Delayed Shuttle Retirement ?

[seth_381]

I was reading about how NASA is getting choices of their future and they may include a delayed retirement of the shuttle fleet and I was wondering what everyone thinks about it. Personally I feel it would a be a mistake even though I love the shuttles. They are just so old and it is time to replace them with newer technology, plus the launching system has proven to be deadly so why not just end it before more people can get hurt. But if the retirement was delayed there are two good things 1. We don't need to rely on other countries to get our people into space 2. We could "possibly" bring Hubble home.

 

[bushuser]

That would have been reasonable 1 or 2 years ago. Now, it would be prohibitively expensive to hire new workers and restart closed assembly plants that are essential to shuttle operations, such as the suppliers of external tanks, solid booster fuel, replacement tiles, tires, etc.

It seems we are stuck with this decision.

 

[radarredux]

The original Constellation plan and schedule are pretty much gone. Expected budgets did not appear during the Bush administration, and the Obama administration is signaling even tougher budget years. The choices are not pretty, and if the shuttle is retired, NASA will either (1) be stuck in LEO probably out to 2030 or beyond or (2) have no serious human spaceflight until 2020 -- a ten year gap.

There is another shuttle option, and that is to push the shuttle into 2011 so NASA doesn't feel rushed getting the last few flights done before Sep 30, 2010. But that doesn't change the larger picture -- budgets too small to maintain current human spaceflight to LEO and build the next generating of spacecraft for Beyond LEO.

It sucks either way. Everyone should tune into the final Augustine Panel meeting where the options will be discussed.

Wednesday, August 12, 2009, 1:00 pm – 5:00 pm, EDT

Here is the agenda -- short and succinct: pdf

 

[seth_381]

well then now that you say that radarredux the shuttle fleet doesn't sound so bad they just need to get re-certified, and have those nitrogen helium tanks replaced on Atlantis if not all three. I think anything to keep us atleast capable of getting our people in space on our own is better than nothing. They are kind of safe in a way of knowledge we know how they work and what to do and not to plus with heat shield checks there is a slim chance of a columbia accident.

 

[radarredux]

I think anything to keep us atleast capable of getting our people in space on our own is better than nothing.

Certainly a valid position; although, I don't fully know about the safety issues. But as some of us have mentioned before, the Shuttle program "eats its young" in the sense that the money required to maintain shuttle operations prevents NASA from having enough funding to develop the next generation of vehicle.

In an ideal world, Congress would provide enough money for NASA to continue operations with one vehicle family while developing the next generation, but unfortunately that doesn't happen.

This point was brought up again during the Augustine Panel's meeting at Cocoa Beach.

 

[vulture4]

>>the money required to maintain shuttle operations prevents NASA from having enough funding to develop the next generation of vehicle.

Constellation is arguably the last generation of vehicle, not the next generation. The entire technology demonstrator (X-plane) program was budgeted at about $4B total, from beginning to end, when it was canceled. Since RLV prototypes can be subscale and unmanned, they are relatively cheap. The high cost of Constellation was partly because of the crash program structure, going direct to manned lunar flight as quickly as possible. Also, of course, it was felt advantageous to force cancellation of Shuttle to "burn the bridges" and get everyone to support Constellation. COTS would cost relatively little, about $1B to each of the two contractors. and use different launch pads and processing facilities, so it could coexist with Shuttle. Obviously NASA could continue the Shuttle program. It probably would not be possible to continue both the Shuttle and Constellation programs. But if we cannot afford manned lunar flight, and unless we borrow another $100B from China we can't, Orion will be limited to serving as a LEO taxi, and it that mission it's almost as expensive and a lot less capable than Shuttle.

 

[radarredux]

The high cost of Constellation was partly because of the crash program structure, going direct to manned lunar flight as quickly as possible.

Interesting point. I vaguely do recall some discussion that certainly some of what drove the selected architecture was the schedule to put 4 humans on the Moon by 2020. Now that the schedule is out the window and the goal is up for grabs, it is a good time to reflect... which I guess is what the Augustine Committee is all about

I read some of Pres. Bush's science advisor Dr. Marburger's comments about the Constellation Program and NASA's goals, and he was somewhat critical. His position was to develop the technology for beyond LEO and don't concentrate so much on a specific mission. Along that line, some of the discussions recently seem to talk about missions that don't go deeply into gravity wells -- visit to asteroids, orbit around Mars, "landing" on one of Mar's moons, etc.

 

[stevekk]

I don't think it is a correct statement that the Shuttle "eats it's young".

We did have a program underway to develop a Shuttle replacement, while still flying the shuttle. It's just that we stopped working on the X-33 because someone decided it was a money pit.

Back when we actually had 4 shuttles, one of them would have a 6-month visit to Palmdale for complete refurbishing and updating. I don't think you would want to compare the current Discovery or Atlantis with the shuttles that were first delivered to Nasa.

I would much rather spend a few billion more on resolving the X-33 issues, because we certainly aren't getting to Mars using an updated Apollo capsule.

 

[radarredux]

I don't think it is a correct statement that the Shuttle "eats it's young".

The problem is that NASA has a relatively fixed budget and the Shuttle system has a high operational costs that consumes all of that budget. The end result is that there really isn't much money left over to develop the "next generation" of anything. In other words, the Shuttle eats all the money that could potentially be used to create its replacement.

And it isn't unique to the Shuttle. I was just watching Sally Ride's presentation on NASA TV, and the same is true with ISS -- operating it until 2020 would pretty much eat up most of the development costs for new Beyond LEO capabilities during that time. And when they projected out to 2028, for all scenarios the operational costs for whatever system they looked at ate up all the budget so there isn't anything left over for future development.

It would be nice, although unlikely, if NASA could set aside 20-25% of its human spaceflight budget every year to develop the next generation of systems.

 

[tanstaafl76]

We'll be lucky if anything with a U.S. flag is sent beyond orbit given how big the current budget deficit is.

 

[seth_381]

Well it's one sticky situation with tough choices. But if we kill of the shuttle who knows how long it will even take them then to get Constellation online. It should be possible to fly the shuttle and make the next big thing but there's the cheap govt. and a public that doesn't care. I wonder though if they would have rescued the Columbia crew if the public would have been more interested ?

 

[radarredux]

We'll be lucky if anything with a U.S. flag is sent beyond orbit given how big the current budget deficit is.

In today's meeting, I think most of the scenarios didn't have a Heavy Launch Vehicle ready until 2028, and even then there wasn't any budget to build landers and outposts for the Moon or Mars or anything. So not even flags and footprints for quite a while. Dr. Sally Ride's presentation was both eye opening and depressing.

 

[radarredux]

But if we kill of the shuttle who knows how long it will even take them then to get Constellation online

Constellation is pretty much toast. Even the most optimistic budget for the next 10 years cannot support it. It looks like Ares I will be in serious trouble as most options discussed assumed we would use other countries or commercial partners to get crews to LEO.

 

[job1207]

The Shuttle will finish it's missions. SpaceX and Orbital will resupply the ISS. Then Spacex will start flying people to the ISS. Then Spacex will start flying to the moon.

In the meantime, Scaled will get going on it's program as well.

There is nothing to worry about, unless you work for United Space Alliance.