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From: karn@allegra.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.space
Subject: Re: Shuttle Snafu
Message-ID: <2275@allegra.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 10-Feb-84 22:18:07 EST
Article-I.D.: allegra.2275
Posted: Fri Feb 10 22:18:07 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 15-Feb-84 00:55:25 EST
References: <2505@rabbit.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill
Lines: 50

The big problem with the Westar/Palapa failures is that they were
launched on the shuttle, for better or worse the only part of the
space program ever seen by the public.  Nobody hears much about the
failures of expendable rockets - launches of those things are so
commonplace that the journalists hardly show up any more.  Plenty of
unmanned launchers haven't even made it to orbit, much less a wrong one,
and barely rate a paragraph on the back page regardless of what happens.

Note also the public pronouncements made by certain competitors to the
shuttle (outside of the USA) in which they claim that their brand of
launcher is obviously more reliable because they've only had "two"
failures when the shuttle has "three".  Of course, they don't point out
that their two failures were LAUNCHER failures each carrying two
payloads which ended up in the ocean, while the problems with Westar,
Palapa and TDRS were the fault of the payload subcontractors and not the
launching agency.  You can also argue, of course, whether TDRS should be
called a failure.

If you want to fault NASA for something here, it is that they've been
forced by limited budgets to oversell the shuttle and cut off the
expendable option. Soon the shuttle will have to be used for just about
any and all US launches, regardless of its appropriateness or
cost-effectiveness. Like all space freaks, I'm all in favor of
developing new space capabilities, but I wonder if the "Solar Max" type
of repair mission really justifies the cost and delay when there's the
alternative of just building and launching a replacement spacecraft. I'm
sure I'm not the only one struck by the irony in this mission which had
as its major objective the demonstration of repair capabilities.

The problem is that the much larger cost of a shuttle orbiter over an
expendable launcher, combined with the need for man-rated safety
procedures, makes NASA so conservative that it greatly diminishes the
extra versatility provided by the system. There is a not-so-humorous
rule of thumb that the weight of the paperwork required by NASA for
safety certification of any "hazardous" (e.g., propellant) system on a
shuttle flight is equal to or greater than the weight of the payload,
and this kind of red tape works against the savings provided by
reusability.

The space shuttle can do many things, particularly when men are needed
in space, but I fear that it was developed more as a political means of
attracting public attention (i.e, funding) to the space program than as
the most efficient means of providing a service. NASA is the only
organization I know which can take a working, reasonably reliable
automated system, replace it with a manual one, and call the result
progress.  On the other hand, if it DOES attract more funding to the
space program (such as a space station), then it will have been worth
it, even if it isn't THE best technical solution to the problem.

Phil