, I feel the cost was way too high. We are behind the curve now. Fortunately as of late robotic missions are giving us the data we should have had decades ago.