Flying, then retiring shuttle key to US space goals

By Jim Loney

MIAMI (Reuters) – The space shuttle’s return to flight will
restore luster to NASA’s tarnished space program but the
spaceship’s 2010 retirement is just as important to the new
U.S. target of traveling to the moon and Mars, experts say.

As the U.S. space agency counts down the days until it
flies the shuttle again after a hiatus of more than two years
following the 2003 Columbia disaster, aerospace experts and
enthusiasts question whether the aging shuttle fleet is worth
the billions it costs.

Shuttle Discovery is scheduled to lift off from Florida on
Wednesday, carrying a crew of seven to the International Space
Station, a live-on-board orbiting research outpost that has
been serviced by Russian spacecraft since Columbia
disintegrated over Texas on Feb. 1, 2003.

The space station, a multibillion-dollar venture of the
United States, Russia, Canada, Japan and Europe, could not be
finished if the shuttle did not fly again, space experts say.

Construction began in 1998 and astronauts started living at
the station in November 2000. But important billion-dollar
parts, including Japanese and European lab modules, a
centrifuge, trusses and solar power arrays, have yet to be
installed.

“The space station will prove to be a critical step in our
exploration and eventual settlement of the universe and we just
can’t finish the station without the shuttle,” said George
Whitesides, executive director of the National Space Society, a
grass-roots organization founded in 1974 by aerospace pioneer
Wernher von Braun. “The shuttle is the heavy lifter.”

Failure to complete the station would mean failure to live
up to NASA’s obligations to its international partners, said
Louis Friedman, chief of The Planetary Society, a leading space
advocacy group.

“I think a very strong argument is that a venture in space,
humans to other worlds, is only justified because it becomes a
great venture of the whole planet. If we don’t meet our
commitments, that’s important,” Friedman said.

REACHING FOR THE STARS?

Critics question whether NASA and other agencies need to
spend billions to send humans into space to conduct research,
when unmanned probes are cheaper. Advocates of manned missions
argue that humans must move beyond the confines of Earth to
live and work in space.

Those who believe NASA should be reaching for the stars
have long been miffed by the agency’s focus on flying the
shuttle in Earth orbit for decades after landing on the moon in
the late 1960s.

The shuttle fleet costs NASA $4 billion a year, a quarter
of its $16 billion budget. That money is critical to NASA’s new
goal, announced by President Bush on Jan. 14, 2004, of retiring
the shuttle by 2010, building a successor, the Crew Exploration
Vehicle, and flying to the moon and Mars.

“The shuttle retirement is the paramount element of the
plan. If you compromise on the shuttle retirement you will
never get the CEV done, you will not go to the moon or Mars,”
said Friedman, who believes a manned flight to Mars will cost
$75 billion over 10 years — less than half NASA’s current
budget.

While the shuttle’s return to flight is needed to finish
the station, which is important for the long-duration space
experience humans will need to fly to Mars, the spacecraft has
little left to contribute to NASA’s push into the solar system,
said Brett Alexander, a former space policy adviser to Bush.

“The shuttle is based on 1970s technology. It is a very
capable system but also a very flawed system in its complexity
and its ability to be used. I’m not sure the upcoming flights
are going to teach us anything about getting to the moon,” said
Alexander, an executive with t/Space, a company that plans to
develop a spaceship for NASA that could also be used for
private tourism and business trips to orbit.

If NASA failed to fly the shuttle again, some experts argue
it would hurt the agency’s confidence and hamper relations with
foreign space agencies. But it would not diminish NASA’s
leadership in space.

“Russia has significant experience and technological
potential for space activities, but some of the expertise may
have faded over the past 15 to 20 years,” said Andre Balogh, a
professor of space physics at Imperial College, London. “China
has potential but no experience.”