NASA’s Space Shuttle program officially ended in 2011 after 30 years of service to the U.S. space industry, starting in 1981. Since then, the U.S. has been using Aeroflot to complete any missions that send astronauts into space.
This situation continued until May 30 of this year, when NASA began using SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft to send two astronauts to the International Space Station. This was the first time since the Space Shuttle was retired that U.S. astronauts were launched from their home country. Next came the recent November 14, when the Dragon spacecraft sent four more astronauts to the space station.
One wonders what was wrong with the shuttle program and why NASA suddenly stopped the project. A recent blog post published by Discover Magazine reveals some of the fatal flaws of the project.
Goals and Achievements
NASA originally planned to turn the space shuttle into a reusable space shuttle , eliminating old throwaway rockets to reduce launch costs for frequent transport of people and supplies into low Earth orbit.
At the time NASA built Skylab, the first space station to operate between 1973 and 1979, NASA planned that the shuttle would not only be able to visit the station frequently, as some engineers expected to do in a week or two, but also have the ability to work with the station in the air to build subsequent space station facilities.
With these plans in mind, the space shuttle program reached quite a few. This includes helping NASA build the International Space Station (ISS), which is still in use today; carrying several important space assets aloft, such as the Hubble Telescope in Earth orbit, the Chandra X-ray Observatory, and interstellar probes including the Magellan Venus Probe, the Ulysses Soviet Space Shuttle, and the Ulysses Soviet Space Shuttle. Ulysses solar probe, Galileo Jupiter probe, etc.; in addition, a number of orbital science experiments have been completed.
In the past thirty years, the space shuttle has carried out a total of 135 missions, which should be said to be a proud achievement for NASA. However, it also has many shortcomings.
First, and one of the biggest drawbacks is that the project is expensive, costing an average of $450 million per launch, far exceeding NASA’s budget costs. Although the space shuttle hopes to save money through reuse, but in the high cost, most customers think it is more cost-effective to use the old disposable rocket.
Furthermore, the spacecraft failed to meet the planned goal of quick turnaround between missions. The fastest two launches were separated by 54 days. In the wake of the Challenger disaster, the turnaround time between missions was 88 days. The slower operational cycle also meant that the program was able to take fewer orders and generate less revenue, which further pushed up its costs.
Risks and Disasters
Safety was another major issue for the space shuttle program. In the mid-1980s, most Americans considered the space shuttle to be safe and already a routine space vehicle. Many of the astronauts liftoff ditched the fully pressed uniforms mandated for previous missions and wore only simple coveralls and helmets.
On January 28, 1986, Challenger malfunctioned and disintegrated 73 seconds after launch, killing all seven astronauts on board. Seventeen years later, on Feb. 1, 2003, Columbia was about to complete its mission when it disintegrated on its return to the atmosphere, killing all seven crew members.
“Challenger explodes and disintegrates after liftoff in 1986, leaving a “man” in the air. (NASA)
Although the technical causes of the two disasters were not the same, it was enough to raise awareness about the safety of the space shuttle.
Finally, with the combination of high costs, long mission turnaround times, lack of customers, and safety risks, in 2004, then-President Bush announced the end of the shuttle program without any clear proposal for an alternative.
This decision left NASA in such an awkward position that it has relied on Russian resources for every subsequent space mission.
With the recent success of SpaceX’s manned missions and the rapid growth of other commercial space companies, the future of NASA’s development of a new generation of manned space shuttles currently looks uncertain.
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