>From: "ScipolicyNews" <ScipolicyNews@...>
>Date: Sat, 1 Feb 2003 19:19:46 -0500
>
>Dear Members,
>
>I posted the following message to several of my professional groups as this
>group is a very appropriate place to discuss the subjectt. So please feel
>free to post at will about it. I have something to discuss about it, and I
>will post it later tonight or tomorrow.
>
><<Group members, faculty, researchers, professionals, policy analysts and
>administrators are invited to join in frank discussion of the causes of the
>Columbia space shuttle disaster, its ramifications, and the future of NASA,
>and Space policy.
>
>
>Click here for further information about the group or to join:
>http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Scipolicy-L/
>
>Or to join directly click here:
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>(Its easy to unsubscribe any time - link is given on every posting.)>>
>
>Best,
>
>Stephen
>

Let me be the first to jump into this one.


I-What caused the breakup of the Shuttle?

Let me play the good Aristotelian and break this up into proximate and
ultimate cause.

A) At this point, my best guess as to the immediate cause of the disaster is
that old standby, metal fatigue. The Columbia has been around the track
many, many times, experiencing high structural stress during each launch and
re-entry. I doubt that it has been subjected to minute, x-ray inspection
after each use. There is a distinct possibility that metal fatigue degraded
some structural element in a way that escaped detection, and that that part
ruptured or cracked under the very high stress of aerodynamic maneuvering at
a point when the deceleration and frictioal forces buffeting the shuttle
were at their peak.

If this is borne out, then the whole future of the shuttle program is quite
doubtful, since it really depends on frequent re-use of the vehicles. In
turn, this probably means that the International Space Station is now
moriund, if not entirely dead. For reasons I shall state below, this
consequence of the tragedy should not cause great lamentation.

B) The ultimate cause is the concept of the shuttle itself, which ought to
rank high on the list of all-time boondoggles. There was never a compelling
reason to build a space program around a machine designed to carry a handful
of "Astronauts" (I use sardonic quote-marks because these guys never got
closer to the stars than you or I) into low orbit. Virtually all that has
been accomplished by the shuttle in terms of pure science, useful
technology, and military applications, could have been done faster and
cheaper by unmanned rockets and, perhaps, a small, cheap manned system not
designed to carry large cargo. The reason that NASA originally opted for
the shuttle was not a technical judgment on the essential merits of the
system but a political and bureaucratic strategy for maintaining funding at
high levels. There was considerable fear that after the Apollo Project
ended, there would be little support for an expensive program unless it gave
a prominent role to a human crew, especially glamor-boy pilots. By
contrast, a program concentrating on automated, unmanned systems would have
generated little enthusiasm on the part of the public and the politicians,
no matter how efficient in terms of pure and applicable research.

II-Value of the shuttle program

NASA bet the farm on a clumsy, complicated, hideously expensive system whose
sole virtue was endless photo-ops for charismatic flyboys (and, eventually,
girls). It was more or less like buying and customizing a Rolls Royce
(complete with wet bar and 48-inch TV) instead of a bicycle as the primary
vehicle for a paper-delivery route. The most lamentable result was a severe
attenuation in space-based scientific work. The Hubble Telescope is often
cited as a major achievement of the program, but recall that this was
delayed for more than a decade by problems with the shuttle itself. The
Hubble and lots more could have been put in place easily and cheaply much
sooner had unmanned rockets been given a suitable role. (Incidentally, this
would have greatly benefitted the astronomers and cosmologists who wasted a
good part of their careers waiting for the Hubble to become available.)
There might have been some justification (at leat to us romatics) for a
manned program in the form of an expedition to Mars or some such, but this
was far too expensive and long-range for NASA's blood in the early '70's.
Pretty much everything, including a nascent space station program, was
sacrificed to the shuttle, which turned out to be far more costly, wasteful,
and tricky to operate than had been initially touted. (For instance, the
initial idea of using re-usable, fully recoverable boosters pretty much went
down the drain.)

C) Post-mortem

The current (possibly soon to be defunct) International Space Station, now
the principal justification for the shuttle, is also a very high finisher in
the boondoggle sweepstakes. It is yet another pretext for
Photo-ops-in-space. It hasn't and won't produce much of interest in terms
of science, technology, industrial applications, or anything else and what
it does produce could have been acquired far more cheaply with a modest
unmanned program.

I'm sure that NASA will gamely attempt to salvage a manned space program as
its centerpiece, proably predicated on an even more expensive piece of junk
than the shuttle. I think they'll have a harder time of it this time round,
despite all the sentimental crap pouring out of the media at the moment.
The cost of the Space Station has been enormous, and replacing or
drastically modifying the shuttle will probably involve additional costs
that will bring the whole thing crashing down. Personally, I certainly hope
NASA will fail miserably. We'll see.

N. Levitt

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