Re: Keep the shuttle

Chris Bennetts <benetsc2000@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

It seems to me that the shuttle has a relatively small number of serious
flaws

By now the actual merits and demerits of the Shuttle are lost in the
noise. It has become a symbol and surrogate for too many larger
arguments: ELV vs. RLV... new flags & footprints vs. "going around in
circles" more affordably... where NASA went wrong... who to blame for
the "loss of momentum" after Apollo?... does space cost too much in
dollars, lives or both?... government vs. alt.space... how closely to
follow the beloved Oberth-von Braun agenda... etc, etc.

That's not the fault of an admirable if over-ambitious piece of
engineering. It's all our fault -- space fans, NASA, Congress,
citizens -- that it has remained the *only* piece of its kind for 25
years, long enough for a generation of agendas to get draped over it.

Almost 25 years ago, I left the staff of a science magazine for
several reasons. One was that the editors were planning the third or
fourth piece in 16 months about the Whole New Age of Space STS was
opening up, with gee-whizzery about the exquisite specificity and
precision of each and every TPS tile. I suggested that maybe that was
Not a Good Thing for a space truck. I suggested a balancing sidebar
comparing the emerging flight rate and cost to those projected in 1972
-- maybe even a tentative predicition that it would take several
generations of STS to reach those.

It was conveyed to me that this magazine was committed to the
Excitement of Science and Technology, not to carping and nit-picking.
I responded, more or less: "Why can't STS be a terrific machine *and*
a first, flawed attempt at a hard problem?"

Plus ca change...
.

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