Critics With Inconsistent Arguments

During the down time of the Shuttle, post Columbia accident and prior to Return to Flight, I believe there were only 3 astronauts on the ISS, and could easily be accommodated by a Soyuz that was docked there.

I assume now that there are 6 astro's on board, there are two Soyuz's permanently docked there for lifeboat rescue scenarios.

And is it possible to launch the Shuttle unmanned, after the last scheduled manned flight, and have it dock with the ISS auto mode, bringing up supplies, and leave it there as a rescue vehicle?

Earthshine:

Good one. I think the limiting factor would be how long the heat shield would last. They could suck power off the station and would have to replace their fuel cells with batteries to get them from undocking to APU start but one ding in the right place on the tiles and she's up there for good.

But wait. It would be nice to have a shuttle on orbit.

If you weren't worried about coming home so much, things get interesting.

Send a shuttle up with the payload bay stuffed with a couple of Spacehab modules. Docked to the Station you'd have 40 feet (12 meters) of extra lab space plus the mid-deck and an extra airlock. Put solar panels (on the bottom of the orbiter), use on-orbit refueling for the Reaction Control System and you have a spacecraft. It would have limited capabilities but at least it's a platform to work with to develop long range spacecraft systems.

How about fly the Shuttle for a lunar flyby or orbital mission and use aerobraking to make Earth orbit to get home. The Thermal Protection System wouldn't have to work as hard for an orbital insertion (I'm guessing there).

There was even an idea to haul the External Tank up with a Shuttle modified to be a spacecraft. The hydrogen tank would have been used for living space. That left the payload bay free for long duration systems like solar panels, fuel tanks and other systems that needed on orbit repair or replacement. I assume it would be launched unmanned because it would be permanently attached to the External Tank.

The Space Transportation System has been highly underutilized.

tinker

@Earthshine: Expedition 7 through 12 had a crew of two.

@tinker: A study for a shuttle lunar flyby exists. You start on orbit with a fully fueled ET. How to get a fully fueled ET there is anybody's guess!

I find it really annoying when I read things in papers like the Houston Chronicle where the facts are conveniently omitted. The little fact that in the 105 Soyuz missions, there have been TWO loss of crew accidents. Yes the shuttle has lost 2 crews as well but the reusable shuttles have launched 26 more missions and hundreds more astronauts than the Soyuz. And the Shuttle hasn't had anomalies subjecting crews to 9+ g's on ballistic re-entries. So perhaps Senator Hutchinson's concerns have some validity if you look at the facts.

The Washington Post just wants US manned space flight shut down using the argument that there are too many things on earth that demand that funding. Please send these folks to see Neil DeGrasse Tyson's argument:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQhNZENMG1o

The Shuttle backers argument is that with only the Soyuz available, if the Soyuz were to suffer an accident, then how would the ISS be serviced?

Another argument, is to keep some or all of Constellation continuing. This argument, if I understand all of the puts and takes, will require between 6 and 9 billion more dollars each year in the NASA budget.

I believe that for a variety of reasons, including international relations, potential but as yet unrealized value, and most simply, in order to maintain the continuity of US human space flight ability, knowledge and experience, there is only one logical string of choices:

(1) keep the ISS going and make it more usable and useful, and harvest all of the value we can from it; this does mean some serious choices in how it is being used;
(2) do what is needed in order to provide all of the servicing, maintenance, and logistics capability to support ISS; for the time being this means the Space Shuttle must be continued until other capabilities, like COTS can supplant it; Shuttle management needs to figure out just how much they can cut back on people and cost and keep the system going, and how many flights a year does that add up to?
(3) make sure we harvest all of the knowledge and capability from the Shuttle program before it is finally terminated, so that we do not have to make major new expenditures at some future point in time in order to rebuild some or all of that capability; I belive a decision on whether a SDHLV provides adequate capability, and at what cost, in a study that would take a lot less than a year, and compare that against what it would take to use some other commercial launcher or a future, larger HLV like an Ares 5. That decision should be made in time to not lose all of the Shuttle infrastructure, in case that is the direction we need to proceed in; if it turns out the medium HLV like Shuttle derived is adequate in performance, then is a commercial alternative as capable ? What would the development and operating costs of each be ? Then NASA needs to make a make or buy decision. If NASA decides they need their own then that becomes a new program.
(4) begin to develop the detailed planning for the exploration missions and vehicles, leading to the asteroid fly-by in 10-15 years. I believe that vehicle is going to have as its core a manned module based on an ISS module and ISS-tested systems, like the closed loop life support already being tested in orbit. Obviously that vehicle would need a power source, propulsion and all of the other systems that make a spacecraft functional. Where does it make the most sense to get those systems from ? An alternative to the vehicle based on ISS and existing systems is something new and completely different. Preliminary Phase A/B studies need to assess this in the next 1-2 years and that becomes a new program.

This series of decisions allows the President's agenda to be met while allowing an orderly progression from where we are to where we need to be.

What is most bewildering to me is that I do not hear any of these plans and decision points being discussed except by Congress.

Where is the NASA leadership? Is there any?

Of course the alternative to the President's and Congressional positions is the opinion of the Washington Post. In that case we just throw away fifty years worth of experience and become like the Chinese of 600 years ago after Zheng He, destroy the fleet, destroy the capability, and give up any interest in future human space flight.

First off the shuttle cannot launch unmanned without EXTENSIVE modifications. There are many things performed manually on the shuttle. Also the dockings are not done automatically and that would require some significant modifications even if it were possible. Finally, the shuttle is not designed, and I doubt could be, for extended on orbit operations. There are limitations on the tires, landing gear, ECLSS, many consumables, and simply so many systems that it would almost require a complete re-engineering to build it for extended stays, even with station power. Shuttle is an amazing vehicle, I work directly on it, but it has extensive limitations (as well as capabilities) and is expensive and labor intensive to fly. Finally it is inherently non-survivable in case of a major system failure during launch. And we are so far down the road in termination that continuing to fly would be hugely expensive and at least two years away. Keeping one on standby is also extremely expensive. This is another canard by congress people looking for money in their states. The space experts who say Soyuz is sufficient until we have a new capability are quite accurate.

The United States should not be dependent on any other nation for its access to space. We have no idea what the political situation on Earth will be a decade or two from now. And we have no idea when private companies will be ready to safely transport humans to and from orbit.

Keep the shuttle going until domestic successor vehicles are ready to transport Americans safely into space. Its the only logical thing to do!

Marcel F. Williams

The United States should not be dependent on any other nation for its access to space.

That's a nice principle, but there is no practical affordable way to satisfy that in less than about 4-5 years, maybe 3 in a high-risk scenario. With Ares I it would be about 7 years. On the 5 year horizon, Russian politics are probably sufficiently stable for this purpose.

It comes down to this: we've boxed ourselves into a corner. Nothing we have can fix that.

Keep the shuttle going until domestic successor vehicles are ready to transport Americans safely into space. Its the only logical thing to do!

Nonsense -- you should know better. That's not a viable proposal unless you savage the rest of the NASA budget or miraculously raise it by 25-50%. Did you read the post directly before yours, or any of the others on NW explaining why STS is already too far gone? Now if you know better, and have facts that all those folks have missed, please provide your sources. Otherwise give this up, and start advocating something plausible.

What do you mean salvage the rest of NASA's budget?

You only have to salvage the NASA budget if its committed to actually do something.

Money that was originally supposed to go from the space shuttle program to the Constellation program is no longer committed since Obama canceled the Constellation program. And Constellation was already being funded at $3.4 billion a year in 2009. So there's plenty of money to continue the shuttle program at $3 billion or less-- especially since it looks like the annual NASA budget will actually be increased by nearly $3 billion a year over the 2009 level.

Marcel F. Williams

"unless you savage the rest of the NASA budget"

actually, there may be plenty worthy of savaging if anybody actually bothers to do so.

although this article's unmanned assessment is incorrect, the commercial characterization is well stated:

Lost in space, or new frontier?

emphasis on unmanned scientific research ... have produced spectacular results at manageable costs.
ROFL - in what universe? (so Stern was just whining, huh?)

The president believes the program can get more bang for the buck by relying more heavily on private industry...The source of Mr. Obama's confidence is not quite clear, since the new NASA would operate somewhat like the Department of Defense. There, the on-budget, on-time weapons system is a perpetual work of science fiction.

http://thetimes-tribune.com/opinion/lost-in-space-or-new-frontier-1.742400

one thing about techies & scientists, they're usually accurate with dissection and identification of the other side's flaws - but not too good with their own

and newspapers don't get why their subscriptions are tanking?

Agree with your Washington Post sentiment, they're pandering to the SatsnBotsRus local readership I can only presume.

Interesting uk article bout that too:

Top 10 technology mistakes
Cock-ups of a technical bent, old and new

Honourable Mention: Mars Climate Orbiter

Shaun Nichols: As any computer programmer will tell you, some of the most confusing and complex issues can stem from the simplest of errors.

If you're writing any kind of code for a game or application, this can be quite annoying. If you're writing the code for a Nasa space probe, it can be a catastrophe that costs hundreds of millions of dollars. This was the case with the Mars Climate Orbiter.

A simple error in the development process caused the destruction of a $327m space system.

4. Iridium
While the idea of Iridium was a dream for users, the reality of it was a nightmare for everyone involved, particularly the investors that pumped billions of dollars into the company....Just nine months later it had to file for bankruptcy protection. The problem was in the 77 orbital satellites that the Iridium network relied on.

Iridium was a brilliant idea, spawned at the heart of the dotcom optimism about how the internet and communications would change the entire structure of human society. Motorola, Al Gore and a host of big name backers got behind the scheme and before long the rocket's red tails were burning.

However, like many brilliant ideas it glossed over the facts that such a system would be expensive and wealth is highly concentrated around the world, so what's the point of serving it all from a capitalist point of view? Also the cost of maintaining a network that large in low earth orbit, with the risk of collision or malfunction so high, seems not to have been considered.

3. Itanium

At the end of the presentation I sat down with a good friend (who now runs a rival news site) and we rehashed the details before the conversation petered out. "It's never going to work," he said. "Not in the short or medium term."

"You're right," I replied, "But it's going to be fun trying to see them talk their way out of this one. Intel's put billions behind this, it's too big to fail."

http://www.v3.co.uk/v3/news/2261955/top-technology-mistakes

hmmmmmm

The winner so far for cartoon, style, & accurate analysis content:

Lost in space: the Goldilocks options
By Editorial Board

http://interact.stltoday.com/blogzone/the-platform/uncategorized/2010/04/lost-in-space-the-goldilocks-options/

(but gets megagiga point deductions for the last three sentences)

dancin in the moonlight, everybody's feelin warm and bright