Where exactly did it go wrong? How do get your calculations off by such an amount? Did someone get a decimal point confused on their calculator?

There's almost certainly a good lesson in applied bleeding edge technology in there somewhere. I'm not an expert; i'll regurgitate some stuff i've read over the years, but there are a number of people out there who are better informed.

To a first approximation, there are two sets of costs to the shuttle program--fixed costs and per mission costs. The fixed costs are those that you pay regardless of how many birds fly--these would be salaries, amortized R&D, facilities, upgrades, that sort of thing. This is a large cost of maintaining the shuttle fleet. A lot of these costs would be present regardless of whether you're flying the shuttle or expendables. The other is are the per-mission costs--fuel, extra pay for the astronauts, refurbishing the shuttle, wear and tear on the shuttle, whatever.

Obviously, if you fly lots of missions, you cut down on the percentage of the fixed costs on a per mission basis. I believe that the Shuttle was supposed to have a lower marginal cost but a higher fixed cost than expendables; it could only be justified economically if all possible US flights were routed to the shuttle. Which was US policy until Challenger. Even so, i believe they had to factor in a growth factor to make things work out (something along the lines of "if you build it, they will come").

NASA had to redesign the shuttle on the fly to get military buy-in; even then, the military wasn't all that keen on it (with good reason). Some of the Shuttle's shortcomings can be blamed on the redesigns and budget limits.

As it happened, the Shuttle wasn't quite as reliable as anticipated. The engines had to be essentially torn down and rebuilt from scratch after every launch. Tiles fell off, every tile had to be inspected. Cracks developed. And so on. It became evident that the anticipated launch rate was hopelessly optimistic. Some of these were to be expected--teething pains. Still, there were a lot of them.

And then came Challenger. Which exposed a host of problems. Several key systems were redesigned (many of the redesigns were heavier, more robust, lower performance. Exactly the opposite direction i would have hoped for (design the prototypes pessimistically, remove weight and add performance as your understanding of the dynamics improves)). The space program was offline for a year. Philosophies shifted--only missions requiring the shuttle were launched on the shuttle.

Anyway, as to what went wrong, probably lots of stuff. The shuttle was sold as a space truck. But it was a truck made with bleeding edge technology. And it was a truck made to be all things to all people. And possibly it was a truck made for a task that never quite materialized.

I thought someone might jump all over my comment about the cost/benefit of science with regards to Apollo. The truth is that claims of the science rewards were somewhat exaggerated by NASA. Of course the moon rocks we've got are an amazing source of information, but we really didn't go to all that many scientifically interesting places on the moon. Apollo was an engineering feat: not a scientific feat. While it's true that the kind of science that was supported by Apollo in the 60s could not have been done cheaper by unmanned missions, there was a lot of science (and engineering) that was not done because we spent the money on a human expedition and had to worry about keeping them astronauts alive and healthy. Maybe no rock samples, but if we had established a firm scientific base in the 60s and 70s we might have been able to develop more sample return missions today.

Glad to oblige

Not sure what your point is here. First, if we had taken all the money that we spent on an Apollo mission and used it for unmanned exploration of the moon, we wouldn't have had all that money. Apollo was more about politics than exploration.

However, if somehow we could have used all that money on developing a real infrastructure, then we might have a real manned space program now. However, that doesn't appear to be what you're proposing either.

I'm not sure what "firm scientific base" was intended to mean. I don't think you meant a permanent unmanned scientific base on the moon--that doesn't seem to have many advantages over a series of Apollo-type missions, and i don't see any feasible way of doing it with existing technology--but i don't see what else you could be suggesting.

Well, daver, I imagine some of that money would have gone to projects other than the moon.

Sorry, i misunderstood the thrust of your argument.

Impossible to say what would have happened if there had been no Apollo program. There's a good chance that the space program would be healthier now. The Apollo money probably wouldn't have gone into other science programs--it would probably have gone into more military spending, more social spending, or wouldn't have been spent at all.

Flies take next giant step for mankind
Scottish scientists have received a massive Nasa grant to work out whether humans can successfully reproduce in space and colonise other worlds.
The team have been given £800,000 by the US space agency to breed several generations of fruit flies in zero gravity and then examine any genetic changes in the insects.
http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com...cfm?id=1432006
The unique project is an essential first step towards discovering whether mankind can survive for generations in space and establish permanent homes elsewhere in the solar system.
The grant has been awarded to Dr Douglas Armstrong, a behavioural geneticist at Edinburgh University, who hopes to get his experiments into space aboard the shuttle by the end of 2007.
Four astronauts are due to fly to the moon by 2018 and later crews are expected to set up a semi-permanent base, with astronauts living there for up to six months at a time. Nasa is also hoping to have a manned mission to Mars by 2030 with a round trip to the Red Planet taking at least 30 months.

The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration plans to send six astronauts on a 500-day mission to Mars, according to its final draft report on the Mars exploration program.
U.S. President George W. Bush promoted a new vision for NASA's space exploration in a speech he gave in January 2004. NASA is aiming to realize the mission before 2030.
The human mission to Mars is planned to take 2-1/2 years for the round-trip and will comprise three sets of vehicles.
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/features...30TDY01003.htm
According to the NASA report, the first stage of the two-part planned journey will be to launch two unmanned transport rockets carrying habitation modules and other equipment two years before the six-member crew's departure. The two rockets will enter Mars orbit after an eight-month journey. This will be followed by the launch of a transport spaceship carrying the six crew. members for a manned Mars landing.

The problem with the human spaceflight program is not only that it takes money away from good science (which it may or may not do) and is inefficient. It also gives NASA a bad name. Human spaceflight does bring publicity but for the last few years it has been bad publicity. Lots of successful missions like Galileo, Hubble, SOHO, the Mars orbiters and landers, Spitzer and Chandra, Cassini, Swift etc. Most of these were good value for money too. Yet the impression is that NASA is wasting money becouse the Shuttle program and the ISS _are_ wasting money, and a lot too.

More importantly there are ways to generate publicity without human spaceflight. Although Discovery's last flight probably generated as much interest as the whole Cassini mission so far and Mars lost some of its appeal when people realized there weren't any Martians, the discovery of the first Earth-like planet will have a huge impact. It will bring something familiar to the strange world of astronomy. Which will mean publicity without the bad press human spaceflight usually gets.

No Buck Rogers, no bucks. Robotic missions catch they eye once in a while, especially if you are an incorribible geek like me, but they fail to inspire hope or even enthusiasm.

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There is no God and Dirac was his prophet.

Well put. Especially in the United States, where spending priorities are rated in Congress based on human interests first and foremost.

There's got to be a compromise here. The fact remains that some of the best science is done by robotic missions, but those robots have definite limits. They've got the range, they've got the staying power that human missions simply do not have. Nevertheless, no robot can match human flexibility and short term capability. We deal better with the unexpected, and in exploring new areas, the unexpected is the rule rather than the exception. We adapt much better than our machines to difficulties as well. Machines to date don't fix themselves very effectively, something a human can do, even if they have to improvise a bit. In the end, it is our adventure, not theirs.

Exploration is as much adrenaline as it is education. You say space flight is expensive and dangerous...well, welcome to the human race, the vast bulk of us high maintenace adrenaline junkies at heart. We do have a paranoidly vocal group of people who live in fear of living making a lot of noise and writing constrictive rules, seldom opposed by those who don't, quite frankly, because they're out living. There's a difference between riskiness and recklessness, when you determine where the line is, the human side of the space adventure can move forward.

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I'm not completely heartless, the doctor who removed it told me he'd never be able to get it all.

is there a difference between science and exploration?

Jon

As I meant it in my post, the difference is the human connection. I don't dismiss at all the excitement of what we learn through probes, but really Galileo, Cassini, Magellan, Voyager, Spirit, Opportunity and Sojourner are no more "exploring" as I see it than looking through a telescope. You can send cameras that can see the grains of sand for the Martian desert, but until someone leaves footprints, we've really not "explored" it. You could give Sojourner, Spirit and Opportunity half credit because they've actually let us do more than drop in and look around, but its still not the same experience as being there. Its still just another remote camera view.

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I'm not completely heartless, the doctor who removed it told me he'd never be able to get it all.

That's an interesting definition.

So, for you, deep sea investigations by means of side scan sonar, towed sledges, ROVs and other tools of the oceanographer are not exploration but science. Studying white smokers with a crewed submersible however is exploration, not science. However both programs are science driven and both are primarily scientific in output.

I see two other probelms with this. First, others have different definitions. ESA for example classes Mars Express and beagle as science but Exomars and Mars sample return as exploration.

Second, if you class crewed missions as exploration and robotic missions as science it risks heightening the false dichotomy between crewed missions (which don't "do" science) and unmanned missions which do.

Is there a better definition, or is the whole classification funadmentally flawed?

Jon

The shuttle's development costs and operational costs are approximately in line with the earliest official estimates. Also development schedule was not late -- it was on schedule based on the earliest official estimates. Statements about cost escalation and slippage in the development schedule are a myth. For details see the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) transcript: http://caib.nasa.gov/events/public_h...script_am.html

This is another myth. NASA wanted military support, but did not redesign the shuttle just to get this. NASA wanted the capability the shuttle now has, and that coincided with what the Air Force wanted. The shuttle's shortcomings are not the result of redesign and budget limits. Again, for details see the CAIB transcript: http://caib.nasa.gov/events/public_h...script_am.html

The SSMEs are not torn down and rebuilt after every launch. They are merely inspected. Until the latest SSME version, the turbopumps were removed and refurbished. Current SSMEs don't require that.

NASA never projected an extremely high launch rate. The talk of 52 launches per year were one theoretical study from an outside group. The absolute maximum launches per year were 24 per year, limited by external tank manufacturing capacity. The earliest official estimates projected possibly 10 or 12 flights per year.

In 1985 one orbiter -- Discovery -- flew four times. With a four orbiter fleet, it's obviously possible to fly 12 missions per year. Before the Columbia disaster, NASA was planning about 8 missions per year to finish ISS.

Not sure what you're talking about here. To my knowledge there was no performance loss because of the post-Challenger safety improvements. In fact current shuttles have greater payload performance due to various performance upgrades.

From NASA's standpoint, as originally planned the main priority of the shuttle was to service the space station. That's exactly what it's being used for. Other uses were secondary. It was understood the shuttle would also launch both civilian and military satellites, and maybe other things. However these tasks were secondary. The main purpose underlying the shuttle's design was servicing the space station. Of course NASA understood the space station wouldn't be built for years, but nonetheless that was the shuttle's main design purpose. For details see http://caib.nasa.gov/events/public_h...script_am.html

Secondary? In the 1970's, NASA decided to phase out expendable rockets and to launch all satellites from the space shuttle. Here is a little lawsuit which resulted from that decision:

http://online.ceb.com/calcases/CA3/214CA3d1.htm

When Challenger exploded, all production Delta, Atlas, and Titan vehicles was already terminated by the US government, and consequently the entire US space lift program was shut down for almost a year. That does not sound like "secondary tasks" to me.

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Fiction has to be plausible. Reality is under no such constraint.

What I meant was during shuttle development any features needed to launch satellites were secondary next to features needed to service the space station. Payload mass, payload size, orbital altitude, cross range, orbital endurance, crew size, etc, etc, were driven mainly by space station servicing needs, not by satellite launching needs.

Of course there were plans to use the shuttle as the primary launch vehicle, not expendables.

But from a shuttle development standpoint, capability requirements were primarily driven by need to service the space station, not launch satellites. That was the shuttle's main feature development priority, because that was the envisioned top operational priority. Launching satellites could be an important and frequent task without that task being the primary driver of features during development, or the top operational priority once the station materialized.

Some aspects of this are obvious if you think about it. You don't need seven crewmembers or 2-4 week on orbit endurance to launch a satellite from the payload bay. The shuttle wasn't given those capabilities to launch satellites, but rather to service the space station.

So you are saying that Shuttle was not BUILT to be "all things to all people", but was USED (for a while) as "all things to all people". Which was still a terrible policy. Primary payload of Challenger on its last flight was a TDRIS communication satellite. There was no need to have seven people -- or any people for that matter, -- on board a TDRIS launch.

Joema, you keep defending the original Shuttle policy, but it remains indefensible. Whether it originated with NASA or with Congress, the "one launch vehicle" policy was moronic, and the post-Challenger "one manned launch vehicle" policy is not much better.

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Fiction has to be plausible. Reality is under no such constraint.

I'm not defending the shuttle but simply pointing out historical facts, which are often different from popular perception.

Just because the shuttle design features were primarily driven by space station servicing doesn't mean it was wrong to launch satellites from it.

E.g, you may buy a pickup truck primarily to haul wood, and the suspension, transmission, engine, tires, bed length, etc. may be selected mainly for that purpose. However you may end up frequently fetching groceries in it. Because you have a wreck going to the store doesn't mean it was wrong to get the truck or wrong to use it for various tasks.

In hindsight the "one launch vehicle" wasn't a good idea, but that's largely separate from shuttle design features, and how they originated.

My main point is many oft-repeated items about the shuttle are myths and have no basis in historical fact. This includes it being over budget, late, compromised by Air Force requirements, not meeting original flight rate projections, SSMEs totally overhauled after each flight, and made for a task that never materialized -- each of those are largely incorrect.