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From: broehl@watdcsu.UUCP (Bernie Roehl)
Newsgroups: net.space
Subject: Re: Shuttle Articles in Discover Magazine
Message-ID: <1921@watdcsu.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 28-Nov-85 09:29:49 EST
Article-I.D.: watdcsu.1921
Posted: Thu Nov 28 09:29:49 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 29-Nov-85 00:29:35 EST
References: <8511251341.AA17196@s1-b.arpa>
Reply-To: broehl@watdcsu.UUCP (Bernie Roehl)
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 54

In article <8511251341.AA17196@s1-b.arpa> dietz@SLB-DOLL.CSNET (Paul Dietz) writes:
>I just read Discover magazine's November 1985 issue...
>"The shuttle is a superb
>technological achievement, and it's flown by brave, immensely competent
>men and women...   But what is it good for?"

Sound like the sort of cover quote designed to sell magazines...
(and it worked -- you bought one, didn't you?)

>What NASA should do is learn from the shuttle experience and design an
>improved shuttle with better economics.

Why?  They've already spent a lot of money developing something that works.
You're suggesting they spend even more money doing it again?  This makes very
little sense.  

>But no, they're going to build
>a space station.

... which is precisely what they need.  What's more useful, a station or
more shuttles? 

>I can take solace in the fact that the europeans are
>working on shuttle-like vehicles (Hermes and HOTOL) and you can bet
>they will learn from NASA's mistakes.

... and from the countless things NASA's done right.  After NASA's done the
R & D, it's easy for the Europeans (and the Soviets) to simply use that
technology to build their own.  Improving on someone else's design is a lot
easier than designing from scratch yourself (which is why so many countries
are poor innovators but strong industrial nations nevertheless).

>For the shuttle, things could become grim in a few years if fiber
>optics really depresses the market for communications satellites...

Unlikely.

>if DOD decides to build a new expendable booster as backup for the
>shuttle.

Possible, but also unlikely.


Whatever the economics, the shuttle has made space more accessible.  It has
also allowed the integration of the manned and unmanned aspects of space 
flight, and made it possible to do things like satellite recovery and on-orbit
repair.  It's proven that you can build a reusable manned spacecraft.  It's
allowed non-astronauts to travel into space to do useful work.

Even if other countries jump on the bandwagon, and even if they manage to
do it cheaper (by using NASA-developed technology) and better (by improving
on the basic design) the fact remains that they are depending on the
innovation of the engineers who built the shuttle.  It's really unfair to
criticize the shuttle program solely on the basis of cost/pound.