Is The Shuttle Grounded Forever?

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/shuttle-04d.html

OPINION SPACE
by Jeffrey F. Bell
Honolulu - Feb 19, 2004
Yes, believe it or not, it's now 19 February 2004! Hard to believe this
famous date came around so soon. I wonder if NASA is having any official
event to commemorate this day? More likely everyone will just leave work
early and get dead drunk.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, obviously you weren't one of the
NASA managers who got a copy of the infamous "Space Station Screensaver".
This nifty addition to your work PC filled all your idle moments with a
continuous digital countdown of the time remaining to the scheduled
completion of the "US Core Complete" configuration of the International
Space Station. If anyone at NASA was morbid enough to leave this program
running, that clock just turned over to zero.

This small program has the distinction of being one of several pieces of
software that was cited by the CAIB as a contributing factor in the Columbia
crash. Many NASA employees testified that the rigid requirement to launch
the "Node 1" module on 19/02/04 caused the intense "schedule pressure" that
led the Shuttle managers to ignore numerous safety problems and rush into
the launch of Columbia. The CAIB harshly criticized NASA for adopting a
rigid schedule for Shuttle launches that took no account of the harsh
technical reality that Shuttle is too complex and fragile to ever keep to a
rigid schedule.

Yet, the very same thing is happening again. NASA has adopted a rigid
schedule for Shuttle that is far too ambitious and is cutting corners in a
desperate attempt to keep to that schedule. Already this insane program has
killed the Hubble Space Telescope. The next victims will be Shuttle itself,
and the International Space Station.

The basic problem is once again, a rigid deadline. The CAIB decreed that the
whole Shuttle system go through a complete "recertification" process if it
were to fly after 2010. The Bush Administration then decided that this
expensive process would be pointless, and adopted 2010 as a definitive end
to Shuttle flights as part of its new space initiative.

However, Plan Bush also called for the "completion" of the ISS before
Shuttle is retired "in order to meet our international commitments". This
will require 25 Shuttle missions. But there were already two "research"
flights scheduled before regular Shuttle operations can restart, and two
Hubble servicing missions in addition, which added up to 29 flights that had
to be flown before the end of 2010. It is now clear that the first research
flight will not occur until at least Jan. 2005. So Plan Bush required a
minimum of 29 flights in only six years.

But this implies a flight rate of 5 missions a year, which NASA was barely
able to support before the Columbia was lost. Now with only three orbiters
and a variety of new safety restrictions, it is very unlikely that more than
three missions per year can be flown. The banning of night launches alone
severely reduces the number of available launch windows in the wintertime.

So it isn't any surprise that NASA is frantically trying to pare down that
impossible flight schedule. Already the next Hubble servicing mission has
been cancelled for "safety reasons". NASA's argument is that the 25 ISS
missions are acceptably safe, but the 2 Hubble missions are not. This is
utterly absurd as Bob Zubrin has pointed out. The real reason for scrapping
Hubble is to free up that mission for more space station hardware.

Hubble is only the first casualty. Already, two formerly "vital"modules of
the ISS have been declared unneeded, and quietly deleted from the "final"
ISS configuration. There is also an ongoing effort to eliminate Shuttle crew
exchange and supply flights, in favor of increased reliance on the Soviet
Progress and European ATV supply ships. It is rumored that this measure
could reduce the total number of Shuttle missions to 18, or only 3 per year.
However, it seems unlikely that Shuttle could completely withdraw from ISS
supply duties; there are many vital replacement parts that are too large to
fit through the Soyuz-type docking port used by both Progress and ATV.

So just to be safe, NASA managers are also talking about getting an
extension on that 2010 drop-dead date. Remember when they swore in front of
Congress that every CAIB requirement would be met without any questions or
quibbles? I guess that testimony is now inoperative, or maybe there is no
controlling legal authority.

And on another front, NASA has encountered severe difficulties in devising
in-flight repair techniques for the Shuttle's thermal protection. The RCC
material on the leading edge is hard enough to repair on the ground, and it
seems that progress in this area is well behind schedule. Even the seemingly
simple task of adding an extension boom and camera to the Shuttle's robot
arm seems to be encountering unexpected problems.

But of course, these improvements mandated by the CAIB only address the
particular defect in Shuttle that caused this particular accident. Many
other long-term problems are not being addressed: decayed wiring, toxic and
explosive fuels, structure corrosion, inaccurate documentation, etc. The
orbital debris risk continues to increase inexorably. So the total risk of a
Shuttle mission will probably not be significantly reduced.

If that is the case, then 25 more Shuttle missions statistically equates to
a ~%40 chance of another dead crew. In the current climate, another Shuttle
catastrophe would probably kill Plan Bush and manned space flight as well.
What possible benefits from ISS could be worth this risk?

Everybody says that the Shuttles will return to flight sooner or later. I
say that it is time to start thinking about the unthinkable. What if Shuttle
never flies again, because of "technically unresolvable safety issues"?

Actually, things don't look so bad. Suddenly that huge $24B budget wedge
allocated to Shuttle and ISS in 2005-2010 and the marching army of Shuttle
servants are free to be redeployed for Plan Bush. Suddenly there IS money
for real hardware, instead of "just artwork" in John Pike's pithy phrase.

Even more significantly, in a Shuttle-free universe the new CEV spacecraft
and its still-unnamed superbooster would have the undivided attention of
NASA management. There would be no continuing manned program with its
inevitable cost overruns to suck money away from R&D. Instead, everyone
would understand that rapid completion of the CEV is essential to keep space
flight alive. There would be no chance that it would be allowed to fail like
all previous Shuttle replacement vehicles.

The only real problem here would be the other nations participating in the
ISS program, who would suddenly be left high and dry. But I've been waiting
for the international partners to attack Plan Bush, and instead they have
mostly been positive about it.

For instance, no ESA official has pointed out that all the partners signed
binding commitments to operate ISS for ten years after "completion", not six
years as proposed in Plan Bush. This suggests that the ESA is as sick of the
ISS fiasco as we Yankees are (it sucks up an even larger proportion of their
budget than it does NASA's). Throw them some big CEV contracts and they will
fall into line. After all, ESA designed and flight-tested a prototype CEV
command module way back in 1998 so they have lots of relevant experience..

Is this the real Bush Space Plan? Was this intended right from the start?

In this model, the current Plan Bush is just a politically sellable
intermediate plan to get the contractors and politicians all mentally
accustomed to a Shuttle-free environment a few years down the road. Thus the
shock of Shuttle termination will be lessened, when it is finally announced
sometime after the November elections. Lockheed and Boeing will get big
contracts for CEV and Super-EELV, about the same size as their current
Shuttle and Station contracts. No NASA centers need close. Everybody is
happy.

Could this particular "conspiracy" theory actually be true? In every
decision that doesn't make sense, there are usually two possible
explanations: actual stupidity and a deep conspiratorial plan that only
looks stupid on the surface. NASA is so technically stupid that it is often
hard to tell which explanation is correct.

But the timing of the Hubble bombshell right after the big Presidential
announcement is politically stupid, stupid at a level that is impossible to
believe. Anybody with half a brain could see that it would stir up a big
discussion on Shuttle safety and the relative merits of Hubble and ISS.

Even NASA doesn't make political mistakes this stupid. They are very much
attuned to public opinion and skilled in manipulating it. They would never
have made this announcement right after the presentation of Plan Bush unless
they intended to stir up a controversy about Shuttle safety.

And as for the Bush Administration, this is exactly the kind of indirect
approach they have adopted for most of their major initiatives. They are
very clever at taking advantage of the blind Bushophobia of the
Administration's opponents. They always start out by doing something very
different from (sometimes exactly the opposite of) what they really want to
do. Then when the first plan is denounced by the news media and the
Democrats, they reverse course and do what should have been done in the
first place.

Then the President's opponents congratulate themselves on having "forced"
Bush to abandon another misguided plan. This ploy works best if the original
plan is really stupid and obviously failing (e.g. letting looters run wild
in Baghdad), but this isn't really necessary anymore, since Bush-bashing has
become so reflexive that any program he suggests is automatically attacked.

So if I were a betting man, I would give you 5:1 right now that Shuttle will
never fly again, and that the decaying ruin of the ISS will be deorbited
within 5 years.

Jeffrey F. Bell is Adjunct Professor of Planetology at the University of
Hawai'i at Manoa. All opinions expressed in this article are his own and not
those of the University.

Find things fast with the new MSN Toolbar includes FREE pop-up blocking!