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By Jerome Fenoglio

August 18, 2005

Original Article (French)    

One day, perhaps, the space shuttle will be tenable. In the distant future, technological progress will permit manned space vessels to break free of the Earth and return with the occupants without much concern or effort, as it is in science fiction movies.

Space Shuttle Columbia Disintegrates after Launch on January 16, 2003.

In the mean time, problems persist, as demonstrated by the return flight of Discovery from July 26 to August 9. And these problems can be dangerous, with passengers placed in a vehicle the components of which are likely to be damaged during launch. Despite all the improvements made over the two-and-half years since the disintegration of Columbia and the death of its seven crew members, a few chunks of insulation broke off [during liftoff], threatening the integrity of Discovery’s heat shield.

Admittedly it was much improved compared to previous missions, as was shown by the excellent condition of the vehicle after landing. All of which leads us to this paradox: undoubtedly the shuttle was never before as reliable, and never before created so much fear.

In the second instance, they have aggravated their problems, as the cost of attaining an impossible level of reliability has risen exponentially. The expenditures necessary for the unceasing engineering changes have added even more expense to an already burgeoning launch budget (estimated between $500 million and $1 billion). Thus, the safety measures taken for the return to flight will have cost NASA $1.4 billion. And still, it is not enough.

The American space agency will again have to resign itself to financial sacrifice if it wants to restart the spacecraft, which are once again nailed to the ground, and track the anomalies that appear during the 15-day shuttle missions.

Shuttle Replacement? ARIANE Rocket Takes Flight

For a long time now, these overhead costs have abolished any hope of seeing the space-plane supplant traditional, non-reusable launch vehicles like the European ARIANE rocket, which successfully placed into orbit the world’s largest communications satellite on Thursday August 11.

The shuttle suffers from the handicap of being a mixture of two species. The use of a single vessel to transport men and material was supposed to reduce risks and costs, but instead it has multiplied them. Flights that carry crews require greater precautions, don’t easily accomodate satellites or other objects and consume much more power. The latest Discovery mission was a good illustration of the problem.

Centered around a safe return from orbit, the shuttle did not dare carry a load heavier than the Italian module destined for the International Space Station (ISS) and a return load of trash. This is what has allowed the shuttle’s detractors to mock the two week trip devoted to emptying the the ISS garbage bins.

With the station, the shuttle also shares the error of depending on manned space flight to orbit the Earth. After the euphoria of the lunar landing, the shuttle and the ISS were justified as the best means for man to remain in space. However, the ISS, its industrial benefits fading and its scientific usefulness still dubious (Le Monde, July 27), never managed to impassion the crowds.

Astronaut Story Musgrave Repairs Hubble in 1993

Symbolically, the highest point of the shuttle program will remain its mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope, which can see deeper into remote space than we ever dreamed possible and has greatly expanded human knowledge. During the first-ever repair in orbit [photo on right] carried out by Discovery in 1993, Hubble was plucked from its orbit and in spectacular form, the near-sighted telescope had its vision restored.

NASA, in deciding on Wednesday August 3 to go ahead with a low-risk operation with so much at stake [the spacewalk to repair the heat shield on the shuttle’s belly], wanted the shuttle to return to earth to public acclaim. But with the capacity to fix only its immediate problem in low Earth orbit, in the end the entire mission appeared short-sighted.

THE DILEMMA OF NASA

Concorde - Ahead of its Time - But a Bit Loud

Like the Concorde, this superb flying machine is handicapped by being ahead of its time conceptually, but behind technologically. The shuttle must therefore admit its wrongs for having been built too soon. The supersonic Concorde, with 30-year service life (1981 to 2010, if circumstances had allowed it to reach its official retirement date) shares with the shuttle its technological audacity. The shuttle’s demise will appear all the more brutal as it is replaced with "high-tech" rockets with the retro designs of the Apollo era.

But at the top of the agenda is planning for expeditions to the Moon and Mars, the itinerary tendered by George Bush to NASA’s new administrator, Michael Griffin, who has never appreciated and in fact has opposed all the principles upon which the shuttle was based.

In the future of manned space flight, the men will be placed above everything else, in every sense of the expression: they will sit at the top of the rocket and thus out of reach of the debris during launch. The transport of material and passengers will be strictly separated, and the astronauts will return in a capsule, the only fragment of the original vessel to return to earth.

But while they wait, as one American newspaper commented recently, with its shuttle NASA is confronted with the well-known dilemma faced by the owners of broken-down old cars: to pay for repairs or get rid of it immediately?

The U.S. Space Shuttle; the Oddly Familiar-Looking Soviet Bouran; The European [French, mostly] Hermes

Increasingly, voices on the other side of the Atlantic are pleading for the latter solution. NASA’s international partners await the answer, holding in their pockets the intergovernmental agreement that obliges the Americans to finish construction of the ISS, to which Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavor are essential. But although they have their rights, these agencies are also well aware of their own share of the blame for the shuttle’s faults.

Several have utterly failed in attempting to successfully launch their own space planes [see photos above]. The Bourane was Russia’s first prototype. The Europeans long dreamed of their Hermès project. Only budgetary constraints arrested the project. Whatever the case, when they signed the ISS founding agreement, all made themselves dependent on the American machine.

CHINA IN SPACE

And we can all see the arrival today of new powers, like India and especially China, which have wasted no time or money on outdated space planes. In 2003, China became the third nation to launch a successful manned flight, and it is at the point of launching its second.

Shortly after the return of Discovery, showing their disdain for the Americans, the Chinese let it be known that they wish to launch an observation satellite into orbit around the Moon in 2007, as the first stage of their plan to colonize our nearest planetary satellite.

China's First Manned Flight, and its First 'Tikonaut,' Lt. Col. Yang Liwei - Back on the Ground in Front of His Ship at Gobi Desert Landing Site

And NASA is not the only one in a delicate situation today. The European space Agency, to name only one, faces important strategic decisions. Is it necessary to follow the Americans to the Moon? Should it aim directly for Mars by developing its own know-how? Should it pursue exploration exclusively with [unmanned] probes?

These questions will have to be settled by European ministers at the time of an anxiously-awaited council in Berlin, in December. By then they will have the new construction schedule for the ISS, which will be decided as of September by NASA with its partners. The four next months will be crucial if the conquerors of space are to avoid mistakes that will haunt them for the next 30 years.