No Way to Run a Space Program
Via a mailing list that I'm on, I was pointed to a good article on the Columbia disaster. The article claims that Air Force imagery shows that the left wing of the Shuttle was badly damaged (showing a "jagged edge" in photos), which probably supports the theory that tile damage did them in. They also claim that, had they been able to assess the damage and determine it was dire, there's a ghost of a chance that they might've been able to do something to save the crew (if not the Shuttle).
As for my reaction to the disaster in general, I'm sort of torn between the views expressed by Derek Lowe on one hand, and Kevin Drum on the other. I really want to see a better manned space flight program, just because it's so unbelievably cool, and that coolness is part of what drew me into science in the first place.
(There's a brilliant John M. Ford story in From the End of the Twentieth Century (if you haven't read this, why not? Go buy it now, slacker...) about a young geek watching the first Shuttle launch, which I found deeply affecting as I clearly recall staying home from school for the first launch of the Columbia (actually, I missed about four days, what with all the scrubbed launches they had that first time around...))
On the other hand, though, I have a hard time coming up with reasons why we ought to do this, other than the coolness factor. There are all sorts of claims about the science to be done in space, but the vast majority of them are bunk. Everybody who's anybody in atomic physics has applied for NASA money at one point or another, through a program to fund experiments to go on the ISS, but the fact is, most of those experiments could be done just as well on the ground. Some of them could be done better on the ground. There is interesting science to be done in microgravity, but nowhere near enough of it to justify the Space Station and Shuttle programs, any more than Tang does...
And the problem is, the vastly more ambitious programs proposed by many space enthusiasts don't seem much more justifiable. Yes, we could send a mission to the Asteroid Belt, and start mining in space, but, well, why? In the absence of a project that absolutely requires ninety billion tons of iron and nickel, I don't really see the point (again, aside from coolness value...). The standard line about needing to go into space so as not to "have all our eggs in one basket," or so we have some future as a species once we exhaust Earth's natural resources strikes me as alternately hopelessly optimistic (the chances of a realistic Mars colony being self-sufficient enough to last long after the Earth gets eaten by space termites, or whatever, are not good for the foreseeable future, which sort of undercuts any claim of urgency...) and faintly creepy (setting humanity up as some sort of precursor of the rapacious aliens from Independence Day, moving from planet to planet using up all their resources...).
On some level, I do think that coolness value alone justifies some sort of manned space program, and even working toward colonization of space, the Moon, or other planets. There's a certain nobility just in the attempt-- as Neil Gaiman noted (scroll down to February 2) it feels good to be part of a species and a nation that can do something so astonishingly difficult. But, much as it pains me to say this, I have a hard time seeing this as a top priority.
Ultimately, I think we should continue manned space flight, but that we need to step back before moving forward. The Shuttle program is not a success-- it's somewhere in the murky middle zone of complexity between things that are simple enough to be idiot-proof, and the yet-to-be-demonstrated level of vehicles so sophisticated that they almost never fail. I found it particularly disturbing that 1) they had no ability to check the extent of the damage from the tank insulation hitting the wing, and 2) even if they had, they had no way to repair it. This is no way to run a space program, and we need to find a better means of getting people and material into and out of orbit before we can think about doing anything else.
Some people have claimed that it would somehow dishonor the bravery and sacrifice of the lost astronauts if we don't immediately push on with the Shuttle program and the ISS and a more ambitious project to be named later. But I think it would be a greater dishonor to their memory to continue along the unsuccessful and verging-on-stupid path which ultimately cost them their lives. The Shuttle program as it currently exists is more a chain on our ankle than a ladder to the stars, and while we shouldn't abandon the dream of manned space exploration, we need to find a better way to do it.
Posted at 3:25 PM | link | follow-ups |