An open letter to the American public:

The Columbia tragedy has affected all of us who grew up on the promise and hope of the Space Age. Our response has been a mix of idealism and cynicism, of doubt and faith. We understand that we would do the brave dead a great disservice if we did not examine ourselves and the ideas for which they sacrificed themselves. So let us examine, with as critical an eye as need be, what the space program promised us, what it has delivered, and what our other options may be.

I was only six years old when Columbia first launched in 1981. I remember Walter Cronkite talking about the dawning new day of spaceflight Columbia heralded, and the new vistas we would explore. It was a grand dream, a dream I spent my childhood believing. There is only one problem with it: it is untrue.

The original conception of the Shuttle was grand: a versatile “space truck” capable of servicing everything from low Earth orbit (roughly five hundred miles) to geosynchronous orbit (roughly 22,000 miles) to the Moon (roughly 250,000 miles) and everything in between. We—the American public—were promised a reusable spacecraft which could be launched 26 times a year, would be cheap enough for us to build ten of them, would be safe enough for tourism, and the total cost to put a pound of material into orbit would be under one hundred dollars.

Those were the promises. Let’s look at the reality.

• The Shuttle is not a “space truck”.

  It’s more of a space Chevy pickup. When I think of trucks, I think of semis—things capable of carrying huge loads over long distances. The Saturn V rocket, the reliable workhorse of the Apollo program, could launch over 250,000 pounds to low Earth orbit or even put men on the moon. The Shuttle, by comparison, can only put 58,000 pounds into low Earth orbit and cannot reach higher orbits. Saturn V rockets made the 250,000—mile trip to the moon not once but several times, while the highest the Shuttle has ever gone is a meager 385 miles (335 nautical miles) during STS-82.

  In fact, the Shuttle is so sharply limited that it rarely deploys a satellite directly. Instead, the satellite is mounted to yet another rocket, carried to low orbit in the Shuttle cargo bay, and the second rocket then kicks it into proper orbit. I don’t understand the logic: we launch the Shuttle into orbit so we can have astronauts risk life and limb ... launching another rocket into orbit?

• The Shuttle is not reusable.

  Endeavour cost ($2.1 billion and each launch costs $450 million per mission. Most of that expense is taken up in refurbishing the Shuttle afterwards, where so much of the Shuttle is disassembled, inspected, replaced and reassembled that it’s fair to declare it “rebuilding” instead of “refurbishing”.

  More than this, not one single flight component of the Shuttle—not one!—has met its original flight rating. For example, the Shuttle’s main engines were originally rated for 27,000 seconds of thrust (about 55 flights). After that time, the engines would have to be replaced. This design goal has not been met. As Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman wrote in the official report on the Challenger disaster, “[t]he engine now requires very frequent maintenance and replacement of important parts, such as turbopumps, bearings, sheet metal housings, etc. … [t]his is at most ten percent of the original specification.” An engine with a life expectancy only a tenth what’s expected may be replaceable and may be disposable, but it’s not reusable.

• Twenty–six launches a year?

  Between maintenance, rebuilding and inspections, it’s not uncommon for a given shuttle to only go up once a year. In Columbia’s case, its final mission was its twenty—eighth flight in twenty—two years of service, and its second since 1999. We are nowhere near 26 launches per year per Shuttle; we aren’t even close.

• Cheap?

  Hardly. Each launch costs $450 million. Even if the fleet were capable of 26 launches per shuttle per year, there’s no way we could afford it. Instead of costing one hundred dollars to put a pound into orbit, it costs $7,750 ($450 million per flight, divided by 58,000 pounds of cargo). By comparison, the Saturn V rocket could put a pound into orbit for $3,500, and a Russian Proton–M for $2,062.

  If the official NASA line of $450 million per flight isn’t mind—boggling enough … try dividing the amount spent on the Space Shuttle from its conception through 1993 by the total number of flights over that time period. You get an amortized flight cost of over one billion dollars (“Space Shuttle Value Open to Interpretation”, Aviation Week Forum, July 26 1993).

• Ten vehicles?

  The first shuttles cost $1.7 billion. Endeavour cost $2.1 billion because production lines that had been shut down for twenty years had to be reactivated. These production lines simply do not exist anymore in many cases and would have to be rebuilt, bringing the price of a new shuttle to $4 billion. Presently we have three shuttles (Atlantis, Discovery and Endeavour). Does anyone think we have $28 billion lying around to bring us up to our original promised fleet strength?

• Safe enough for tourism?

  We’ve lost two shuttles and fourteen lives in one hundred and thirteen flights. Common sense tells us that if we’re losing one flight in fifty—seven, it’s not safe.

Comparisons between sts and unmanned rocketry

It is worthwhile to compare the Shuttle with the Proton–M rocket the Russians are currently using. The Proton–M carries a little less into orbit (48,500 pounds versus 58,000), but costs only $100 million apiece. A (disposable) Proton–M rocket costs less than a quarter as much as a (rebuildable) Shuttle flight, and carries five–sixths the weight. The Shuttle is slightly more reliable than the Proton–M, but the Proton–M has the significant benefit of being unmanned. If a Proton–M suffers a failure, the only people who get hurt are the insurance underwriters. When the Shuttle suffers a failure, seven lives are snuffed out and untold lives affected.

Why are we risking lives just to put satellites into orbit, when we can do the exact same task more cheaply, more efficiently, and with greater safety through unmanned rocket launches?

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