What We Lose With the End of the Shuttle Program | Hacker News Reader

What We Lose With the End of the Shuttle Program

spectrum.ieee.org

71 pointsnaish71 comments

Interesting points from Prof. Brian Cox:

  * NASA costs less than 0.13% of  GDP 
    and provides 9x return on investment

  * The entire Shuttle Program cost approximately 
    the same as the UK bank bailout

  * The Iraq conflict so far has cost significantly 
    more than a manned mission to Mars

Source:

https://twitter.com/profbriancox/status/88955884390195202

https://twitter.com/profbriancox/status/88956654539902976

https://twitter.com/profbriancox/status/88957802281840640

I wonder how he comes to the conclusion of 9x return. I think that we ought to invest in dragons instead and that they would bring returns in orders of magnitude greater than any space program, plus they live longer.

Source: http://blog.mises.org/6512/socialist-calculation-versus-magi...

Downvoted for referring mises.org.

Your link isn't even about NASA, it's just an ideological discussion (and not a particularly coherent one). For reference, here's a list of NASA spin-offs:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spin-off

It's not hard to see the multiplier effect of our investment in NASA.

Like I said in another related post, the Ludwig von Mises Institute is not the place you go for coherent discussions. The sooner we drop it as a source of discussion arguments, the better.

The 9x return is nonetheless unsourced and likely to be the results of some fuzzy accounting.

I nearly vomitted when I read this story on NPR saying that we've spent more on air conditioning in the Afghan war -- around 20 billion -- than NASA's yearly budget.

Fucking politicians.

http://www.npr.org/2011/06/25/137414737/among-the-costs-of-w...

Edit: I understand that the 20 billion figure includes the cost of infrastructure needed to put that air conditioning in place -- fuel for transport, roads that will be unmaintained or actively destroyed soon after the U.S. leaves, etc. Each piece is more frustrating than the last.

Yes, when you pour money down the money hole, you do tend to get a few things in return. My real question, which we'll see answered hopefully over the next few years, isn't "Were the capabilities we got with the shuttle cool?" but "Was the shuttle a cost-effective way to obtain those capabilities?"

And it's really hard to look at the Shuttle program and say yes.

In general, we really need to get over whining about what we could have if only we could spend money we don't have.

>we really need to get over whining about what we could have if only we could spend money we don't have.

I don't think it could be said any better. What we do have now is a privatized space race which is priceless.

And it's really hard to look at the Shuttle program and say yes.

How effective/efficient would a tax-payer supported version of Xerox PARC or the Golden Age Bell Labs be?

Something more pleasant than DARPA, for example.

What is your problem with DARPA?

It has a military focus. I'd like to see devlopment with a broader scope. Like how to teach more people to read. Or farming.

In the US, USDA funds a lot of farming research and DoE has its own labs for energy research.

Military and Space seem to have a lot of civilian offshoots. Probably because of focus and demanding environments / specs.

Fair enough, but keep in mind that DARPA did bring us the internet...

Funny thing about that. Bob Taylor ran ARPA and then Xerox PARC. May be that he was his own golden age.

Nothing funny about it. The analogy is good. Garrett Reisman, astronaut, joins SpaceX:

http://www.spacex.com/press.php?page=20110304

The time of NASA-monopoly (DARPA) is fading, and the time of commercial space (Xerox PARC/Bell Labs) is just beginning. But it really shouldn't be anything for anyone should get worked up over--Xerox PARC/Bell Labs ushered in golden age of innovation and wealth creation, and DARPA still exists and still does amazing things.

You can't compare it this way. Xerox Parc and DARPA are research organizations.

NASA is a research and development organization. they products that are used in real life.

Usually development and deployment cost much more than pure research.

I'm more horrified they canceled the James Webb telescope (or are just about to).

Holy shit! This just happened:

http://appropriations.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?Doc...

  $4.5 billion for NASA Science programs, which is $431 million 
  below last year’s level. The bill also terminates funding for 
  the James Webb Space Telescope, which is billions of dollars 
  over budget and plagued by poor management.

Yep, especially shitty since the project is so far along.

It needs to be said that JWST isn't primarily over-budget because of technical problems, but because they didn't do realistic cost and time estimates in the first place. Overall, the project has suffered very few technical surprises.

So what does this mean? We just shit can it?

Or it sits on a shelf for a couple years or what? If we want to save money, shouldn't we kill something before we start it?

Projects of this complexity are difficult to mothball, and the costs of restarting are very high. We've seen that with the F-22 fighter.

What we really need are politicians who can grasp the ROI of basic science (which is what I believe the JWST is) and have the will to prioritize it.

Sadly, politicians with both brains and courage are a rare breed.

You say that like politicians with either brains or courage is somehow not rare.

Thanks for that link.

People should know that there's a lot of turmoil in the astrophysics community about JWST. In current plans, JWST overruns have resulted in elimination or long-term postponement of all other NASA astrophysics missions in the next decade. Even non-flight-project research is being cut significantly.

I am utterly incapable of intelligently commenting on the cost effectiveness of this telescope, but I will note that all of NASA's current money problems could be solved by allocating it just a tiny fraction of what we instead wasted in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I'm sorry to keep talking about these fucking wars, but it really does make me want to cry.

Expanding NASA's budget by 2x or even 10x would not solve its problems. Parkinson's Law is as applicable to NASA as to any other organization. JWST and the other missions will overrun any amount of time and budget allocated to them.

I had that thought as I was writing the comment, which is why I added the word "current". But you're probably right to a large degree, and my only answer is that, to the extent that larger budgets don't decrease NASA'a fiscal discipline, the investment is better made there.

The Shuttle fails in its primary objective, that of being a "reusable" vehicle. I attended a presentation by a NASA employee that explained the Shuttle process from landing to launch, and I was amazed at how much of the craft is replaced. I think we would have been far better off extending the Apollo program to new missions, similar to the Soyuz (which is still flying although much improved from the moon landing era).

The shuttle was the worst of both worlds. They replace enough parts to make each mission absurdly expensive, and keep enough components in place that it's extremely difficult to be sure they won't fail in flight.

The Shuttle is inspiring, and compared to nothing it looks excellent. But on the whole it is not a good system. It has unique capabilities that it uses extremely rarely or not at all (such as the cross-range flight ability) but which impose tremendous compromises on the system's cost, reliability, and safety.

All of this added up to the system falling far, far short of its design goals in payload cost and flight rate, by nearly 2 orders of magnitude. By any sound measure the Shuttle is a failed experiment that was left to run, and bleed NASA budgets dry, for far too long. On the whole each Shuttle mission cost $1.6 billion dollars.

The alternative to not building the Shuttle was continuing with what we had before, which even at a reduced budget compared to the Shuttle would have resulted in larger space stations, moon bases, and perhaps manned Mars missions. The alternative now to not continuing the Shuttle is relying on commercial launch providers as the base of manned spaceflight, which looks to be both cheaper and more capable than the Shuttle.

The shuttle mission, which was to provide a safe, reusable, cheap spaceflight platform, failed on two of the three goals. It was reusable, but not cheap, and not safe. We need a better LEO platform, not more shuttle missions.

3 of 3. The Shuttle is not reusable, it is at best refurbishable. In between launches the SRBs and the ET have to be replaced and the orbiter itself has to be processed including replacement of its main engines, draining of all consumables, and extensive inspection of each one of the thousands of thermal protective tiles. All in all the process takes months. This is not reusability in any meaningful sense of the word, it borders on a complete overhaul of the vehicle. Imagine if on landing a 747 it had to be drained of fuel, the engines replaced, the center fuel tank replaced.

This is a major factor in why it is so expensive to operate the Shuttles. They are not truly reusable, and the refurbishment in between launches takes so long and requires such an extensive permanent staff and facilities that the per-launch cost is astronomical. If the Orbiters were truly reusable then they could easily quadruple or more the number of flights per year for little increased total cost.

7. Dead astronauts.

The space shuttle was a bad idea and dangerous from the start. Bring on the robots!

Going outside was a bad idea and dangerous from the start. Bring on the pizza delivery and cable TV!

See, that ain't no way to run a civilization. Without taking (calculated) risks, we're nothing.

Except those risks must be evaluated against the reward. In this present day and age, what exactly do we gain from using humans instead of robots in space that justifies their expense?

The fact that humans can do so many things that robots cannot yet do. Look at it the other way: what is the most robust and fault tolerant adaptive machine with the best motor skills, the best perception system, and quick decision making system that we have available? There are some tasks that robots are better at, but as a general purpose machine humans are still the best. A robot tumbles over or gets stuck behind a stone, and you've just lost your multi billion dollar project.

Humans are not "robust adaptive machines" in a space environment -- airless, zero-g, cosmic radiation.

It's not an either / or deal.

Automation is good for rote tasks. People are good at improvising.

During the mission to correct Hubble's lens problem, the supplied tools and procedure failed. The mission specialist utilized scissors and a plastic cover from a log book to correct the problem.

Without that improvisation, the mission to fix Hubble's lens would have been a loss.

What we gain from having people in space depends on what you want to _do_ in space.

If it's all just drones mapping planets and space telescopes then investing in automation makes sense.

If it's manufacturing, settlement, getting some of our eggs out of this basket, then we need people out there, learning how to live off-planet.

The expense in either case, might possibly be the same.

Automation isn't cheap, missions that have to be redone because the automation fails are costly.

It may not be exactly either/or, but budget constraints coupled with the astronomical cost of using humans in space makes it nearly so.

I think the example of Hubble actually works in my favor on this point. Hubble is a relic of an old technological age. Earth-based telescopes surpassed Hubble's capabilities not too long after it was launched, and have now pretty much left it in the dust. At a fraction of the cost.

Hubble's replacement (James Webb) is quite a leap ahead, and as an IR scope it really does need to be in space, unlike Hubble. But you'll note that its location will be off-limits to humans, and it is accordingly designed to be remotely maintained.

In short, the age of low-earth-orbit, high-maintenance space telescopes is, and should be, over. I argue that other space-based platforms that require human intervention should likewise be curtailed for similar reasons.

>"Automation isn't cheap, missions that have to be redone because the automation fails are costly."

It is still orders of magnitude cheaper than sending people, and the cost of a "failed" space endeavour with people on board is infinitely greater. In cases where it's not currently feasible to use robots, it would be worth our while to wait until it is, instead of trying to use humans now.

I feel that Mars is another example in my favor. Cost estimates for sending humans to Mars are so high and so speculative that they're essentially useless outside of the insight that we cannot afford it. Compare that with the cost of robotic exploration, which is both quite affordable and spectacularly successful so far.

The reward of human exploration is impossible to quantify. You may as well ask what is the risk reward for basic research, philosophy, religion, or art.

I agree, except for the fact that in the field of space exploration humans can now be largely substituted by machines, and will be more so as our machines advance.

Philosophy and art do indeed require lots of human intervention. Thankfully, they are cheap, as is much of the basic science research that we should be prioritizing ahead of, say, super sexy space stations.

But if we do just robotic exploration, we miss out on the unintended side effects of putting people in space.

Kidney dialysis machines for example. And basic research on bone loss which has been a huge help for Osteoperosis patients.

I think the issue here isn't that we know that putting humans in space is expensive, it is, in time as well as resources. I think the issue is that if we don't put humans in space we'll never know what advances we could have made by doing it.

Granted, but I'm not sure that the progress that can be attributed specifically to the presence of humans in space has been worth the expense.

Your two examples are instructive. I guarantee you that these medical advances would have been made in the absence of a space program. It's not a matter of if, but when. The best that be said about the scientific contribution of human bodies in orbit is that it has provided some acceleration of progress -- I know of no evidence to the contrary.

The crucial question is, what are we willing to pay for that acceleration?

For my part, I feel that space robots supplement the exploration efforts, but are a poor substitute.

The gain is, actually, putting humans in the space. It's an arbitrary objective that you (or me) may not share, but it seems to be the primary objective. Other gains usually don't outweigh the costs, but are useful at marketing the idea to bot people. They lower the perceived-by-bot-people loss, to the point where the loss may be accepted as the cost for winning the human-people.

As far as I am concerned, I want human uploads in space. Durr.

Interesting point. So is your user name, given the discussion :)

see the article i just posted from 1980 by Gregg Easterbrook on this theme - If you are a critical thinker and haven't read his posts on the shuttle, you should...

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2738448

Not to sound insensitive but 134 flights and 2 accidents is a good enough record. I for one would have volunteered to go, if I was presented with these odds. Robots can't do everything.

If STS-135 doesn't catch fire, then that's a 1.48% mortality rate.

The risk is worth it, if the mission actually does something. Most of the shuttle missions were just jerking off in orbit or hauling stuff to the space station.

The shuttle program was an unmitigated disaster that set back space exploration a generation. By trying to build a "reusable" space plane we ended up with the most complex machine ever built-- and complexity is dangerous-- that does nothing especially well.

Shuttle does one thing very well: it's a gorgeous sight watching her lift off. And seeing her glide to a landing is like poetry.

Too complex, too expensive, not best at any one thing.

But a sight to see.

The idea of Shuttle was good.

The execution was flawed.

The shuttle reminds me of one of those awful software development projects which start with clear, simple goals, until all the "stakeholders" start wanting their pet feature and need to be appeased because they will bring more money to the table, and you end up with a bloated, over-engineered mess.

As I remember, it was supposed to be two vehicles: a people-mover and a "space truck". Budget cuts and general human stupidity turned the project into a single, crappy vehicle.

Wings!

Shuttle had wings thanks to the Air Force joining the project, then the Air Force dropped out, but Shuttle still had wings.

Of all the problems with Shuttle the wings bother me the most.

aka just about every government project ever.

Or at least in the last forty years.

Good example of when governments got the job done (P51 Mustang):

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/North_America...

First prototype completed 100 days after the contract signed. In contrast it took decades to build the Eurofighter. Granted a more complex aircraft, but they didn't have CAD back then either.

Mustang vs Eurofighter isn't really a fair comparison in a number of ways.

The most important, I think, is that Mustang wasn't a government project, but one designed and built by a private company to meet an existing wartime need.

Eurofighter by contrast was a government job start to finish, built by three companies in three countries. Starting with a DNA like that delays and cost overruns are baked into the process.

The space shuttle is (was?) a test vehicle. Do you know how many test pilots die each year? Actually I don't know either, but I know it's a lot higher than the number of astronauts.

Before anyone jumps on me, I'm absolutely not saying those lives are not valuable. Of course they are, I regret their loss, and I wish that those accidents did not happen. But pushing the envelope is a risky business, and every astronaut knows the odds but gets in the capsule/cockpit anyway. Because if we are not losing lives now and then for reasons unknowable at that time, then we are no longer pushing the envelope and that would be cause for concern.

NASA has been screwed since someone made the decision that we needed to land on the Moon by the end of the 60's. We didn't build the infrastructure to go and stay in space. Being first should never have been a goal. Being there to stay should have been.

We lose a lot. We gain incentive to go out into space privately and commercialize spaceflight.

Is living in a Futurama-esque commercialization of space worth it?

I believe so, yes. Bring on the frontier!

Aren't some of these things possible with the X-37B?

Some, with limitations to most of the retained capabilities. The X-37B is substantially smaller and is not manned. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37

1. Gentle delivery of large modules for attachment to existing complexes. - Probably lost, the main reason the shuttle is gentle is because it carries fragile humans.

2. Bringing cargo down gently. - Partially lost: the cargo bay is much smaller.

3. Safe "proximity operations." - Lost or at least made much more challenging.

4. Temporary deployment of a workbench in orbit for experiments, repairs, and other assembly. - Lost.

5. High-precision research orbits with specialized instrumentation. - Likely not lost.

6. Flexibility of crew composition. - Lost.

How many times did we actually need those capabilities?

edit:

> 1. Gentle delivery of large modules for attachment to existing complexes. - Probably lost, the main reason the shuttle is gentle is because it carries fragile humans.

I cannot imagine we don't have any launcher that can do that. Any launcher, when approaching its payload limit, should be very gentle (as in pull low G's). A Saturn V was much gentler than the SRBs in terms of vibration, BTW.

> 2. Bringing cargo down gently. - Partially lost: the cargo bay is much smaller.

How many times did we need that? We could keep one shuttle operational for that kind of mission or just build a bus-sized capsule that would go up empty and land on parachutes.

> 3. Safe "proximity operations." - Lost or at least made much more challenging.

I am not sure I see a scenario where we would need that. The arms attached to the station are adequate for manipulating objects close to it and capable of doing it very precisely. Automated cargo vehicles have been servicing space stations for decades.

> 4. Temporary deployment of a workbench in orbit for experiments, repairs, and other assembly. - Lost.

Do we really gain so much by bringing the workbench back? Why would "temporary" be an advantage here? Couldn't we just pack the supplies and leave the workbench there?

> 6. Flexibility of crew composition. - Lost.

We could have built a larger Apollo capable of launching 7 people. For a fraction of the price, most likely. If putting people in LEO were cheaper (a promise the shuttle never fulfilled) we would have far more diverse crews in space.

And all of that negates the fact the shuttle is useless for anything beyond LEO. And LEO is costly because we have to take everything with us.

When we did need it, we -needed- it. Hubble for example.

Perhaps, but Hubble's not a good example. As a visible-spectrum scope, there was no reason it really needed to be in orbit. Its resolution advantage was fairly quickly exceeded by earth-base scopes with much lower cost and much better longevity. In other words, keeping visible-spectrum telescopes on earth gives us a better return on our investment.

I'm sorry. I was not aware the Hubble launch and repair missions required a winged vehicle.

Wait, I'm sorry, I see what you mean. You're right; manned shuttle missions were the only way to keep Hubble from going to waste.

Perhaps, but what's the cost of "fuck it, we'll just build a replacement Hubble" in Shuttle mission equivalents?

Blame Nixon. Or OPEC.

Interesting that this is at the bottom; people who downvoted this probably don't know their NASA history...

(EDIT: for context, most of trouble NASA has gotten itself into stem from commitments made for political reasons to appease the Nixon administration and a Congress dealing with fallout from the OPEC oil embargo in '73--when Apollo was winding down and Shuttle revving up.)

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