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Virgil

STS-135, The Final Space Shuttle & Other Thoughts

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Virgil
, 07-22-2011 at 12:38 AM (1277 Views)
The videos speak for themselves. The first is the final take off, the second the final landing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyN6itTCa1A&NR=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oSxh0E76SA

Gosh, can they mention “final” enough times. Still it’s always impressive to watch rockets and flying vehicles take off and land. Beautiful. As we say in Italian, “che bella.”

Overall though I guess I have mixed feelings. Despite what the announcer said toward the end of the second video, I was never as mesmerized with the Shuttle missions as he states. It’s a shame that the standout events in the thirty year history for me were the two catastrophic disasters killing the entire flight crews. It’s interesting that of the two catastrophes, one occurred on takeoff (1986, Challenger) and one on re-entry (2003, Columbia) into the atmosphere, the two most dangerous events in the operational sequence. Two catastrophes out of 135 missions is actually not too bad a ratio, considering the complexity and straddling of high risk hazards, though not good enough. I imagined they learned quite a bit from each mission. The 1986 Challenger disaster remains a textbook case of management failure to listen to the working level engineers. It’s discussed in both engineering and management classes. In fact a few weeks ago I took a class at work on improving decision making, and that Challenger case history was mentioned.

I guess I’m of a different generation. I grew up on the Apollo missions to the moon. I was a boy who played hooky (at least once, anyway) to watch the Apollo flights and moon landings and splashdowns into the Pacific. No question about it, the Apollo missions is what inspired me to be an engineer. I remember the last Apollo flight, and they had the same maudlin sentimentality, the closing of an era with the same anxieties of an unknown and remote future. The routine flights of the Shuttle to just outside earth’s atmosphere did not compare with the incredible, visionary, and dazzling feats of not just leaving earth herself, but of breaking free of her gravitational pull and landing on and then returning from the moon, another terrestrial body. In fact we have not since put a man on another terrestrial body. The Shuttle, in comparison, just didn’t have pizzazz. Or maybe I’m just an old fogey engineer now and not an awestruck boy.

I just checked and the last Apollo flight (Apollo 17) occurred in 1972, which is a bit surprising to me; for some reason I would have guessed 1977. The first Shuttle flight was in 1977, but that and the early flights were more developmental test flights. Its first real mission flight occurred in 1982. So there was a ten year gap between the end of the Apollo program and the operational beginning of the Shuttle. When the Apollo program ended, I remember thinking that something greater must be around the corner. It wasn’t around the corner, and, for all intents and purposes, it wasn’t greater.

Still the technology of the Shuttle is very impressive. The reusable nature of the craft, the ability to translate in space and within the atmosphere, the relative roominess inside compared to the Apollo Command Module, the ability to dock with a space station, the ability to cargo–equipment, satellites, the Hubble telescope, and the “bricks and mortar” that is forming the International Space Station—required a new way to think about space transit and the application of technology to achieve its ends. No question, the Shuttle is actually a higher tech baby than the Apollo.

What comes next? Will the United States still be a leader in space exploration? Will our flailing economy require us to squeeze out space exploration funding? Can commercial space vehicles actually pick up the ball and move it forward? The answers to those questions, and others, are in this excellent interview at PBS with several people long involved in the space industry: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/scien...ace_07-11.html

Read the whole thing, but here are a few standout excerpts:

RAY SUAREZ: But what is going on there right now? Do they you have a specific thing that they have to do by a specific date? And do they have money to do it?

MILES O'BRIEN: Well, that is the problem. I would say the answer is big question marks in both cases.
The fact of the matter is the money, which should have been appropriated initially when George W. Bush announced the cancellation of the shuttle program, never materialized. And so the program that he envisioned, which would have sent astronauts back to the moon and ultimately beyond to Mars never took hold. And so Obama reversed course.
And now we're in a situation where there is no specific date, no specific destination, just embracing some technologies that will allow NASA to push beyond low Earth orbit. Will there be funding for that? Will there be the political will and leadership to follow through? Those are big questions.
RAY SUAREZ: Dr. Jemison, did NASA make, short-term, the right choices; don't head off on something until you know where you are headed?

DR. MAE JEMISON, former space shuttle astronaut: Well, I don't think it's the issue of don't head off.
I think the issue is really, was Constellation going somewhere, and was it worth waiting until 2028, getting rid of the space station and the shuttle program, and not having any human involvement in space? So I think it was the right answer, given the budget constraints, given the time and what we needed to do.
I think that one of the pieces that's lost in this is that the commercial spaceflight effort is really important, because now we're really ushering in another era of space exploration, where people have an opportunity who are not part of the government to have humans go into space. And I would add on that, that what the government's role really has to be -- NASA's role has to be to push space exploration further, to do the things that companies can't do, that individuals can't do.
The Constellation Program was the program that would have been the follow on space exploration program to the Shuttle.

RAY SUAREZ: Eric Sterner, is NASA taking the right course right now, now that the shuttle program has reached its end?

ERIC STERNER, former NASA official: Honestly, I think we find ourselves at an impasse.
You saw an authorization bill enacted from Congress. The president signed it. And the key thing in that is the space launch system, a very large rocket. Honestly, it looks a lot like Constellation. One of the challenges you have is -- is NASA and Congress disagree on whether or not it's doable.
Congress says, do it, here's the money, which it hasn't provided. And NASA says it's not doable. So, you are at a point right now where the fundamental entities and government that pay attention in space don't agree on either the mission, how to get there -- you don't know where you are going -- and how much it's going to cost, and when -- time frame you can do it in.
RAY SUAREZ: Miles, there is some concern that -- of a more practical nature, that, because there is no active craft to take Americans into space, there are real safety considerations about the International Space Station, and the need to keep America in the game, even if we're not actively pursuing another mission. Is that -- is that right?

MILES O'BRIEN: Well, the space station was built by the shuttle, largely. And the shuttle was designed to service and maintain a space station.
So, in a perfect world, you would like to have a space shuttle as long as you have a space station. Now, the space station is now built. We're just now beginning to get some sense of what its scientific capability might be, and the shuttle goes away. So, how do we maintain that?
Now, there's a lot of smart engineers in Houston and in other places that have been spending a lot of time thinking about this. And this past mission was all about getting as much stuff, just stuffing that Atlantis to the gills with food and other things, anticipating problems that, you know, uniquely, the shuttle could help as the station goes down the line.
So as you can see the future is very vague. I am not exactly hopeful. The International Space Station will go forward but to what effort? The Europeans, the Japanese, and the Russians will apparently provide some leadership, but those entities are also experiencing economic problems, and what will be the motivation of any country to sink funds from already attenuated budgets toward efforts where the economic return is miniscule if not nil?

And perhaps there is a larger question here. With the rapid decline of the American Space activity (I did not realize Obama killed it!), the hesitancy to build skyscrapers, the withdrawal from nuclear energy production in Japan and Germany, can the golden age of engineering have come to a close? Will we look back in a decade or two and say it ended here? I’m sorry, these idiotic wind mills generating a paltry trickle of electricity (and I’m sure is a passing fad) will not inspire.
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  1. OrphanPip's Avatar
    5-6ish years ago I attended a lecture by the former NASA director of the MARS Rover program and he wasn't hopeful about the future of NASA even that far back. On top of that he thought Bush's plans for NASA were misguided and set without consultation with NASA.

    Sadly, NASA has been a dying institution for probably a decade or two.
  2. Cunninglinguist's Avatar
    It seems like much of NASA (or just "the space race") was principally fueled by competition with Russia (after all, nothing very useful, in a scientific sense, came out of landing on the moon) ... and the cold war did end some two decades ago.

    At any rate, I watched the landing on the tele live (on BBC), and I can't say that I was even remotely awestruck by the particular spectacle. The technology is amazing, certainly. But I don't think it would be appropriate to be affected by what symbolized the end of a very remarkable enterprise, and the passing of an era. Also, the BBC commentator remarked a number of times that "once the wheels stopped rolling, about 4000 people would be losing their jobs," which put the whole thing into a rather ironic light for me.

    America is certainly losing global dominance, ranked 17th in education, and now having to depend on the Russians to get into space. What happened?
  3. Virgil's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by OrphanPip
    5-6ish years ago I attended a lecture by the former NASA director of the MARS Rover program and he wasn't hopeful about the future of NASA even that far back. On top of that he thought Bush's plans for NASA were misguided and set without consultation with NASA.

    Sadly, NASA has been a dying institution for probably a decade or two.
    You're right about the NASA dying over the last two decades, which is part of the point I was making. The Shuttle program just didn't have a set goal or a real raison d'etre. More on that in my response to cunningliguist below.

    I looked up Bush's plan. It could be summarized as finishing the International Space Station and then by 2025 (which was 20 years from the policy speech) to get back to the moon and use that to get to Mars within 10 years. I don't know; that seems pretty reasonable to me. Time frame seems about right and what else is there? Anything more is way too ambitious and anything less is just another Shuttle program. Though there were critics, including Buzz Aldrin, Neal Armstrong appears to have been a strong supporter. Right now there is no space program, so I guess anything looks good.
  4. OrphanPip's Avatar
    NASA has been at the cutting edge of engineering research. It's a loss to the scientific community at large to see it lose funding. People don't appreciate the scope and reach of NASA's research. At McGill I had the pleasure of encountering a handful of NASA affiliated scientist who worked in fields as diverse as geology and microbiology. They conduct biological research on extremophiles in the arctic. I met a guy who lived in Antarctica and did research on the subglacial lake ecosystems, the object of which was to understand how subglacial oceans could function in the moons of Jupiter.

    The institute has contributed to pretty much every branch of science imaginable and it would be a real shame to see it go. Particularly because institutions that do science largely for the sake of science are few and far between these days.

    Obama has at least increased science investment at the university level, which is more than I can say for the funding cuts we saw in Canada. No one appreciates the economic value of universities, private companies thrive off of them sort of parasitically. It's no coincidence that the American pharmaceutical industry is concentrated around Princeton and Harvard, while the Canadian is grouped around my alma mater McGill. These firms provide valuable high paying jobs that can't be done overseas, and they are attracted by the presence of educational and scientific infrastructure at major universities and institutes.
  5. Virgil's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Cunninglinguist
    It seems like much of NASA (or just "the space race") was principally fueled by competition with Russia (after all, nothing very useful, in a scientific sense, came out of landing on the moon) ... and the cold war did end some two decades ago.
    Yes, I agree, and that highlights the dilemma I've had as an adult all along with the space program. There is no reason but for the pure challenge and sense of exploration. The problem is that there are no market forces or national advantage which really prod the endeavor forward. Competition with the Russians seems like the only reason we really went to the moon. I really doubt that the Russians would have started their space program if it did not present a possible military advantage. Nor would we have countered with ours.

    At any rate, I watched the landing on the tele live (on BBC), and I can't say that I was even remotely awestruck by the particular spectacle. The technology is amazing, certainly. But I don't think it would be appropriate to be affected by what symbolized the end of a very remarkable enterprise, and the passing of an era. Also, the BBC commentator remarked a number of times that "once the wheels stopped rolling, about 4000 people would be losing their jobs," which put the whole thing into a rather ironic light for me.
    People losing their jobs is not that unusual for any engineering project, though that's high. When companies lose projects or operations, people lose jobs. Though I've been incredibly lucky not to, engineers and technicians losing their jobs is common. Hopefully there is another project for them to get hired to. 4000 may seem like a high number, but it's not unusual. I just saw in the papers today that Cisco cut 6500 jobs.

    America is certainly losing global dominance, ranked 17th in education, and now having to depend on the Russians to get into space. What happened?
    Well, we never were at the top in education scores. 17th is actually better than I thought. I keep advocating significant changes to our education system, but the teachers and their union fight it tooth and nail.

    Perhaps in recent years with our struggling economy we may have slipped a notch. These things come and go in cycles. Just ten to twelve years ago we had a balanced budget and a booming economy. In fact from 1983 to 2008 we had what someone characterized as the largest economic expansion of any 25 year sequence in the history of the world, and that included the Gilded Age of the 19th century and the roaring twenties. But nothing is as good as it is perceived to be and nothing is as bad as perceived. At the end of the 1990's with a booming economy and a balanced budget, hidden below the surface we had the dot com bubble and over inflated housing prices. And we had a terrorist menace that we were ignoring to engage. With the right structural changes, the fiscal problems we face now can be wiped out in five years if we really put our mind to it.

    The problem with maintaining global dominance today is that the upcoming countries have such low labor rates that even when we develop a new product, it makes economic sense to mass produce it in those countries with low labor costs, ie, Mexico, China, India, and the other far east countries. We're bleeding jobs to them. If we could hold our labor rates down, a little sacrifice all around, then we could better compete. Labor costs are more than double material costs on my work projects. But it's a tough sell to tell people they need to work for less. By the way, that also applies to European countries and Japan.

    As to global dominance, perhaps the US will decline in the next few years in the space industry. But look at the last twenty years of computer products, their software, the internet, GPS, satellite communications, and the medical industry, including drugs, equipment, and procedures, the US has been the dominant innovator. The reason is that there is a market for these things. People want these things and are willing to spend money on it, personal money, not the government's. There is no market for space exploration. Sure, as long as the amorphous notion of the government spending other people's money, people support it. Would I give a good portion of my paycheck to explore Mars? I don't think so. Would you? What for? So when politicians are faced with either cutting space exploration or people's social security (our pseudo government retirement system) checks, you better believe they will cut the space program. And I can't blame them. Still I believe we should be exploring space; at a minimum it builds a scientific/engineering infrastructure whose ingenuity spreads across other industries. The space program and its sister industry, military industrial complex, create a scientific support community that symbiotically assists other industries: fighter jets lead to commercial planes which lead to computers which lead to exotic materials which to artificial heart valves.
  6. Virgil's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by OrphanPip
    NASA has been at the cutting edge of engineering research. It's a loss to the scientific community at large to see it lose funding. People don't appreciate the scope and reach of NASA's research. At McGill I had the pleasure of encountering a handful of NASA affiliated scientist who worked in fields as diverse as geology and microbiology. They conduct biological research on extremophiles in the arctic. I met a guy who lived in Antarctica and did research on the subglacial lake ecosystems, the object of which was to understand how subglacial oceans could function in the moons of Jupiter.

    The institute has contributed to pretty much every branch of science imaginable and it would be a real shame to see it go. Particularly because institutions that do science largely for the sake of science are few and far between these days.

    Obama has at least increased science investment at the university level, which is more than I can say for the funding cuts we saw in Canada. No one appreciates the economic value of universities, private companies thrive off of them sort of parasitically. It's no coincidence that the American pharmaceutical industry is concentrated around Princeton and Harvard, while the Canadian is grouped around my alma mater McGill. These firms provide valuable high paying jobs that can't be done overseas, and they are attracted by the presence of educational and scientific infrastructure at major universities and institutes.
    LOL, I was writing similar in my response to cunningliguist as you were writing that.