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[REPRINT from News-Journal Daytona Beach, FL ]
By CHRIS VUILLE
Community Voices
The space shuttle
is a metaphor for NASA over the past three decades: endlessly circling
the Earth on a mission to nowhere. Some believe the shuttle was
excellent as a concept and that problems arose only later. In fact, the
shuttle was a policy and technical failure long before its maiden
flight.
The space shuttle can put a payload of 30 metric tons into low Earth
orbit. Before the shuttle, America's primary launch vehicle was the
Saturn V system, capable of sending 120 metric tons into low Earth orbit
and 50 tons to the moon. Sky Lab, half the size of the international
space station, required a single Saturn V launch, while completing the
space station will take numerous shuttle launches. Even 20 years ago,
the cost for a Saturn V launch and a shuttle launch were comparable in
constant dollars; now, a shuttle launch costs far more.
And the Saturn
never failed. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that America
traded a reliable system for an unproven system with less potential.
The Apollo
program was a Democratic initiative, so when Nixon won the presidency,
he had little interest in keeping it going. As a result, the space
program lost the Saturn, and funding for space dropped to such a low
level that design of the shuttle was compromised. There was a proposal
for a strap-on rocket booster made of a single casing, but the less
expensive segmented casing was chosen, with the infamous O-rings that
led to the Challenger disaster. Werner Von Braun and others advocated a
design with an astronaut escape system, but this feature wasn't
included. Continuance of the Apollo program, with the planned upgrading
of the already powerful Saturn V vehicle, could have led to science
stations on the moon and missions to Mars, all with funding levels
comparable to what has been spent on the space shuttle.
The shuttle
program, despite its failures, has been supported for three decades by
the inertia of special interests. Its budget has siphoned funds from the
unmanned space program, to the detriment of both. The gutting of the
unmanned program weakened America's pool of talented space scientists,
an important contributing factor in NASA's decline. By shutting down the
costly shuttle system now, NASA could put its resources into much
cheaper unmanned missions and recover that talent.
Systems using new
technology, like the nuclear thermal engines first successfully tested
45 years ago, should be developed and implemented before manned missions
continue. Meanwhile, the space station could be serviced with less
expensive Russian boosters. Space-faring nations should cooperate in
making space exploration a truly international venture.
The space
program, despite its failures, has been a gigantic boon to humanity. The
communications and weather satellites alone justify every dime ever
spent on space, but the benefits stretch far beyond, to the survival of
the human species. Asteroid impacts large enough to cause massive
extinction events happen only on a scale of tens of millions of years,
but many scientists now believe that smaller impacts causing widespread
destruction may occur every few thousand years. A cometary fragment that
struck Siberia in 1908 annihilated sixty square miles and would have
killed millions had it hit Europe. A small asteroid hitting the Pacific
Ocean would create enormous tsunamis, wiping out the Pacific rim in a
catastrophe dwarfing what recently transpired in the Indian Ocean.
Several near collisions with such asteroids have been recorded in recent
years. In the long term, a strong presence in space is crucial to
safeguarding humanity.
America needs a
better educated public and ambitious, well-defined goals. Improved
education will create new visionaries for service in government and in
our corporations. America was made great not by going in circles using
flawed, outmoded technology, but by reaching for the unknown. There are
worlds and the future to be won, and these victories of discovery will
make life better on Earth. Tough decisions need to be made, and we are
three decades past due making them.
Vuille is an associate professor of
physics at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and co-author of a
leading college physics textbook...
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