Tragedies influence future space vision

Alan Boyle Science editor • Profile • E-mail

After the Challenger tragedy in 1986, and again after the Columbia tragedy in 2003, presidents vowed to continue the space shuttle program as a tribute to the fallen.

But now, 20 years after the loss of the shuttle Challenger and three years after Columbia, NASA and the White House have fully accepted the view that the shuttle fleet's days are numbered, and that America's next spaceships will look nothing like the winged space planes they will replace. In fact, a decade from now, U.S. astronauts may well ride in craft that look much like the Apollo capsules of the late 1960s.

Is the shuttle program that so many people worked on for a quarter-century turning out to be a technological dead end? Will it be remembered primarily for the two disasters? What are the lessons learned for the next generation of spaceships?

Even NASA's administrator, Mike Griffin, has admitted that the space shuttle program was "not the right path" to take in the wake of the Apollo moon effort. The space agency's future approach, which he dubbed "Apollo on steroids," is aimed at correcting the mistakes made three decades ago, he said last fall.

For Scott Horowitz, the former shuttle commander who now heads up the effort to develop those future spaceships, the shuttle program nevertheless has lessons to teach.

"The shuttle program taught us how to operate on a more routine basis in space — we've flown over 100 missions on the shuttle so far," Horowitz, NASA's associate administrator for exploration systems, told MSNBC.com this week. "It also reaffirmed the lesson that going to space is difficult. This is not an endeavor without risk, so we need to learn to manage that risk. ... Taking all those lessons and rolling them into the design of the new exploration systems is probably the biggest lesson learned."

‘Big lie’?
Outside of NASA, others have been more outspoken about the shuttle system's flaws.

"Certainly there were a lot of people who deluded themselves back when they decided to pursue the shuttle," said Dwayne A. Day, a space writer and historian who served as an investigator for the Columbia Accident Investigation Board. "They believed that you could operate this thing cheap, and fast and economically. ... That was a big lie that they kept telling themselves."

After the Challenger tragedy, the shuttle's commercial and military applications were scratched, and NASA was never able to deliver on the original dream of sending a "space truck" into orbit at least twice a month. In part because of the low flight frequency, shuttle missions have been incredibly expensive, with some estimates ranging above $750 million per flight.

Despite those failings, it would be wrong to characterize the shuttle as a mistake, Day said: "Using the term 'mistake' somehow implies that they knew it was a mistake and they went ahead and tried it anyway. ... It was an attempt to push the technological frontier, and it didn't pan out."

It would also be wrong to shrug off the Challenger and Columbia tragedies as the inevitable result of taking on the risks of spaceflight, he told MSNBC.com.

"Spaceflight certainly has its risks, but if you want to look specifically at the two examples of the shuttle failures, people screwed up and ignored the clear warning signs," he said. For Challenger, those signs included excessive wear seen in the O-ring seals on the solid-rocket boosters, particularly on cold launch days. For Columbia, it was the foam debris seen falling off the shuttle's external fuel tank.

NASA is still working to fix the foam problem, with the aim of launching another shakedown mission to the international space station in May. But even if the shuttles are judged safe enough to fly again, they're due for retirement in 2010.

NBC News space analyst James Oberg noted that the shuttle won't be the first breed of flying machine to be scrapped. "After fatal disasters, sometimes aerospace systems have been abandoned — the U.S. dirigible fleet of the 1930s, for example," he said.

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