craig@think.COM (Craig Stanfill) (09/14/87)
Pardon me. Responses to my original posting on the state of the U.S. space program have drifted somewhat off the point - looking at short-term issues rather than long-term. Clearly, our short-term problems are immense. And, clearly, this short-term difficulty is a result of having relied to heavily on the shuttle; this was due to NASA's having to oversell the shuttle's merits in order to get the project funded. My original argument is that, however abysmal our short-term position may be, the long-term position is still superior. While other nations are honing fundamentally old technology, we are well on the way with the new technology of a re-usable space launch system. Suppose it takes us another 5 years to make the Shuttle work like we want it to, and in the interrim we rely on expendables. Assuming we can do it, I think that a truly operational Shuttle will be worth the trauma and bother. And here's the real debate: not what is happening today, but whether the Shuttle can be made to work. What constitutes operational? Is it necessarily the case that the Shuttle will be less safe than expendables? Is it necessarily the case that the Shuttle will have greater trouble meeting operational goals than an expendable? As a case in point, quite a few Atlas boosters exploded before they got them to work (fairly) reliably; this has been the case with every rocket ever flown, except the Saturn series. What does the history of other programs suggest in terms of the catastrophic failure rate? Remember, the Appolo project had two catastropic failures (the pad fire and XIII), each of which led to delays. Remember the accident on the launch of Skylab which almost scratched the project. The Soviets have lost crews, too. It is unrealistic to expect any space program which continues over a non-trivial period to go without a disaster or two along the way, but this does not necessarily mean that the program is futile. Oh well, I've gone on longer than I had initially intended. The Shuttle program is in fine shape, at least as good as a consideration with the history of space flight would lead one to expect. Yes, it was dumb to dump our expendable technology, but that is a short term problem that should soon be solved. -Craig Stanfill