The human spaceflight program is an express train heading for a cliff. To explain where we are going, let me try to explain where we have been.
Apollo was not a program of "exploration", it was a substitute for a perilous nuclear arms race. Kennedy announced its goal, "to send a man to the moon, and return him safely to the earth." Period. When Apollo 11 landed in the Pacific, the goal had been achieved. NASA was surprised when there was no public support for more moon flights. At the time I was aghast, but over the years I have realized that Nixon, and public opinion, were right. The geopolicial goal of Apollo had been achieved, and continuing to send people into space on huge expendable rockets was, and is, much too expensive to be of any practical value to America. Nixon gave NASA a choice. Reduce the cost of sending people into space to a level consistent with the actual value of the work they could do there (i.e. the Shuttle) or forget it.
During the building of the Shuttle, NASA made one major technical error. Previously aviation had been incremental; test each part, build a prototype, fly a little, learn a little, build another prototype. Finally, when it works well, build an operational aircraft. But during the Apollo program there was so little time that it was decided to design the final model of the huge rocket, all on paper, by the new method of "systems engineering", then build it and test all the parts at once. It worked, but only because they were lucky and because cost was completely irrelevant. We tried the same thing with the much more complex Shuttle, building the final design with no in-flight testing of any of the major components. It was amazing that it flew at all. It should not have been surprising that there were major unanticipated costs and unanticipated failure modes. It has taken all these years to finally straighten out the risks and begin to reduce the cost.
In the 1990's NASA understood this. That's why the X-33, X-34, X-37 and DC-X were funded, to develop and test the design elements for a new generation of shuttles that would be practical and safe. But Sean O'Keefe and Mike Griffin, despite being NASA administrators, had no idea why they were important, and canceled all these programs between 2000 and 2004. It was then, not in 1974, that NASA dropped the ball.
Griffin was bored with Shuttle because it was doing the same thing over and over. He was nostalgic about Apollo and had no idea why it was canceled. He coined the term "exploration", i.e. human spaceflight that wasn't for science, tourism, or any practical purpose, but just to send people on dramatic flights to new celestial objects. He designed new rockets by sticking together graphics of existing stages from Shuttle and Saturn. Many people at NASA were similarly nostalgic for a "clear goal" and a blank check, and bored with trying to do practical work at low cost. The idea of America as tough and strong appealed to Bush, but not enough to add any money to the budget. So Griffin ordered Shuttle and Station canceled in 2010, not because they were unproductive, but because he found them boring.
Now, the first President Bush had also wanted to go to Mars. He asked for a plan, and a cost, for what was called the Human Spaceflight Initiative. I was involved in that study. NASA laid out a mission to Mars and a realistic pricetag, $400 billion. Bush I decided it was too high, and sensibly dropped the idea. So when Griffin proposed an even more ambitious plan "Moon, Mars, and Beyond .....", to the second Bush he was careful to mention no budget increase at all, and suggested it could be done "free" by getting rid of Shuttle and Station in 2010. Bush, who didn't like ISS because the hated Clinton had invited in the Russians, and wanted to be remembered for his "bold vision", jumped at the idea, and didn't question the ridiculously unrealistic cost.
This was the second point where NASA dropped the ball. Most NASA people I knew were enthusiastic about a "clear goal" (i.e. fly to Mars) and to this day look at me blankly when I try to explain that NASA should produce practical benefits for the taxpayers who fund us. They did not question Bush's lack of a realistic budget but became livid when Obama pointed out that absent a major tax increase there wasn't any money to go to the moon.
Of course the International Partners were up in arms over the utterly bizarre NASA policy idea of finishing the ISS and then abandoning it, after they had invested a great deal, so Constellation said it would also take over for Shuttle for a few years in supporting ISS, never mind that the capsule was completely inappropriate for that mission, just as expensive as the Shuttle to launch and carrying much less.
Obama, who doesn't consider himself an expert on space, appointed Augustine to find a new direction but got a laundry list. He properly pointed out that Constellation was unsustainable but had no concept of the importance of low-cost, reusable vehicles for human spaceflight. Augustine, like Griffin, assumes a goal for NASA means putting people on an object in space, and wasn't even definite on what it should be. Obama ordered Constellation canceled but chose the "flexible path" option, which seemed benign but is undefined.
Constellation was officially canceled, however it still has support in NASA management and demanded billions in "closeout" funds which it then applied to continuing expensive tests, planning five (5) "test" flights, including actually building and launching the Ares I and sending crewmen to the ISS!!! In order to do this they will of course be forced to demolish the Shuttle launch pad at LC-39B next month, driving a stake into the heart of the Shuttle program and the whole concept of reusable spacecraft and launch vehicles. The semi-stated goal is for Constellation to present itself as the only available way of reaching the Space Station (having destroyed the infrastructure needed for Shuttle) and therefore forcing its way back into the position of "program of record".
Meanwhile there is a furious battle in the press over whether SpaceX and ULA can launch people safely, or whether only NASA can do it. Both are wrong. The only NASA employees who put their hands on the Shuttle are the crew. The only workforce in the world that has person-centuries of experience actually maintaining reusable spacecraft, that has the "tribal knowledge" that can't be codified, that could avoid the problems of Shuttle in a new generation of reusable spaccraft, are the hundreds of contractor engineers and technicians, mostly with USA, who actually maintain the Space Shuttle. And they are the ones who are about to be fired.
Today, after nearly thirty years, the Shuttle is finally flying amazingly well. The problems that caused the loss of Challanger and Columbia were corrected, and the thermal protection system has been vastly improved. This was our first attempt to build a reusable spacecraft, and thousands of lessons have been learned that could make a new generation of reusable spacecraft and launch vehicles practical and safe, and the Shuttle could easily be kept flying safely until we have something better. Logically a new reusable program should be started in parallel, so personnel and knowledge can be shared between the programs. Then, when the new vehicle is operational, the old one can be gradually withdrawn with no gap in operations. Instead, while newspace entrepreneurs and NASA administrators fight over who knows how to launch safely, all the people with real experience in maintaining reusable spacecraft will be fired and dispersed forever, and for at least a generation.we will see the death of the dream many of us had of spaceflight, not as spectacular for a few, but rather as routine for many.
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