鈥淚 THINK this was a wildly successful mission in so many ways,鈥� declared Bill Parsons, the head of the shuttle programme, after Discovery returned to Earth last week. Sure, nobody died, and the astronauts managed to make improvised repairs while in orbit. But this mission, billed as the 鈥渞eturn to flight鈥�, was supposed to prove that the shuttle fleet was once again fit for service. Instead, it is grounded yet again due to the failure to solve the safety issues.
Look at the bigger picture and things are even worse. When the shuttle was conceived in the 1960s, the idea was that reusable craft would cut the cost of space flight. By last year the cost of each shuttle flight had risen to a staggering $860 million. Proposals for the shuttle鈥檚 successor now envisage a return to Apollo-style capsules atop a rocket, an implicit admission that the entire concept was flawed from the start.
It would make sense to retire the shuttles now, five years early. NASA鈥檚 problem is that it needs them to complete the space station 鈥� which brings us to another sorry story. When Ronald Reagan announced the goal of building a space station in 1984, he envisaged it being built within a decade. It would, he proclaimed, 鈥減ermit quantum leaps in our research in science, communications, in metals, and in lifesaving medicines which could be manufactured only in space鈥�.
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But as the completion date for what became the International Space Station (ISS) recedes further into the future, the costs keep on ballooning, from the $8 billion initially billed to well over $100 billion today. To save money, plans for a top-notch space laboratory started to be scaled down well before orbital assembly began in 1998. The latest swingeing cuts were revealed earlier this year. Any scientific advances the station delivers are likely to be 鈥渜uantum leaps鈥� only in the sense of being extremely small.
鈥淎ny advances the space station delivers are likely to be 鈥榪uantum leaps鈥� only in the sense of being extremely small鈥�
NASA is pouring huge sums of money down the drain trying to keep a fundamentally flawed spacecraft flying for long enough to complete an astronomically expensive space station that will be capable of only a fraction of the research promised, the benefits of which were vastly over-hyped in the first place. The ISS has become an orbiting black hole, sucking in money and resources, and delivering next to nothing in return.
OK, manned space flight has often been more about showing off technological expertise and demonstrating a pioneering spirit than actual scientific gain. But isn鈥檛 the cold war over? Or is it all about impressing China now? And would China be impressed by the string of failures and budget overruns? US space policy has become reminiscent of the potlatch ceremonies in which chiefs of the Kwakiutl of Canada used to give away or even destroy their most precious possessions to demonstrate their wealth and superiority.
Furthermore, NASA is becoming embroiled in an even grander folly: President Bush鈥檚 vision of manned missions to the moon and Mars. Don鈥檛 get me wrong, I鈥檇 love to see people set foot on another planet. But not at the price of cancelling dozens of missions to more exotic and intriguing destinations, such as the oceans of Europa. And not at the price of losing more space-based observatories in the mould of Hubble, such as the Terrestrial Planet Finder, intended to spot Earth-like planets around other stars. These and many other projects have been shelved indefinitely. Science and exploration are the big losers.
Take NASA鈥檚 plans for Mars. It aims to send rovers first to check out landing sites in advance of manned missions that will cost at least 100 times as much. Will they deliver 100 times as much? Only if you measure success in column inches and television minutes.
Let鈥檚 hope the vision of the next president extends beyond Mars. In the meantime, it鈥檚 time to dump the shuttle and mothball the space station. Or, better still, lease it to Disney.
