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From: elt@astrovax.UUCP (Ed Turner)
Newsgroups: net.space
Subject: Cost of the Shuttle
Message-ID: <316@astrovax.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 27-Apr-84 13:31:00 EST
Article-I.D.: astrovax.316
Posted: Fri Apr 27 13:31:00 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 28-Apr-84 09:41:20 EST
Distribution: net.columbia
Organization: Princeton Univ. Astrophysics
Lines: 73

This may be regarded as a continuation of the recent exchange between Karl
Stapelfeldt and myself concerning the true cost of Shuttle missions and
whether or not they are a good deal for space science.  There are several
somewhat related points I would like to make:

1) My colleagues who are primarily space astronomers (I am mainly a ground
based optical astronomer.) essentially unanimously regard the 1970's as
disastrous for space science.  The problem was not so much that major,
well advanced (named and well publicized) missions were canceled in great
numbers (although the few such losses Karl mentions were painful) as this
is conspicuous and politically difficult for NASA.  Instead planned missions
were delayed and most seriously new mission plans were not developed and will
not be in the rather long time lag queue associated with space science.  The
net result is a sharp decrease in the number of science missions.  Some
specific examples are number of planned launches of planetary probes has
dropped from of order 1 per year to of order 1 or 2 per decade, previously
nearly continuous existence of some sort of x-ray astronomy facility in
orbit has been replaced with a roughly 15 year gap (that's half an
astronomer's productive career!) between EINSTEIN and AXAF, and no plans for
radio interferometry experiments in space (which were being widely
discussed and anticipated in the 70's).  The big space astronomy events of
80's such as Space Telescope and COBE were originally planned for the 70's
(or very early 80's).  In essence NASA can spend less and less on space
science without every canceling anything (except time critical missions
such as the Halley probe) just by delaying everything in the pipeline
more and more.

2) Less critical but still scientifically very costly, NASA canceled
essentially all support for ground based observations and most funds for
theoretical work in support of space missions.

3) I don't know to what extent astronomy's problems extend to other areas
of space science, but my impression is that they were general.

4) I believe these problems have been widely recognized in the scientific
community.  For instance, George Keyworth (the President's Science Advisor)
in his review of the Reagan administration science policy (SCIENCE 1984,
Vol. 224, No. 4644 (April 6), pp. 9-13) in an attempt to reassure the
scientific community about the space station program states "We are all
aware of the lesson of the impact of the Shuttle program on space sciences
in the 1970's-and we are not about to see that happen again."  The space
astronomy community dreads the space station like the plague as far as I
can tell.  In a more informal comment at the Jan. 1984 Las Vegas AAS
meeting, Keyworth was even more blunt calling the Shuttle "a disaster for
astronomers" again in an attempt to reassure them relative to the space
station project.

5) These problems occurred because in the face of declining budgets and
Shuttle budget over runs in the 1970's, NASA gave the Shuttle program
priority over space science programs.  Karl argues this should be blamed
not on the Shuttle but rather on the Federal government for its inadequate
and inconsistent funding of NASA.  Well, yes and no.  You could blame the
Shuttle project for being too expensive, or NASA for having the wrong
priorities, or the Feds for poor support of NASA, or the general population
for electing such a government and tolerating such budgeting, or human
nature for being so shortsighted, or evolution for producing human nature, or
...  Obviously, there is an infinite regression of reasons.  In practise one
must pick some level to operate on an attempt to influence things there
instead of simply referring blame and responsibility to some higher but
uninfuencable level.  Most scientists feel that they can little influence
the overall popular and political support for NASA (except perhaps in some
long term sense by trying to educate the public) but that they can try to
get NASA to slice up its portion of the pie differently.  This in the final
analysis is the reason for the criticism of the Shuttle program among space
scientists.

6) My personal view is that the manned space program is now and always has
been a serious deficit for science but that it is important for other
non-scientific reasons.  The Shuttle program was good tactics but poor
strategy for the manned space program in my opinion.

Ed Turner
astrovax!elt