The space shuttle was supposed to be the safest, cheapest, most reliable space craft ever built when it was envisioned. It was thought that since it was reusable it would save huge amounts of money on launches over those old shoot once and lose rockets. On paper it seemed that this was the way for the U.S. to go, at least in the beginning. If it would have worked out, we might have had a fleet of fine, second or third generation machines by now, but as we all know, the program was plagued with disasters and cost overruns.

When we look at the space shuttle we see a dangerous vehicle who's cost per launch is so much higher than a rocket that you have to wonder why we use it. Launching cargo or humans into space is an expensive business. Indeed, it costs us about $3,000 per pound to do it with a rocket, but if you think that is a lot, listen to this. It costs over $26,000 per pound with the space shuttle. Some people wonder why we haven't gotten further with space exploration. One of the main reasons is because NASA stubbornly has maintained the shuttle fleet which is so expensive that between it and the International Space Station, there is hardly any money left for anything else. I am certainly not alone in this criticism. There are many famous scientists that criticize the decision to keep these dinosaurs flying. To what end are we keeping the shuttle program going? It seems to me that the only ones benefiting are the companies that help maintain the fleet and the thousand of extra workers that are needed for it.

International Space Station

Our government has budgeted somewhere around $30 billion dollars to keep this fleet flying through 2010. I ask you, why are they doing this? It would be probably be much cheaper to use Russian rockets to fly back and forth to the International Space Station and I bet it would be a lot safer. The Proton rocket seems to be very good. But we seem to be caught in a Catch 22. We supposedly need the space shuttle to get to the space station and we need the space station so that we have something for the space shuttles to do. One thing that I always wondered about was why the space shuttle had no ejection system? I guess I beat this subject to death in prior articles. but a lot of people feel that some of the astronauts could have made it out of at least one shuttle before the pieces hit the water. I am one of those people. As for the space station, what do we do there that we couldn't do in any vehicle in Earth orbit for a heck of a lot less money? As a matter of fact if there was no space station, we could perform the same experiments from the shuttle alone.

If we look at the shuttle, I mean take a real good look, what do we see? The first thing we notice is the huge amount of parts that make up the space shuttle. Each shuttle has 250,000 parts and many of them can not be repaired. A set of tires on the main wheels must be replaced after every flight and the nose tires after every two flights. Each shuttle has to be backed by a number of spare parts. One thing that some engineers are saying is that NASA sometimes just keeps using old technology instead of updating. One person at NASA was quoted as saying that they were more interested in reliable technology than the newest technology. Is this what they think the shuttle is, reliable technology? I can understand to a point the use of reliable technology over newer technology, if the newer technology is unproven, but if you take this too far, then we would still be driving around in Model T Fords. Could it be that the bureaucrats at NASA are afraid of being blamed if anything goes wrong? If you have this kind of attitude, you will never get anywhere. What happened to our pioneer spirit?

I know, what I am about to say you are probably sick of hearing. This might all make sense if this program was just eye wash and we really had a second space program, perhaps run by the air force, that is far ahead of this one. It stands to reason folks, everything is becoming secret so why wouldn't a space program? Many people are saying that we have a space plane, a vehicle capable of going from the ground into orbit and maybe further. That is what most people think the secret Aurora is. This would mean that all the money used for the shuttle and space station is completely wasted and this is all propaganda for our benefit. Benefit? Perhaps that is the wrong word to use in this case, I should have said it was to fool us. There is one thing that the shuttle is able to do that might be exclusive and that is retrieve satellites, but the price of maintaining the fleet for this is hardly worth it.

Hanging on to old parts is causing a problem for NASA. As parts get older, they also get harder to find and the systems get even more obsolete as time goes by. Engineers are saying that the longer the shuttle fleet is maintained, the further behind in technology NASA falls behind. It is also being said that using this old technology is stopping young engineers from going to NASA because they feel stymied. They want to work on the newest things and perhaps cause change. The median age of NASA engineers is getting older and older. Originally 50 shuttle flights were planned a year, but this never worked out, then it was 25, but that was also too optimistic. So how old is the currently technology used in the shuttle? Well, the computers have had one upgrade and that was in 1988. Remember your home computer, if you had one, in 1988? I was using an Amiga Computer which while advanced for its time, but was a far cry from my dual core setup today. The memory in the shuttle computers is only 1 meg while some desktops today have 9 gigabytes. The shuttle has been around since 1982.

Aerogel

One of the things that seemed to always give the shuttle a problem was the tiles. Tiles are attached to the vehicle that form a heat shield to protect the craft on reentry. Unfortunately these tiles sometimes get loose or pieces of them break off causing trouble for the shuttle. Today there are alternatives to these tiles, but NASA doesn't seem to be considering them. There is Aerogel, the lightest material made that also has heat protection properties and the aerospike which is a sort of energy cloak that can be adjusted over the structure to protect it from heat and change the shape of the nose of the vehicle. These are only two alternatives that I know of, there may be many more out there.

The truth in this matter is that the director of NASA, who took over last year, has stated that development of the space shuttle and International Space Station was not the right path. He went on to say that he is trying to change the path, but by doing as little damage as possible. Come on, scrap the shuttle and shut down the space station and lets get on with manned exploration of space which has now become more feasible with the invention of much more powerful and improved ion engine.