It's easy to see this as tragic or humiliating, but I think if you look deeper the current situation is actually quite exciting. It's true that the US has stopped building spaceships and has stopped going to space on its own, but this is very very temporary. The private companies (specifically SpaceX) are picking up the slack fast and should be able to do full ISS resupply missions within a few years.

And I'd definitely bet that the NASA will be the first organization to build the epically huge rockets, the heavy lifters to take people to asteroids and eventually to Mars. They'll take longer than any of us want to wait, but they'll do it properly and safely and it'll be magical.

Here's to hoping the Russians or Chinese decide they can beat us to Mars. That'd do the trick nicely, get the competition going and the excitement in the air.

Yes, it would get the competition going again, but I think it may be China that have the determination and drive to pull that one off (if they keep to their schedule). Although the US has been known to pull a few rabbits out of their hats from time to time. But perhaps not as willing to take risks any more and that may be what is needed.

Sadly I agree with you. The loss of a couple shuttles was a very public event and I think that has taken some steam out of the drive to push the edge. Exploration is by its nature risky and you just can't make it completely safe. All the money and time you spend trying to eliminate (not reduce, eliminate) the risk factor only destroys budgets and delays advancement.

I use the analogy of ships of explorers/settlers heading for the new world. Some ships never made it, some did but the settlements never took. Today we cross the oceans almost without thinking about it. Space is no different, just on a grander scale. But when those early settlers board the ships they will be taking the risk too. If our ancestors didn't do it we wouldn't have explored the world until the late 1900's. Nor would we have learned to build reliable ships as quickly.

That's the risk - you make an unnecessary manned vehicle to launch satellites because you can get funding for it being 'our brave heroic astronauts' then when it goes wrong the same publicity comes back and bites you.

Exploration of the West wouldn't have been possible if Nasa had been in charge: http://www.spacefuture.com/vehicles/how_the_west_wasnt_won_n...

Or, to put it bluntly, if you are not killing people, you are not pushing hard enough.

I may be a weird person, but since when strapping yourself to a tank, the size of a building, filled with high explosives and riding it to orbit could be expected to be a safe thing?

If astronauts wanted safety, they'd be accountants.

The problem is that Nasa don't seem to have a reason for having astronauts there - other than without the astronauts there would be no interest and no Nasa.

You could make it safer by replacing the Shuttle with an Apollo era capsule and sticking it on the front of every commercial ArianeV / Atlas IV launch. Wouldn't be any point in having the man there but it would be safer manned spaceflight.

There is not much reason to have astronauts up there other than to have astronauts up there. You can do a lot of science with unmanned probes, you can launch satellites with unmanned rockets.

OTOH, you can't repair the Hubble without meatware close to it. And no machine can tell you an inspiring story of adventure and exploration.

And that's what NASA should focus on. Returning scientific data is important, of course, but stories of exploration are what inspire us.

OTOH Hubble cost 3x as much to build because it had to be serviceable by the Shuttle and it's scientific use was greatly compromised by the orbit it had to be in. Each service mission cost (in real $) as much as building a non-shuttle HST.

Compared to the Herschel space telescope I don't see Hubble as a great advert for manned space flight.

You don't need a shuttle to repair a Hubble. Hubble's orbit was limited to what a shuttle could reach and the cost of repairing it compounded by the operational costs of the shuttle.

You could send a repair crew on an expendable vehicle or, even better, launch a tow that could bring the satellite being serviced to the ISS and reinsert it into any desired orbit. The Hubble service missions greatly extended its useful life. I doubt Herschel will last as long.

Herschel is cryogenic so can't last anyway.

Hubble was in a particularly bad orbit specifically because of the shuttle but any manned servicing would still require it to be in LEO, there is no way you are servicing something at the Lagrange point.

A lot of Hubble's cost and problems were also the result of Nasa in the 80s - things have got a lot better.

The point is more that a series of disposable satellites, especially sharing common parts, is much cheaper than a single upgradable one. Otherwise we would make other satellites (GPS, comms etc) shuttle rated.

> Herschel is cryogenic so can't last anyway.

Couldn't we ship a load of coolant?

> there is no way you are servicing something at the Lagrange point.

It depends on what Lagrange point we are talking about. It can be easier than a trip to the Moon or more or less like a trip to Mars. Anyway, you could tow it to a service orbit humans can reach and then boost it back to its original (or any other convenient) orbit. Herschel is pretty far to receive a human crew, but it can be towed to a more manageable orbit.

I like the idea of cheap satellites with high commonality, but I also like being able to upgrade and repurpose them. After all, the worst part of the work - launching them - was already done, and the cheaper each satellite gets, the more the launch weights in its overall costs.

Not allowed to fly cryogens on the shuttle as a safety feature. You also aren't allowed to carry propellant or use propellant on serviceable satellites, that was one of the design problems with the HST + shuttle.

It's not a shuttle specific thing it's the problem of anything man rated - you can't put anything dangerous onboard.

Then the shuttle is the problem. It's like saying crossing the river is impossible because you are required to use a school bus as a vehicle.

SpaceX looks like it may do a great job in the currently envisioned outside contactor role. The Constellation program under Mike Griffin would have done a great job, but now that's billions of dollars wasted. Keeping the shuttles going would have done a good job in the interim at least, but now the upcoming, indefinitely long gap in national manned spaceflight capability threatens to erode the workforce. Having NASA's programs totally reworked every time there's a new president, on timescales smaller than those of developing new spaceflight capabilities and programs, has been a disastrous recipe for waste. Yet, it's hard to knock its record of accomplishment in the 60's when it had a clear mandate that was kept stable for long enough. If only it could be shielded from the whims of political leaders.

Outsourcing: The way large american businesses do business when it requires innovation.

Apparently they have a special exemption. It's illegal for dell to let somebody in Russia download a driver but it's OK for the US government to pay for Russian rocket launches.