
Dismantling the Space Shuttle Program - admp
http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2011/04/dismantling-the-space-shuttle-program/100045/
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Chocobean
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3po2gdQNgqk>

I remember watching the episode of Top Gear where James May drives the new
moon buggy, then sits down and talk about the old moon buggy.

[Kind of a spoiler] The old one, which served everyone so well, was left
behind to collect dust on the surface of the moon for the rest of eternity.
And then, he says, "But if you ask me, it's not half as sad a moon buggy that
will never get up there at all." I tear up just thinking about it.

~~~
scott_s
Thank you. That was amazing.

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mak120
Can't help feeling a little sad. The same feeling when the Concorde was
retired.

Its not sad that these awesome machines are being phased out. Machines/designs
become old and obsolete all the time. But in this case, there is simply
nothing better to replace it. It is as if this was as far as mankind could go
and have to turn back.

Here's to hoping that some day there will something more ingenious that will
be a worthy successor.

~~~
rbanffy
This one was obsolete well before its first flight. Astronauts could be
delivered to LEO with expendables for less money. Satellites and supplies to
the ISS could be delivered without risking human lives and, again, for less
money. By using expendables you would end-up building modular spacecraft,
iterating designs and improving them on every launch. By using less money you
get to build more expendables.

The shuttle is a beautiful machine, but it's even less practical than the
Concorde. And many, many orders of magnitude more expensive.

Sadly, a Saturn/Apollo stack would be more ingenious and a worthy successor.

That said, the SRBs, the tank and the engines could be put to good use. I
guess the tank could be adapted to LOX/Jet-1 and engines and payload could be
fitted on it.

The orbiter is the problem.

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michaelpinto
It breaks my heart that we didn't have a replacement lined up years ago. I
fear it will take China landing on the moon until the US gets serious about
funding NASA to do some hands on space exploration. Granted I'm happy that we
live in an era when space science is booming, but getting humans off this rock
more often shouldn't be that hard to do in the 21st Century...

~~~
Empact
NASA's budget has been pretty steady at about half its boom-time moon-landing
60's budget for several decades.
<http://jeffreyellis.org/images/NASA_budget_history_2.png> That's $15 Billion
a year - not a ton of money when the shuttle costs a billion per launch, but
I'll bet it's plenty in the hands of a more efficient organization such as
SpaceX, with costs 1/5 - 1/10th as much.

~~~
arethuza
Exactly, and when there is a good commercial _reason_ for going to the moon
(or anywhere else).

~~~
randallsquared
I think there have been good commercial reasons for decades. The problem isn't
inherent to the task, the problem has been legislative and regulatory
uncertainty. The only way around that would be operating from a more open
jurisdiction (difficult due to so many of your potential workers being banned
from working with you due to ITAR) or having so much personal wealth that you
can afford to take the risk, which is the path it seems to be happening on.

~~~
arethuza
"I think there have been good commercial reasons for decades"

What commercial reason would you have for going to the moon at the moment?

~~~
randallsquared
The moon is an excellent source of raw materials for orbital work: silicon,
oxygen, aluminum, and potentially the rare earths also needed to turn these
into communication satellites and solar power satellites. We're on the cusp of
being able to do these things entirely through automation and occasional
remote operation, but it would have likely been profitable to do it with on-
site humans in the 80s if political fear hadn't gotten in the way.

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iwwr
One of the great boondoggles of our history is finally wound down. The
sentiment should not be nostalgia, but rage for all those wasted resources.
Consider just the kind of unmanned probes that could have been sent out there.

~~~
jrockway
Wait until you hear how much the military costs. Just consider the kind of
foreign aid we could provide if we weren't shooting injured civilians from
billion-dollar helicopters.

The point is, the amount of money the space shuttle wastes is nothing compared
to what the rest of the government wastes. Things get funded because they
appeal to people -- the space shuttle is the reason NASA gets funded at all.
Sending people to space is _cool_.

~~~
Retric
Sending people to space is cool. But sending people AND stuff to space at the
same time is simply a stupid waste of money. The Apollo program docked space
ships launched from the moon. If the shuttle was designed for 8 people + air
filters + some water and no cargo it could have added a lot more redundancy
and with a better Mass to surface area ratio it could have returned to earth a
lot cooler. They could have even added some air breathing engines and landed
an airplane vs a falling brick.

We needed a 6-8 seat aircraft and built a 737.

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sliverstorm
Looking at this photo:

[http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/infocus/shuttle041311/s_d0...](http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/infocus/shuttle041311/s_d06_20112187.jpg)

I can't help but picture a storied old workhorse complicity plodding to it's
demise. Just think of the places this thing has been! It's somehow a sad
picture.

It's going to be dismantled (killed), 'made safe' (sterilized), and put on
public display (put up in stocks). Outta go out with a bit more glory.

~~~
bonzoesc
It's appealing to romanticize and anthropomorphize machines, but you really
shouldn't. They only exist to suit the whims and needs of people, and any
romance or feelings between man and machine are strictly one-way.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsQXQGaasUg>

~~~
scott_s
That picture is meaningful to me because of what it represents.

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BasDirks
Open source it! Not happening, I know, but wouldn't that be sweet?

~~~
mturmon
Doing so would be in violation of ITAR among other laws:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelsat_708>

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Are you sure? The space shuttle has classified secret communications tech on
board?

According to your link Intelsat 708 had classified systems. I find it highly
unlikely that the space shuttle has militarily sensitive secrets unless you're
suggesting that the shuttle program itself was militarised?

~~~
mturmon
The level of scrutiny to get an approval to release any meaningful part of the
Shuttle flight software would be almost insuperable. "Open-sourcing it" is
utterly out of the question.

However, this is not because there is secret communications tech on board.

It's because any "space-based technology" is covered by ITAR, and the US
government has signaled (in the case I referenced, and others) that the gloves
are off. It's not just fining the companies concerned, it's filing criminal
charges against the involved individuals. This has been true for some years
now, and the crystallizing event was the Intelsat incident above, which caused
a multifaceted furor that resists summarization.

A case in point. I worked on a project to analyze ISS (space station)
engineering data. We needed to look at the currents flowing through a motor on
ISS that controls orientation of the solar panels. For publications released
in the open literature, we were not allowed to label the axes on any of these
motor currents. We were not allowed to have foreign nationals (such as, say, a
Canadian grad student) working on the project.

The point being, any information about space-based systems is covered by ITAR,
and the standard of scrutiny is very high.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I hesitate to say this but that sounds moronic.

What, in your opinion, are they trying to achieve with this sort of
"scrutiny"?

Are they trying to stop Iran from developing a range of super-shuttles with
lasers?

Presumably they're now going to pension off all NASA staff to avoid them
sharing such expertise (like which way round to wire a motor) with outsiders?

~~~
mturmon
I suppose they're trying to limit Chinese technological competition, and to
delay Iran's getting long-range missiles (to choose two examples).

Legal solutions like ITAR are always coarse-grained, and the whole thing ends
up looking silly because parts of it are silly.

