Flying, then retiring shuttle key to US space goals
10 Jul 2005 15:11:12 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Jim Loney
MIAMI, July 10 (Reuters) - The space shuttle's return to flight will restore luster to NASA's tarnished space program but the spaceship's 2010 retirement is just as important to the new U.S. target of traveling to the moon and Mars, experts say.
As the U.S. space agency counts down the days until it flies the shuttle again after a hiatus of more than two years following the 2003 Columbia disaster, aerospace experts and enthusiasts question whether the aging shuttle fleet is worth the billions it costs.
Shuttle Discovery is scheduled to lift off from Florida on Wednesday, carrying a crew of seven to the International Space Station, a live-on-board orbiting research outpost that has been serviced by Russian spacecraft since Columbia disintegrated over Texas on Feb. 1, 2003.
The space station, a multibillion-dollar venture of the United States, Russia, Canada, Japan and Europe, could not be finished if the shuttle did not fly again, space experts say.
Construction began in 1998 and astronauts started living at the station in November 2000. But important billion-dollar parts, including Japanese and European lab modules, a centrifuge, trusses and solar power arrays, have yet to be installed.
"The space station will prove to be a critical step in our exploration and eventual settlement of the universe and we just can't finish the station without the shuttle," said George Whitesides, executive director of the National Space Society, a grass-roots organization founded in 1974 by aerospace pioneer Wernher von Braun. "The shuttle is the heavy lifter."
Failure to complete the station would mean failure to live up to NASA's obligations to its international partners, said Louis Friedman, chief of The Planetary Society, a leading space advocacy group.
"I think a very strong argument is that a venture in space, humans to other worlds, is only justified because it becomes a great venture of the whole planet. If we don't meet our commitments, that's important," Friedman said.
REACHING FOR THE STARS?
Critics question whether NASA and other agencies need to spend billions to send humans into space to conduct research, when unmanned probes are cheaper. Advocates of manned missions argue that humans must move beyond the confines of Earth to live and work in space.
Those who believe NASA should be reaching for the stars have long been miffed by the agency's focus on flying the shuttle in Earth orbit for decades after landing on the moon in the late 1960s.
The shuttle fleet costs NASA $4 billion a year, a quarter of its $16 billion budget. That money is critical to NASA's new goal, announced by President George W. Bush on Jan. 14, 2004, of retiring the shuttle by 2010, building a successor, the Crew Exploration Vehicle, and flying to the moon and Mars.
"The shuttle retirement is the paramount element of the plan. If you compromise on the shuttle retirement you will never get the CEV done, you will not go to the moon or Mars," said Friedman, who believes a manned flight to Mars will cost $75 billion over 10 years -- less than half NASA's current budget.
While the shuttle's return to flight is needed to finish the station, which is important for the long-duration space experience humans will need to fly to Mars, the spacecraft has little left to contribute to NASA's push into the solar system, said Brett Alexander, a former space policy adviser to Bush.
"The shuttle is based on 1970s technology. It is a very capable system but also a very flawed system in its complexity and its ability to be used. I'm not sure the upcoming flights are going to teach us anything about getting to the moon," said Alexander, an executive with t/Space, a company that plans to develop a spaceship for NASA that could also be used for private tourism and business trips to orbit.
If NASA failed to fly the shuttle again, some experts argue it would hurt the agency's confidence and hamper relations with foreign space agencies. But it would not diminish NASA's leadership in space.
"Russia has significant experience and technological potential for space activities, but some of the expertise may have faded over the past 15 to 20 years," said Andre Balogh, a professor of space physics at Imperial College, London. "China has potential but no experience."
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