The Space Shuttle wasn’t scrapped

Thursday, November 5th, 2015

Contrary to popular belief, the Space Shuttle wasn’t scrapped, according to astronaut Chris Hadfield in a recent Q&A:

No vehicle lasts forever; eventually you retire your ’73 Dodge; eventually you got to retire all vehicles and build new ones, because technology comes along. There wasn’t a hard date set to retire the Shuttle, but after the Columbia accident in 2003 there was a huge push to never fly again; an enormous body of the American public, management and people who pay for it thought you killed everybody on Challenger, everybody on Columbia; you do not have the permission to ever fly again. So we had to first figure out what all the problems were, try to fix them, and then we had to convince ourselves, as an organization, that we actually knew enough of what we’re doing, that we thought we could actually safely fly again, and then we had to convince all the people that are paying for it, that we could be trusted to fly again.

In that process we said how much longer, why are we flying them for, and when is the end of the natural life of the Shuttle. So during that process post Columbia, ’03 to ’04–’05, we said we’re going to finish building the Space Station, and that is the natural end, that’s what Space Shuttles were really for anyway, and that’s gonna be the natural end of the Space Shuttles. So we built the whole program after Columbia to finish building the Space Station; we decided in ’04 that we’re not gonna fly Shuttles after 2010, because then you can start winding down the whole parts supply chain and plan how to wind down facilities, manning, all of that.

We ended up a little bit later, summer 2011, but the beauty of it was that we finished the entire Space Shuttle program, didn’t hurt one more person and got the Space Station built; it was an enormous rollicking success, from our point of view. So when someone says you scrapped the Shuttle program, it’s a complete misrepresentation of what actually happened. There is a huge amount of pride that we prolonged the Shuttle program, got it flying again, and finished building the Space Station.

(Hat tip to our Slovenian guest — who also transcribed that passage.)

Posted in Technology | 4 Comments »

Comments

  1. Roger says:
    November 6, 2015 at 1:27 am

    The astronaut speaks untruths. There were active plans to keep flying the shuttles until 2040 or so. They were certified for 100 missions. The program shut down because we had killed more astronauts than the Russians.

  2. Slovenian Guest says:
    November 6, 2015 at 7:47 am

    To paraphrase issman1 from the collectSPACE forum:

    I recall when Daniel Goldin, as Administrator of NASA in the late 1990s, spoke confidently about shuttle missions until 2020.

    It could have happened, but the Columbia disaster was the beginning of the end. Other than building, maintaining and supplying the International Space Station there’s not much requirement for its versatility. Servicing the Hubble Space Telescope was also exceptional, but the last time a shuttle mission actually repaired/rescued a commercial satellite was STS-49 in May 1992. So it was neither cost-effective nor lived up to its original billing, as satellite deployments shifted to expendable vehicles after Challenger, further reducing those potential number of missions.

    It’s easy to get overly sentimental about the past three decades. And while I empathise with all those within NASA and its contractors who lost their livelihoods as a consequence, human spaceflight has to be about more than endless laps around the Earth. Though it makes perfect sense to do so on board a space station. The shuttle could have continued to carry more Spacelabs if there was no ISS.

    He goes on further saying:

    Those in charge of NASA as Apollo was winding down may have been fearful that the entire US space programme was in jeopardy.

    They went on the offensive, exaggerating and promising all things to all people. Yet, a flight rate of 50 per year seems so absurd I find it amazing the shuttle was ever approved. Considering the sizable cargo capacity of the orbiters, one might venture to guess that overall shuttles flew half empty. Indeed, few missions other than the Hubble Space Telescope Servicing mission completely filled the cargo bay.

    And user BNorton answers how the 100 mission standard was created:

    It was a simple matter of structural fatigue analysis. The loads on the spacecraft during launch and entry, and the structure design, essentially established the 100 flight limit. If an orbiter had made 100 cycles, I would guess that it probably would have been inspected and potentially re-certified for additional flights/cycles. The same is true of all aircraft: they are operated in the US for a fixed number of cycles (take off and landing). For example, many commercial domestic aircraft are “retired” after about 60,000 cycles.

    All things considered. I still think Hadfield is right!

  3. Bob Sykes says:
    November 6, 2015 at 8:17 am

    And now we go to the ISS as guests in Russia’s Soyuz.

  4. Slovenian Guest says:
    November 6, 2015 at 10:25 am

    And now we go to the ISS as guests in Russia’s Soyuz.

    That’s underselling it. Hadfield again:

    So I started studying Russian in 1993, I studied it for 20 years, I was NASA’s director of operations in Russia, I learned to fly, I learned orbital mechanics in Russian, vehicle control theory, studied and became qualified to fly the Soyuz. Then I flew as the left-seater in a Soyuz co-piloting, and a reporter says, “So, what’s it like hitching a ride with the Russians?”

    Not only does he speak Russian, he speaks Soyuz! And hitching doesn’t require years of preparation:
    Hadfield Training in Russia, short 7-minute YouTube clip.

    Fun fact, as a fighter pilot Hadfield once intercepted Soviet aircraft for NORAD.

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