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From: desj@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (David desJardins)
Newsgroups: net.space
Subject: Re: Scuttle the Shuttle?
Message-ID: <11632@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Fri, 31-Jan-86 00:22:30 EST
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.11632
Posted: Fri Jan 31 00:22:30 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 1-Feb-86 07:11:42 EST
References: <8601301636.AA04800@s1-b.arpa>
Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: desj@brahms.UUCP (David desJardins)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 151

In article <8601301636.AA04800@s1-b.arpa> dietz@SLB-DOLL.CSNET (Paul Dietz)
writes:
>Just when you thought things couldn't get worse, they did.  The shuttle
>was plagued by delays and bad economics, and now its a killer.  It's
>time to take a long hard look at the shuttle and strip away the myth
>from the reality.

   Oh my god, it's a killer!  We'd better get rid of cars, motorcycles,
planes, ships, knives, guns, cigarettes, alcohol, drugs, swimming pools,
bathtubs, electricity, and pregnancy too.
   As for the long hard look, I'm ready when you are.

>Some myths:  that the shuttle is a cheap way of delivering cargo to
>orbit, that manned shuttle missions are somehow bringing us closer to
>real exploitation of space, that manned missions in the shuttle can
>accomplish things economically that can't be done by robots.
>
>I addressed the first myth several months ago.  The NY Times mentioned
>in today's paper that the cost of shuttle cargo ($2000 to $2500/lb to
>LEO) makes almost all space manufacturing uneconomical.  NASA has
>received almost no positive response from industry, just some companies
>exploiting NASA's subsidized rates for research to do work feeding back
>to ground based processes.

   This is a common debating tactic; put words in your opponent's mouth
(obviously ones which are easy to shoot down).  Obviously knowledgeable
people in or out of NASA would not claim that the shuttle is a cheap way
to deliver small packages to low Earth orbit.  But there are a lot of
things that it can do quite well that no current or previous space
transportation system could even aspire to do.

>The shuttle has also been less reliable and more expensive than unmanned
>boosters for lifting satellites in orbit.  Although the putative cause
>of many of these satellite failures has been PAM motor or satellite
>malfunctions, have you noticed how many problems there have been with
>experiments in the shuttle cargo bay?  I suspect the vibrations during
>shuttle launch from the SRB's are damaging the payloads.  This is
>one of the theories about what destroyed Challenger -- combustion
>instabilities in the SRB's could induce vibrations in the shuttle
>that could lead to structural failure.

   Are you suggesting that NASA engineers are too stupid to be able to
measure the level of vibration during launch and analyze its effects
on the shuttle and the payload, or that there is a cover-up where
everyone who knows the truth about shuttle vibration is keeping it
secret so that multimillion-dollar payloads and multibillion-dollar
spacecraft can be destroyed?

>The second myth: that the shuttle is somehow advancing the real
>exploitation of space.  This a curious inversion of logic.  Clearly,
>when space has been fully exploited there will be lots of people up
>there, it doesn't follow, though, that any scheme for sending people
>into space moves us towards that goal.  Except for some sound (if
>extremely expensive) research conducted in Spacelab, the shuttle has
>done little for the advancement of space exploitation.

   Another debating tactic: fabricate an illogical argument for your
opponent and then point out why it is wrong.  The fact of the matter
is that the only way to learn how to do things in space is to try to
do them.  The real question is not whether the shuttle is advancing
the exploitation of space (obviously it is) but whether it is doing
so more effectively and economically than the alternatives.  I wait
to see your proposed alternatives.

>The third myth: that manned missions can accomplish things economically
>that can't be done by robots.  This is true in the long term (unless AI
>really succeeds), but in the short term (read: for the rest of this
>century, at least) there is little that can be done in space
>economically that robots and teleoperated manipulators can't do better.
>Repair and maintenance of spacecraft in earth orbit, mining the moon,
>exploration of the planets, manufacturing in low earth orbit are all
>better done by robots and remotely controlled manipulators, simply
>because they don't breath or eat, don't die of radiation from solar
>flares, and can be launched by supposedly less reliable expendable
>boosters, can be controlled from the ground 24 hours a day and can be
>left in space for years.

   Another debating technique: make such a grand claim that it is very
difficult to refute.  The statement you have made here seems so absurd
that I don't see how I could start to refute it.  As far as I know nobody
has had any success in space operations using "robots and teleoperated
manipulators."  I will put the ball back in your court; you are making a
positive assertion here, that these things can be done.  Do you have one
shred of evidence to back this up?

>So, what should be done with the shuttles?  Just grounding them is a bit
>excessive, but they are currently unsafe and uneconomical.   The
>following might make sense: convert one shuttle to purely manned mode;
>beef up its structure so that it's too heavy to carry much cargo but
>can carry people into orbit.  The other two shuttles can be adapted to
>as unmanned reusable cargo vehicles.  Strip out the cabin section and
>replace it by a much smaller forward electronics bay.  Extend the
>cargo bay forward, or just leave that space empty.  This converted
>vehicle would take off and land semiautonomously, and would be used to
>deploy satellites.  It could conceivably carry much more cargo and,
>if it prangs after 25 flights no one would be killed.  Perhaps all
>three can be adapted for unmanned use, but NASA probably wants to keep
>one vehicle around for congressional joyrides.

   This doesn't really make sense, as I'm sure you're aware.  If all the
vehicle is going to do is deploy satellites in earth orbit it makes far
more sense to just launch the satellite and not the whole orbiter.  And
the loss rate would be a lot higher than 4% without onboard human control,
if the operation could be managed at all.
   Even if it were possible it would mean abandoning:
-- All repair operations in earth orbit
   (e.g. Landsat, Solar Max, and many more).
-- All recovery operations in earth orbit 
   (e.g. the Long Duration Exposure Facility).
-- All servicing operations in earth orbit.
   (e.g. inspection and maintenance of Hubble Telescope)
-- All human-directed experimentation and observation in earth orbit.
   (e.g. many biology, manufacturing, physics experiments)
-- All experimation and study of humans in earth orbit.
   (e.g. studies of human response to weightlessness, human efficiency
   in weightlessness) 
-- All plans for possible space station construction.
Or is all of this magically going to be taken care of by your "robots and
teleoperated manipulators"?

   I also want to reply briefly to all of your flaming about safety.  I
think that you are being hypocritical in claiming that the safety of the
astronauts is your primary concern.  Either that or you are misguided.
There is certainly no shortage of extremely qualified people willing to
risk their lives in space.  If the risk is acceptable to them I don't see
that it's any of your business.  If you were really concerned for the
welfare of the astronauts you would allow them to live their lives as they
please.

   One more comment for the record.  There was an article from the LA Times
which began with something like "While the seven lives lost in the accident
are of course the primary concern..." and then went on to talk about the
impact on the space program.  This is absurd.  The next day 21 people died
in Mexico in a plane crash and I don't think most network news programs
even mentioned it.  Three maintenance workers died in a room full of pure
nitrogen in the early days of the shuttle program, and it was essentially
ignored by the public and the news media.  And those were not people who
had chosen, with full knowledge of the danger, to take a rather large risk.
I'll try not to belabor the point, but I don't see how anyone can consider
the seven lives of any great significance when compared to the destruction
of a $1.2E9 spacecraft and probably several times that much expense in
direct and indirect costs (cost of the investigation, delays in planned
missions, possible changes to the other vehicles, etc.).  How many lives do
you think $5E9 in medical research, or construction of trauma centers, or
even public education would save?  Certainly more than 7!
   All I'm saying is that we should keep our priorities straight.  One of
mine is space exploration.  I hope the American public agrees with me (or
at least can be persuaded to pay for it; $5E9 would put quite a dent in my
checkbook :-)).

   -- David desJardins (ucbvax!brahms!desj)