It has made world-wide news, and rightfully so, as NASA’s oldest Orbiter gets stuck into the petting zoo at the Smithsonian’s Udvar Hazy facility located at Dulles International Airport. I have gone into detail about my views, many of them very strong, about how the Obama Administration, and their lap-dog Administrator Bolden, has castrated our Space Program, leaving America with an ambiguous grab bag of less than well-defined capabilities which may come to fruition in the distant future. You can read all you want about my detailed views on the subject, and how to fix our predicament with bold and creative solutions, by clicking the “Categories & Hot Topics” tab to the right, selecting “Space Shuttle Retirement,” and reading through some of the pieces concerning retooling NASA and/or starting a new fresh and nimble agency to handle American space exploration.
In the end we are losing not just a way to get into low earth orbit, the Shuttle was always an overkill solution for simple human transportation, we are losing America’s space truck, a irreplaceable multi-role platform that we had finally come to truly understand and operate safely. We had a opportunity to continue to fly the Shuttle and prove the “commercial spaceflight” model all at the same time instead of jumping into it headfirst with reckless abandon as we did. The United Space Alliance, the constellation of contractors who have supported the Shuttles for years, offered to fly the Shuttle twice a year for NASA, more if needed, as well as for private purposes, at a much lower cost than NASA had been paying per launch historically. This seemed like a win-win for all involved and a great way to transition with low risk to a new dawn of commercial spaceflight right? Not in Administrator Bolden and the Obama Administration’s eyes. Nope, they wanted the Shuttle’s wings clipped ASAP. Now we are left with relying on the Russian’s increasingly questionable Soyuz system to access the a Space Station which we primarily funded, while hoping that one day Space-X and others will give us back a rudimentary capability we had some 50 years ago. As for heavy lift capability, in place of the Shuttle we have nothing aside from a design on paper of a monstrous and dated vehicle with no real core mission or relevancy, that featuring a timetable of development measured in decades not years. It would appear that America’s loss of the Shuttle, without a real replacement such as the promising Constellation Program, is a symptom of America’s chronic sickness of unfocused priorities and dwindling economic might. All the while young would be astronauts and engineers that could change the way mankind lives and even thinks are treated to a series of flying funeral processions of America’s space faring icons of days gone by.
Honestly, I have been dreading this day. Don’t buy the propaganda, today was another NASA, and thus American, death rattle on a grand scale for all to see…
Here are some of the best videos of Discovery’s trek to Udvar Hazy, we are still waiting on the photos and footage from the T-38 chase aircraft:
Odd that the Obama Administration was singled out… I’m afraid that this was a result of both the Bush plan to cancel the Shuttle Program, and the Obama plan to scrap Constellation. I really hope someone in your government gets their s*** together. Considering the ridiculous Military budget, you wouldn’t think that NASA would be all that big of a deal. Go Space X! (I guess…)
Cody, Bush cancelled the Shuttle, although on less finite terms, for the Constellation program which would have been the right solution for America moving forward. Bush was almost as much to blame as Obama in that the Constellation program was almost set up to fail do to underfunding by the Bush Administration. Still, it needed comparatively little to get back and track and would have been far better than what we have today. Please read through my old posts on the matter, lots of details and solutions given. If Constellation was on the horizon giving up the Shuttle would have been a worthy, although still faulty sacrifice.
Thanks so much for posting!
Ty
I wanted to reply to Cody but Ty beat me too it. Yes, the shuttle program was put on a schedule to end under the Bush administration. However, there was a solid, scalable system of systems begun to replace it, also under the Bush administration. Constellation. Yes, it was underfunded. But that was fixable and is a fairly common occurrence in American government. Happens all the time. Under the Obama administration, Constellation was scuttled with no real replacement. Leaving us where we are, with nothing but PowerPoint slides and R&D programs to replace it. NO schedule. NO hardware orders. No set destinations. Just vague dates and wishes. After 2020, ISS will be de-orbited leaving the USA with no manned space program at all.
The proper analogy would be as if President Carter had ordered the scrapping of the Shuttle program in January of 1977, and ordered R&D begun on some other, ‘better’ launch system. We had Apollo, it ended, we ordered Shuttle to replace it. Shuttle was coming with set delivery dates AND hardware in testing. Nixon made that decision with Ford following suite. Exact same things as bush was Shuttle / Constellation. Except Obama scrapped it and began new R&D, increased commercial funding, and Muslim outreach for NASA.
Please note: Congress votes the budget. Not the President. The President just suggests one, which is a tradition, not a legal requirement. Of course, we haven’t had a budget for 3 years at ALL, so I guess none of this fiasco should come as any surprise. But fiasco it is, and it is the Obama administrations fault. Make no mistake about it.
I am slowly coming around to the cold, hard truth that grounding the Shuttles was a good idea. NASA gets little money compared to what they used to get (as a share of GDP), and frankly, the Russians can send people into LEO at 1/20th the cost of a Shuttle launch. I’ve read a Shuttle launch, all programs costs included, averaged at $1.3 Billion each, while a ride on a Soyez rocket is $63 Million.
With companies like Space X working hard to get people into to orbit for pennies on the dollar compared to the Shuttle, NASA can finally concentrate on its real mission, science and exploration, not trucking satellites into orbit for the defense department and others using aging, ever-more expensive technology they can barely afford.
Let private companies do the trucking, let NASA explore the cosmos.
David, thanks for sharing your thoughts,
Comparing a Shuttle Launch to a Soyuz seat is really apples and oranges. A shuttle can take 7 Astronauts up to orbit, fix satellites, build or repair a space station, act as a temporary space station & lab, launch other vehicles, carry literally tens of tons more than a Soyuz and bring all of it back to earth. I am not saying that the Shuttle is the perfect vehicle for swapping out crew members on the ISS, that could and has been done historically by the Soyuz as well and such missions would benefit from a commercial option to compete with Soyuz. The Shuttle was akin to an industrial work truck, the soyuz is a akin to a compact car. We should have flown the shuttles by private industry when the mission demanded and continue to send up soyuz or a commercial option when the market actually demanded it’s creation instead of the fabricated market NASA has created and subsidized for such outfits as space-x etc.
Also, I would argue that NASA is no position to continue leading in the area of deep manned space exploration. They have fumbled that mission for years. Let them have their robots and low earth orbit manned spaceflight and start a new ‘guiding agency’ to take care of the space exploration stuff beyond LEO on a truly commercial level, most notably by issuing a prize for whoever gets to the moon and back first.