Doubt Replaces The Shuttle
By Wes Oleszewski
On April 14, 1981, after landing the first Space Shuttle,
Astronaut John Young spoke to the cheering crowd at Edwards AFB. In
his speech he said “I saw a newspaper headline that expressed
it way better than I could. It showed a Space Shuttle orbiter and
it said The Dream Is Alive Again. Let’s keep it that
way.” Just over 30 years later the Space Shuttle program and
that dream ended as the orbiter Atlantis landed at the Kennedy
Space Center in what the media repeatedly called a
“bitter-sweet moment.” My question is; "where’s
the sweet?"
The date of the Atlantis’ landing was July 21, 2011,
exactly one half of a century after Gus Grissom flew a Mercury
Redstone from Cape Canaveral on a sub-orbital flight. He flew that
sub-orbital mission because in 1961 the United States did not yet
have the capability to actually orbit a manned spacecraft. Fifty
years later to-the-day, with the wheels of the Atlantis coming to a
stop, the United States once again does not have the capability to
orbit a manned spacecraft. There is no man-rated launch vehicle in
production, no man-rated spacecraft in production and NASA has not
produced a firm plan for any such hardware in the future. Instead
all that we have are vaporous circle speeches about undefined
“path breaking and “game changing” technologies
and assurances from NASA administrators that the future is bright
and this is far from the end for NASA’s human spaceflight
program.
What is really represented by the end of the Space Shuttle
program is not a pinnacle of technical success, but rather a
failure of political leadership. It is a demonstration that our
so-called “leaders” in the 21st century have taken
their lessons not from John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, but from
Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter. Rather than leading us to a
challenging bright future of national excellence, they are
concerned only with leading us toward the ballot box and their own
re-election.
NASA Administrator Bolden
NASA’s administrative “leadership” has joined
in taking this pig and applying a heavy coat of lipstick. The man
who likely will go down in history as being the worst NASA
Administrator in history, Charlie Bolden, repeatedly appears in
front of Congress and in the media and assures that “This is
not the end of Americans flying in space.” and “We
still have a manned space program.” Indeed, Americans will be
flying to the International Space Station, by way of rented seats
on Russian rockets. It is time to tell the truth. That is NOT an
American manned space program. To settle that point, simply ask
yourself this question: Is space tourist (although she prefers the
term “participant”) Anousheh Ansari a country with her
own human spaceflight program? No? Well, she went to the ISS on a
rented seat aboard a Russian Soyuz. That’s exactly what the
United States will now be forced to do... except she paid about $40
million less for her seat than the United States will have to pay
for each of its. If we cannot call Ms. Ansari a nation with a human
spaceflight program, than we cannot call the United States a nation
with a human spaceflight program. Additionally, Administrator
Bolden has continually overseen and perhaps directed the
foot-dragging by NASA that is obstructing the development of the
Shuttle replacement vehicle- the Space Launch System, or SLS.
Directed by law to immediately begin and expedite the SLS back in
2010, NASA’s Administrators are now nearly 10 months behind
on the program. This has forced to Congress to go as far as to
threaten to open an investigation into the administrator’s
foot-dragging. No other NASA administrator has been openly
threatened by Congress with such an investigation. Of course
Charlie probably does not care much about such issues. He is
often away on overseas junkets as his agency fall into ruin.
Charlie Bolden, it should be noted, serves “At the
pleasure of the President.” And Bolden himself recently
testified in front of Congress that his president is one of the
most engaged and interested presidents in history when it comes to
spaceflight. Then he cited President Obama’s visit to KSC for
the STS-134 launch when he toured the space center with his family.
Indeed, the only President who spent a similar amount of time
appearing in front of space hardware was Richard Nixon- who, by the
way, at the same time was working hard behind the scenes to cancel
the ENTIRE manned space program. History alone will tell us what
this president is doing behind the scenes while at the same time
posing in front of space hardware. Currently, as evidenced by his
last two budget proposals, President Obama appears to be working
very hard to gut NASA’s human spaceflight program. Each
proposal sought to funnel most of the human spaceflight dollars to
“commercial” operators and his 2011 proposal canceled
the vehicles that were to replace the shuttle while he also
canceled our return to the moon.
Yet we are told that there is always “commercial”
spaceflight to bail us out… right? Well, that is where Obama
proposes that we spend our funds. Although I am all for SpaceX, and
the other “commercial” space start-ups, it is about
time we knock down to political facade of “commercial”
that is being used to prop-up a few companies that are
Obama-approved to do spaceflight. The best filter here is to look
through is Project Gemini. The Titan II booster was built by
Martin, a “commercial” company. The Gemini spacecraft
was built by McDonnell Aircraft Corp., a “commercial”
company. Many other components were made by other private
“commercial” contractors and the entire program was run
by NASA. Government funds along with investments by those companies
made Gemini happen. This is the same basic formula that is being
applied to the Obama approved “commercial operators such as
SpaceX and Orbital. Yet, the SLS is not considered as
“commercial” by Obama even though the Orion spacecraft
is being made by Lockheed-Martin, the core tank is being made by
Boeing and the SRBs are made by ATK- all being private
“commercial” companies. The difference? These companies
are apparently not Obama approved for taking us into the future of
spaceflight. So the production of the SLS is being delayed and
stalled by, not only NASA’s upper administrators, but by the
Office of Management and Budget (OMB) which operates exclusively at
the direction of the office of the President.
Gemini Launch
There is no real need to end the Shuttle program at all. In
fact, the “retirement” and replacement of the Shuttle
architecture was a recommendation made by the Columbia Accident
Investigation Board in the wake of the STS-107 accident. For the
Bush administration it became a handy, politically acceptable
knee-jerk reaction to the accident. Additionally, it was supported
in the public eye by some commonly held myths about the Shuttle.
First, the Shuttle is too dangerous to continue to fly because in
the event of a catastrophic failure on takeoff- because it has no
escape system. Indeed, it has no escape system to can be used in
such a catastrophic failure. Neither does ANY modern jet airliner
or corporate jet- yet we do not see them as too dangerous to fly.
Next, the Shuttle system as a whole is simply dangerous. Yes ...
IT’S A ROCKET that flies into space! Of course it’s
dangerous overall. Now, however, the Shuttles will be totally safe
forever ... as museum pieces. Additionally, the SRBs are dangerous
to operate. To date, the SRBs have made 270 flight cycles with only
one failure, which was caused when management elected to fly the
unit outside of its operational flight envelope. Also, the Shuttle
has an unacceptable loss rate. In fact, when the Shuttle was
originally proposed the Loss Of Crew (LOC) rate was calculated at
2%. With the end of the 135th flight, there have been two losses-
that is a rate under the original prediction of 2%. Finally,
Charlie Bolden himself said, in front of Congress, that every time
NASA launched a Shuttle it was playing Russian roulette. This was a
slap in the face to all of the hundreds of people who worked
meticulously to ensure that every time the Shuttle played that game
that Charlie called Russian roulette, there were no bullets in the
gun.
So here we are, left with no flying space hardware, with the
standing army of spaceflight professionals devastated by lay-offs
as the shuttle replacement architecture is being held hostage by
political brats and we have no choice other than paying whatever
price the Russians wish to charge us in order to get to the space
station that we paid $100 billion to build. Meanwhile our best hope
depends on so-called “commercial” operators who have
yet to fly a single man-rated vehicle. Meanwhile our so-called
“leaders” seem to believe that simply talking about
doing fantastic things is just as good as actually accomplishing
them. As of the wheels-stop of the Atlantis and the end of the
STS-135 mission, we are left with nothing more to do other than to
look back at exciting videos of what we once accomplished in space
and say “The dream WAS alive.”