Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!decwrl!labrea!rutgers!njin!princeton!phoenix!elturner
From: elturner@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Edwin L Turner)
Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Subject: The Down Side
Keywords: all is not well
Message-ID: <3839@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>
Date: 4 Oct 88 20:45:31 GMT
Organization: Princeton University, NJ
Lines: 64


There is a very natural feeling of relief and euphoria (both in this group
and in the media) at the success of Discovery's recent flight.  While
understandable, I do not think this feeling really makes much sense; there
are still excellent reasons for unhappiness with the current situation:

1) Our space program is still far behind even the most pessimistic
pre-Challenger projections.  Many important missions have been canceled,
and many others greatly delayed.  We will be launching "old" hardware,
some of which has probably deteriorated in "storage", for years to come
(e.g., the Hubble Space Telescope, once planned for Shuttle launch in the
early 80's, is now scheduled for launch in Feb. '90).

2) Furthermore, we will continue to fall further and further behind what
seemed, pre-Challenger, to have been a reasonable, but not wildly ambitious,
plan.  There is essentially no chance that Shuttle launch rates will reach
those planned by NASA in the early days of the program.  This is true by a
large factor now and will remain true when (or if) the new orbiter is put
into service.  Even with extensive use of ELV's, it will be a long time
until we catch up to were we would have been.

3) The success of the Discovery mission, while most welcome, is hardly a
startling accomplishment.  In all probability, we could have simply ignored
the Challenger crash (I know this is not realisticly possible.) and proceeded
with the next scheduled launch, and it would have succeeded.  After all, there
had been more than 20 more or less successful missions before the accident.
The only real test of how successfully the Shuttle Program has been
rehabilitated will be its long term track record, both in terms of absence
of catastrophic failures and in terms of frequency and success rate of
missions.

4) We still have almost all of our space program eggs in a single, potentially
fragile, and perhaps deeply flawed basket (i.e., the Shuttle Program).  It is
certainly possible that there will be another "loss of vehicle" accident
within a few years.  There is no very good indication of what the probability
per flight of such a mishap is; it could still be in the range of a few
percent, and even if it is much lower, bad luck is always a possibility.  If
another serious accident were to occur in the near future, it is hard to
guess what the consequences for the US space program would be, but certainly
they would be much more severe than those of Challenger's loss.  Even if
there are no major problems with the shuttles in the future, many of the
charges leveled by critics of the Shuttle Program even pre-Challenger still
stand or are at least arguable.  It still seems quite possible to me that
historians of space exploration will someday judge the Shuttle program to
have been a major, or even a fatal, mistake for the US space program.

Of course, things may turn out much better than some of the gloomier
suggestions above; time will tell.  Also, things could well be worse.
We did badly need to get back into business at some level, and that goal
now appears to be within reach.  It is also clear that the most pessimistic
predictions right after the Challenger accident (i.e., that the Shuttle
Program or even NASA itself would be terminated) were too extreme.
Furthermore, after more than 2.5 years of gloom, it is clear that space
fans need something to cheer about.  Nevertheless, I think that it is
important to avoid the attractive conclusion that everything is "A-OK"
again when, in reality, the US space program is in pretty sad shape and
is likely to remain so for the forseeable future.

Ed Turner			"Does one really have to fret
phoenix!elturner		 About enlightenment?
				 No matter what road I travel,
				 I'm going home."
or
elturner@phoenix.Princeton.EDU