Homer Hickam, former NASA engineer and author of the book Rocket Boys, (which became the movie October Sky), wrote an op-ed in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal (link requires paid subscription) in which he described the shuttle program as America’s Viet Nam. Hickam takes issue with the CAIB report assertion that NASA’s flawed culture is to blame for the Columbia disaster:
I don't believe there's a NASA culture. There is, however, a Shuttle cult. It is practiced like a religion by space policy makers who simply cannot imagine an American space agency without the Shuttle. Well, I can, and it's a space agency which can actually fly people and cargoes into orbit without everybody involved being terrified of imminent destruction every time there's lift-off.
The problem, as he sees it, is the placement of the shuttle amid what he describes as " the turmoil of launch." The shuttle sits in a precarious position at launch, wedged between two solid rockets and strapped to a huge fuel tank which, as Challenger demonstrated, can explode like a massive bomb. Hickam attributes this flawed design to the mistaken belief that it would be cheaper to re-use the main shuttle rocket engine, so it needed to be a part of the orbiter.
That has not proved to be the case -- far from it -- but it has left us with a crew sitting in the most vulnerable position possible in terms of design. Simply put, had that spaceplane been on top of the stack, the destruction of Challenger and Columbia wouldn't have occurred. The CAIB ignored this flawed design and that makes their conclusions suspect: no amount of inspections or condemning another NASA generation to worry over this thing will solve it.
So let's get practical. We can't just shut the thing down. We need the Shuttle to finish the space station and also to keep the Russians and Chinese from dominating space. I'm not willing to see that occur while we dither. Human spaceflight is important to this country. But the Shuttle is as safe as you're going to get with what's in place today. Let's put some tough engineers in charge, fly it 10 more times over the next four years with hand-picked crews to finish the space station and meet our international obligations. Then close the program and replace it with expendable launchers and a shiny new spaceplane. And, this time, put it on top.
Rand Simberg has some interesting reflections on Hickam's ideas.
I wonder whether Hickam is suggesting building a whole new launch infrastructure. If NASA creates a new rocket to place our shiny new space plane in orbit, it will no doubt be smaller and less powerful than the current shuttle launch infrastructure. As Robert Zubrin has pointed out, this will mean the loss of launch capability that could send us to the moon or Mars.
I have a modest proposal. After Hickam’s final 10 shuttle launches, why don’t we plan on four more uses of that infrastructure? Using the shuttle launcher in an expendable configuration, it would take four launches to complete the first phase of the modified Mars Direct mission. Four launches could place a habitat, an ascent vehicle, a return vehicle, and a crew all in place. We would have a proof of concept mission to Mars and, if we approached it correctly, a roadmap for moving forward.
Clearly, this would involve a lot more work than just launching the rockets: someone would need to design and build the hab, the return vehicle, the ascent vehicle, and the Mars transport vehicle. Who would do it? I propose that our new space agency (or a new and improved NASA) take on that piece by administering a series of X-Prize type initiatives for private companies to design workable versions of those components. Even the re-purposing of the shuttle launch infrastructure could be accomplished by private entities. After those first four launches, we would take NASA (or its successor) completely out of the loop except for setting direction and awarding incentives. The space agency would exist only to push private space development along. The new space plane, the next space station, and the ongoing exploration of the solar system would belong almost completely to the private sector.
From there, all the private sector has to do is draw a line from winning NASA prize money to making real money from the settlement of Mars or other commercial exploitation of space. If they can somehow traverse that line (or, if you like, cross that T Relative boundary), the human settlement of space will take off fast.
Mars isn’t a necessary component of such a scenario. It’s one of many possible destinations. But it has a lot going for it. It’s resource-rich. It’s fairly close. It would be a good staging area for expeditions to the asteroids or to the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. And besides, as I have alluded to frequently during this week’s festivities, Mars has a hold on the popular imagination that no other destination in the solar system can match. A mission to Mars wouldn’t just be logical, it would be exciting. It would be fun. It might very well re-awaken the spirit that drove our ancestors to cross the Atlantic in dodgy sailing vessels or the Amrican continent in vulnerable covered wagons.
That, above all, is why I think we need to set our sites on the red planet.
Posted by Phil at August 30, 2003 12:29 PM | TrackBack