The final shuttle launch

[Jason Thompson]

If the weather in Florida holds out, it is now less than 30 minutes until the last ever launch of the space shuttle. An era is ending...

[Rob McCow]

I hope they're playing 'The Final Countdown'.

It shouldn't be sad. Because they should be introducing a new version of the Space Shuttle. But it seems they're not.

[Jason Thompson]

And she's off.

[WhiteCrowNZ]

It's been in service now for 30 years? I have a certain emotional attachment to it, but I do think it's had it's day, and best to be retired.

On paper the idea of a reusable vehicle was a great one, but it's never really lived up to it's promise. After all the vehicle requires major rebuilds between launches. And the decisions taken for that reusablity have compromised safety, leading to the loss of two crews.

So the heart says this is a sad day, but the head says it's time to move on ...

[Jason Thompson]

On paper the idea of a reusable vehicle was a great one, but it's never really lived up to it's promise.

This is true, but the blame for that cannot be laid at the door of NASA. The shuttle was conceived as the lynchpin in a huge program of space expansion. It would carry components and crews for interplanetary craftt o be assembled in orbit. It would support a permanent manned space station in orbit. it would be used by commerical and military groups to launch satellites, etc. etc. And then virtually everything the shuttle was designed to support was cancelled. The Nixon administration reviews the plans and approved only the shuttle, requiring that to be developed before a fixed orbiting space station project. The MoD had their say, demanded increased payloads so some of their heavier staellites could be launched on the shuttle, demanded a good cross-range capability (requiring those large delta wings), then bailed on the project after the design was fixed. The budget was cut repeatedly, which meant that the original concept of a shuttle orbiter lifted on another manned booster that would be flown back to Earth became the shuttle that we have now.

And the decisions taken for that reusablity have compromised safety, leading to the loss of two crews.

That is an unfair characterisation of the development decisions in the shuttle. The decision to use solid rocket boosters was made for reasons of budget, not reusability. The piggyback design that caused the problems on Columbia was there from day 1 of shuttle development. There were serious issues that led to those two accidents, but none of them have anything to do with the reusable design. There were flaws in design and flaws in management.

So the heart says this is a sad day, but the head says it's time to move on ...

Which would be fine, except they're not. It is a sad day when any successful transport system is retired without even an inferior replacement moving up to take its place. NASA, as of now, has no manned spaceflight capability at all.

[WhiteCrowNZ]

I actually spent last night looking through some designs they had/worked on for other vehicles. It's almost torture to look at all the "what ifs" and the "this project was cancelled".

It's a shame the Buran didn't fly a bit more actually. But it's also interesting - the Buran obviously flew unmanned, and a few of the designs for replacement spaceplanes are mainly unmanned vehicles to carry payloads.

Although payload has never caused a fatality, I do think separating crew from payload is a good move forward.

[Jason Thompson]

Buran only made one unmanned test flight, and was even less reusable than the shuttle, being bolted on the side of an expendable Energia booster. It was 'shuttle-lite'.

And separating crew from payload is daft if you can launch both on one booster. That's why Earth orbit rendezvous was not selected for the Apollo missions. The cost of multiple launches was higher than building one huge rocket and sending everything up in one go.

[Zbigniev Hamson]

What we really need is the USSR to make a comeback, or for China to step into its place. Nothing like a cold war for stimulating this kind of thing. Without a big bad technological enemy to worry about, it seems all the effort just goes into obtaining more oil.

[WhiteCrowNZ]

Well China is still doing it's space stunts, it's aiming for the Moon in about 2025 I think, a much more sedate pace than NASA I know.

[Rob McCow]

It seems crazy to me that we don't have some kind of permanent presence on the moon (aside from a bunch of shiny mirrors that were left up there). We managed a space station for years, surely it would at least be slightly easier to run a three-person moonbase? Or are there difficulties I'm not aware of?

[Jason Thompson]

Assembling and running a Moonbase is a lot harder than it sounds.

Getting components to the site

Orbiting space station: accelerate them to low Earth orbit (final speed 17,500 mph) and leave them up there.

Moonbase: accelerate them to escape velocity (25,000 mph), then slow them down for a soft landing on the lunar surface. Much greater fuel requirements and therefore much larger boosters required, as well as the added complexity of a landing system.


Assembly

Orbiting space station: Adjustment of orbital approach to make a nice, clean, simple rendezvous, a technique now so well practiced that not only has a manned rendezvous never failed but most entirely automated ones go to plan as well.

Moonbase: The parts would need to be landed sufficiently far apart that the landing system of one did not impinge on the previous parts already there (scorch marks from rocket exhausts look bad), then hauled across the lunar surface to be mated with the prexisting components.This mating must take into account something that no orbiting station will ever have to worry about: lunar regolith. This stuff is incredibly abrasive, and will ruin seals and latching mechanisms given half a chance.

Supplies

Same issues as with the components: those for an orbiting space station need only be launched into orbit. Those for the Moonbase need be launched to the Moon and need to be able to land on it as well. Also, with the space station supplies they can simple carry out another rendezvous (as indeed they do with the ISS) and your supplies are just there on the other side of the hatch. On the Moon you'd have to go out and find them, or include some sort of landing pad. Even if you did this, the landing would never be precise enough to hit the exact same spot every single time, so you can't do a pinpoint delivery as with orbiting craft.

Crew safety

Orbital space station: the crew are inside the van Allen belt, mostly protected from the solar particle radiation of deep space. In the event of an emergency on the station they can leave in docked escape capsules and be safely back on Earth in a couple of hours.

Moonbase: Radiation is a bigger problem, requiring denser shielding than an orbiting space station. Additionally, any crew escape system has to have lunar launch capability, and will take a minimum of three days to return to Earth.

Then the lunar dust rearse its head again, as this stuff will get everyhwere. It will erode seals, clog air vents, damage space suits, even cause respiratory and heaven knows what other kinds of issues with the crew, and so on and so forth.

A Moonbase therefore requires bigger, more expensive rockets for every part of its operation, and has a far more complex set of requirements for successful assembly and operation than an orbiting space station. These sorts of problems are one of the issues I had with the design of Bowie Base One in The Waters of Mars, with its long, wide, empty corridors and great thick metal plates on the roof.

[Rob McCow]

Shame

In other news, the crew of the Atlantis are enjoying some sing-songs!

The crew of Space Shuttle Atlantis were this morning greeted by R.E.M's Michael Stipe, who delivered a vocal snippet of the band's Man on the Moon, followed by a quick message.

Stipe said: “Good morning, Atlantis. This is Michael Stipe from R.E.M. We wish you much success on your mission and thank all the women and men at NASA who have worked on the shuttle for three decades. From Earth, a very good morning to you.”

We suspect that NASA's press office may have had a hand in Stipe's contribution to the increasingly tearful end-of-an-era love-in which the agency has arranged to mark the closure of the shuttle programme.

In a similar message to the International Space Station yesterday, Elton John said: "Good morning, Atlantis, this is Elton John. We wish you much success on your mission. A huge thank you to all the men and women at NASA who worked on the shuttle for the last three decades."

Nonetheless, Stipe's solo rendition of Man On The Moon was certainly all his own work. He explained: "I recorded Man On The Moon for NASA in Venice, Italy, where Galileo first presented to the Venetian government his eight-power telescope, and in 1610 wrote The Starry Messenger (Sidereus Nuncius), an account of his early astronomical discoveries that altered forever our view of our place in the universe."

Yes! Man On The Moon, which quotes famous events and then sarcastically derides them with a 'Yeah, yeah yeah yeah' and features the chorus:

If you believed,
They put a man on the moon, (Man on the moon!)
If you believe there's nothing up my sleeve, then nothing is cool

That's bound to cheer them up.

And if that wasn't bad enough, Rocket Man has this as the last verse:

Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids
In fact it’s cold as hell
And there’s no one there to raise them if you did
And all this science I don’t understand
It’s just my job five days a week
A rocket man, a rocket man

I think they're having their noses rubbed in it!

[Jason Thompson]

I think someone is looking at the titles of the songs and not really paying attention to the words. A common occurrence also in wedding song choices, apparently....

[Rob McCow]

Well, it's kind of sweet I suppose and it does generate some publicity. It's the thought that counts!

[WhiteCrowNZ]

Didn't they have a special version of the Beach Boys called "We gotta put the Shuttle away"?

No really not a joke, I remember hearing it on a lecture on the shuttle about 15 years ago ...

[Jason Thompson]

Atlantis landed safely as scheduled this morning, bringing the era of shuttle flight to an end.

[WhiteCrowNZ]

[Rob McCow]

And that about wraps it up for space. Unless someone finds a good economic reason to go back, sadly.

[Jason Thompson]

The space program is not dead. The Russians are still operating the Soyuz spacecraft and the ISS is still operating, and will continue to do so for a while. In the US various private contractors are bidding to build the next generation of manned space vehicles.

After the Apollo Soyuz flight in 1975 there were no more flights for six years. The shuttle was in development but was a long way from flight. This is a pause, not the end.

[Jeff]

Isn't China planning a trip to the moon around 2025 or so, as well?

[Zbigniev Hamson]

The ISS is "being in space" about as much as me standing on my back step is "a night out".

[Jason Thompson]

Oh bollocks!

The ISS is a critical piece of equipment. When we finally do get around to manned flights to Mars and beyond, do you really want the first experience of long term working and living in space to be that flight out? We are gaining more and more information from a continued presence on the ISS, and there is, believe it or not, some pretty good stuff coming out of it that has been useful down here.

OK, it's not Star Trek, and it's not walking on the Moon, but it is still a damned good piece of work and I am really tired of people being so down on it just because it doesn't match their expectations of what being 'in space' should be.

[Zbigniev Hamson]

My opinion remains. Anyway calm down, it's only a space station.

[WhiteCrowNZ]

When I've seen it pass over it looks more like a small moon ...

[SiHart]

"That's no moon..."