elturner@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Edwin L Turner) (10/05/88)
There is a very natural feeling of relief and euphoria (both in this group and in the media) at the success of Discovery's recent flight. While understandable, I do not think this feeling really makes much sense; there are still excellent reasons for unhappiness with the current situation: 1) Our space program is still far behind even the most pessimistic pre-Challenger projections. Many important missions have been canceled, and many others greatly delayed. We will be launching "old" hardware, some of which has probably deteriorated in "storage", for years to come (e.g., the Hubble Space Telescope, once planned for Shuttle launch in the early 80's, is now scheduled for launch in Feb. '90). 2) Furthermore, we will continue to fall further and further behind what seemed, pre-Challenger, to have been a reasonable, but not wildly ambitious, plan. There is essentially no chance that Shuttle launch rates will reach those planned by NASA in the early days of the program. This is true by a large factor now and will remain true when (or if) the new orbiter is put into service. Even with extensive use of ELV's, it will be a long time until we catch up to were we would have been. 3) The success of the Discovery mission, while most welcome, is hardly a startling accomplishment. In all probability, we could have simply ignored the Challenger crash (I know this is not realisticly possible.) and proceeded with the next scheduled launch, and it would have succeeded. After all, there had been more than 20 more or less successful missions before the accident. The only real test of how successfully the Shuttle Program has been rehabilitated will be its long term track record, both in terms of absence of catastrophic failures and in terms of frequency and success rate of missions. 4) We still have almost all of our space program eggs in a single, potentially fragile, and perhaps deeply flawed basket (i.e., the Shuttle Program). It is certainly possible that there will be another "loss of vehicle" accident within a few years. There is no very good indication of what the probability per flight of such a mishap is; it could still be in the range of a few percent, and even if it is much lower, bad luck is always a possibility. If another serious accident were to occur in the near future, it is hard to guess what the consequences for the US space program would be, but certainly they would be much more severe than those of Challenger's loss. Even if there are no major problems with the shuttles in the future, many of the charges leveled by critics of the Shuttle Program even pre-Challenger still stand or are at least arguable. It still seems quite possible to me that historians of space exploration will someday judge the Shuttle program to have been a major, or even a fatal, mistake for the US space program. Of course, things may turn out much better than some of the gloomier suggestions above; time will tell. Also, things could well be worse. We did badly need to get back into business at some level, and that goal now appears to be within reach. It is also clear that the most pessimistic predictions right after the Challenger accident (i.e., that the Shuttle Program or even NASA itself would be terminated) were too extreme. Furthermore, after more than 2.5 years of gloom, it is clear that space fans need something to cheer about. Nevertheless, I think that it is important to avoid the attractive conclusion that everything is "A-OK" again when, in reality, the US space program is in pretty sad shape and is likely to remain so for the forseeable future. Ed Turner "Does one really have to fret phoenix!elturner About enlightenment? No matter what road I travel, I'm going home." or elturner@phoenix.Princeton.EDU
cynthia@cod.NOSC.MIL (Cynthia G. Anderson) (10/05/88)
Naturally, i agree with Ed Turner's cautions about the shuttle program and the future of the entire US space program. I'd just like to point out some food for thought... Ultimately, it really isn't NASA's fault that the program is slowing down. You see, as NASA itself admits, the space program is basically run by politics and presidental directives (and as a worker for the Federal government, i can sympathize with that. you are basically told " You WILL do this, with THIS much money. No, you CAN'T do that, it will COST TOO MUCH. Or, NO, why? because it doesn't fit with what I(the sponsor) WANT. and finally, If you CAN'T do it all on the money i gave you, then 1. Tough, you take the fall for failure or 2. then just do part of it or occasionally 3. Well, i try and get you more money." and in the very end, we (The People) supposedly dictate what are politicians are supposed to accomplish. I just wish more people REALLY cared enuff to SAY something to their representatives or even VOTE in the rep they wanted! (yes, i DO vote and try and keep informed and i'm fairly sure most people in this group do too..it's the average "joe" or "jo-ann" on the street you've got to get thru to!) p.s. no real flames on my part on the government (research and development-wise) they do, as opposed to industry, let you take more speculative-type risks in things you want to find out about..even give you money to do it sometimes! "sigh" didn't mean to stand on a soap box folks, just my humble opinion. cynthia anderson "hoping to make it to Mars!" Disclaimer: No one made me say this, i speak from my own stupidity.