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Hi
It has taken NASA a long time to admit that the Shuttle and the ISS were a mistake. But don’t blame NASA; politic had a lot to do with it. During the 60’s and early 70’s NASA had a goal, set out by JFK to land a man on the moon. They achieved this goal, not only once, but six times, all done with slide rules and the computing power of a digital watch. Since then, each preceding US Government lacked any vision for manned space exploration and considered going back to the Moon or landing on Mars a waste of money (remember it was the Cold War and military hardware was important, remember Ragan’s StarWar program). All NASA could offer was the Shuttle (approved by Nixon) and the ISS (I think it was approved by Ragan).
The development of the Shuttle, due to the U.S government budget restrictions was restricted to $5150 million (we are talking about the late 60’s early 70’s $ here). To keep in within the budget, expendable hardware substitutions had to be made to save the project. NASA considered several compromises. One was an expendable, external propellant tank (the foam covering the tank caused the destruction of the Columbia). Further development cost reduction were achieved by eliminating the fly-back Booster vehicle and substituting booster rockets, and solid-propellant boosters were cheaper than those employing liquid fuels (another seven astronauts killed when Challenge exploded just after launch).
When these compromised were adopted at the end of the 1971, the Shuttle Transportation System emerged in its final phase as a rocket-boosted glider. For a while the Orbiter retained turbojet engines to give it a go-around capability to ensure safe landing. Eventually, these engines came off, and here is a kicker, the crew launch escape system was also scraped.
For the last thirty years NASA has been handicapped by a lack of vision and lack of money. I hope with this new vision of returning to the moon, the US Government will stay the distance.
Anthony
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