Do We Need the Space Shuttle?

...Reduced cost has long been nasa's chief sales pitch for the shuttle...

...critics, as opening the door to the treasury, nasa currently estimates the cost of developing the system at $5.5-6.5 billion, including two orbiters ($250 million each) and four boosters ($50 million each...

...BY NORMAN F. SMITH The space shuttle has been "readied for launch" by nasa, the aerospace industry and President Nixon, but the real mission director??Congress??has not yet pushed the final "go" button...

...Another pressing problem is the replacement of helpless parachute drops into the ocean with pilot-controlled landings on solid ground...

...Once the orbiter's mission was completed, retrorockets would slow it into a descent trajectory...

...Yet the winged configuration that is best for landing would create horrible difficulties during the fiery descent into the earth's atmosphere, while a simple cone-shaped design for easy reentry could hardly be worse when it comes time to land...

...The SST seemed unrelated to today's needs, a kind of "hobby-shop" effort, to use the term engineers sometimes hurl at projects pursued more for fun or excitement than practicality or necessity...

...Designed to ferry men and material between the ground and earth orbit, the vehicle has been under sporadic study by nasa, the Air Force and industry for several years...

...Under pressure from the Office of Management and Budget, he ordered a retreat from the all-recoverable two-airplane configuration to a less exotic partially recoverable version...

...The agency expects to save money on satellite development because the shuttle's great weight-lifting ability will permit the use of cheaper, heavier materials and "off-the-shelf" instrumentation, instead of exotic materials and expensive minaturized gear...

...The six rocket engines of the first stage would lift it to an altitude of 35 miles and accelerate it to 3,500 miles per hour before being discarded...

...The Mercury, Apollo and Gemini manned missions account for another two dozen launches...

...The result was a monster vehicle, at least on paper...

...and William Proxmire (D.-Wis...

...Adding this $5 million brings the total expense of a launch to about $13 million??or roughly $200 per pound, if the shuttle is loaded to full capacity...

...Then last January 5, Nixon announced his decision to proceed with the development of the shuttle...

...Yet the critical issue, it would seem, is to channel the drive for progress toward solving the specific, urgent problems impairing the quality of life in the country...

...The full possibilities of space, the President said, "can never be more than fractionally realized so long as every single trip from earth remains a matter of special effort and staggering expense...

...It has also failed to acknowledge that the shuttle will save money only if the nation undertakes a vastly expanded space program...

...If the shuttle could serve a surveillance system operated by an international authority for the benefit of all countries (an idea advocated by many, including Edward Teller) it might become a world-wide priority...

...Mondale has compared the shuttle's satellite repair function to "building a fleet of gold-plated Cadillacs to go out and fix a wheel on a wheelbarrow...

...Not yet designed or developed, the tug is considered a possible venture for European participation in the project...

...Democratic Presidential hopefuls Edmund Mus-kie, George McGovern and John Lindsay have joined the opposition, while Henry Jackson and Hubert Humphrey are backing nasa...

...The agency now proposes to use stiff, heavy propellant tanks and simple rocket engines to make recovery and reuse more feasible, but one official admits that "we really don't know...

...The shuttle obviously represents an enormous step in space technology and, not so obviously, a commitment to undertake greatly increased space activities in the future...

...For a capacity load, a $25 million launch runs about $400 per pound...

...This is the issue that shot down the SST??and that not only the shuttle but the entire space program now faces...

...As one might expect, the more a vehicle resembles an airplane, the harder it is to protect in reentry, and consequently the heavier and more expensive it will be...

...Because the shuttle is largely reusable rather than expendable like present spacecraft, nasa argues that it will provide "airline-type service" into space "for a small fraction of today's costs...

...In any event, taken at face value, nasa's estimates for the shuttle imply an incredible amount of satellite traffic...

...Although no details have been released on the type of cargoes planned, nasa has indicated that about 30 per cent will consist of Defense Department equipment...

...The new system "may bring operating costs down as low as one-tenth of those for the present launch vehicles," he continued, and seems likely to "take the place of all present launch vehicles except the very smallest and very largest...

...In its guarded and very general prediction of space traffic, nasa has stated that 80 per cent of the shuttle's cargo will be unmanned satellites...

...No sooner did President Nixon endorse the shuttle in early January than the battle lines began to form...

...This airplane-shaped orbiter would mount piggyback on a launch vehicle, resembling a large airliner stuck to the side of a Saturn-sized booster...

...Air friction in reentry would then further reduce its speed until it could glide to its landing site...

...Bill Hines, a columnist for the Chicago Sun Times, has declared flatly that "the goal of $100 per pound cannot be met...

...Of course, if the shuttle flies more than 445 missions, the per-flight cost decreases...

...Little support for such heavy traffic into orbit can be found in our past space program, nasa's annual unmanned satellite launches numbered about 18 in 1968 and 1969, down to about 14 in 1970 and 1971...

...nasa may not have done the shuttle a favor by linking it with the hypersonic transport through spinoff...

...The SST's hobby-shop image was inadvertently highlighted by disclosure of aerospace proposals for a hypersonic transport, or HST...

...Neither the technology nor the need for attempting these things from orbit has been established...

...Estimates of development costs generally ranged from $8-15 billion, not counting flight vehicles ($400 million per pair), launch and pay-load...

...That figure, however, excludes launch expenses??i.e., pro-pellant, pad services, refurbishment between flights, etc.??and the price of the payloads that the shuttle will haul into orbit...

...The shuttle's overcapacity for nasa's purposes (it originally desired a 25,000-pound payload limit) reflects the high price the agency paid for Air Force support...

...This one would travel at twice the speed of the SST, with passengers sitting inside a fuselage loaded with liquid hydrogen propellant, looking out at wings glowing red hot from air friction...

...To date, however, there has been no move in that direction...

...But many of the suggested applications??such as spotting fish, forest fires, and pollution??are so far only interesting ideas...

...How much support the White House gave the project during the planning stage is not at all clear...

...Thus a small tug (carried into orbit by the shuttle) has been proposed for the task of chasing satellites...

...The agency has not said what proportion of the system's capacity it expects to utilize on the average, but to bring any real savings in space transportation, the shuttle will have to make frequent flights with very heavy loads...

...After the President's special task group, chaired by Vice President Agnew, mentioned the need for a shuttle in its 1969 report, the Administration was silent on the subject for over two years...

...Colonel John G. Albert, Director of Space Operations for the Air Force, has said that his service is planning to use the shuttle for all of its future launch needs and that no new space boosters are being developed beyond the present Titan III...

...During early studies, the agency went all-out for a full solution to all problems at once...

...Because the Saturn boosters are not reusable, nasa has appropriately included their price in calculating conventional launch costs...

...Still, every scheme to save their fragile craft from a watery grave entailed intolerable payload penalties or unjustifiable development costs...

...Even if its load averaged only 50 per cent capacity (thereby raising hob with the cost per pound), the total would come to 1.2 million pounds??over 80 times the average weight put into orbit each year from 1965-71...

...at half-capacity, almost $800 per pound, in the same ball park as large throw-away boosters like Saturn and Titan III...

...At the agency's projected rate of 45 launches a year, the shuttle could lift into orbit nearly 3 million pounds annually...

...This would both eliminate the expensive recovery effort by the Navy and facilitate reuse of the spacecraft...

...Waiting ships would tow the floating booster back to the launch facility to have it refurbished for another flight...

...Weighing over 5 million pounds, it was similar in size to a Boeing 707 mounted vertically on a Boeing 747 or Lockheed C5A for a rocket-type launch...

...what does not burn up in reentry should flutter harmlessly down into the ocean...

...As the empty booster fell back to earth, some kind of landing aid??probably parachutes??would drop it gently into the sea...

...Officials claim that in contrast to a conventional booster, a reusable one would lower the expense of placing a payload in orbit from $700-1,000 per pound to about $100 per pound, "with potential for an even lower figure...

...From the beginning of the space age, rocket men have grieved over the loss of their expensive boosters after only one quick firing...

...with fewer missions, it rises accordingly...

...It is on this model that nasa now pins its hopes with the Administration and Congress...

...Thirdly, it is unrealistic to presume that the shuttle will carry a full load on every flight, and with lighter cargoes the cost per pound increases in direct ratio...

...At the going satellite price of $2,000-7,000 per pound, the cost would run in the billions of dollars...

...A larger, more expensive scheme with far more tenuous possibilities of financial return, the STS will inevitably receive the same hard scrutiny that scuttled the SST...

...Meanwhile, the orbiter would have ignited its three engines, fueled by liquid hydrogen and oxygen propel-lant from a large tank strapped to its belly...

...Whatever the outcome, it is certain to rouse the hottest debate heard thus far about our relatively uncon-troversial space program...

...Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield denounced the project as a "misplacement of priorities" and predicted a major election-year fight over the space budget...

...adding the true launch and hardware cost of $13 million, each flight budgets out to $25 million...

...Roughly the length and span of a Douglas DC-9 jet transport, it contains a payload bay capacious enough to swallow a Greyhound bus...

...In responding factually and futilely to the nebulous, emotion-laden charges of environmental damage, the industry missed by a supersonic mile the main point of the SST furor: the fact that it was the first major non-military pie-in-the-sky program that the public could get its hands on since the popular eruption of social concern...

...Secondly, nasa's figures fail to incorporate the $5.5 billion development cost of the shuttle...

...A crucial question is whether the use of military payloads in space, whatever they may be, will lower or raise world tensions, promote or hinder arms limitations...

...With $5.5 billion as a target, the booster became a more conventional launching rocket designed for a parachute-and-towback recovery, and the orbiter was considerably reduced in size by strapping on a throw-away fuel tank...

...This is misleading on several scores...

...Given that many satellites weigh only a few hundred pounds, it may be more important to look at the total weight placed in orbit...

...Upon reaching orbit, the empty tank is to be cut loose...

...Norman F. Smith has served as Assistant to the Director of Engineering and Development at nasa's Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston...

...Accepting the agency's projection of 445 flights over 10 years, the development cost per mission comes to $12 million...

...Except for Apollo, no satellite approached as much as a tenth of the capacity of the shuttle, and the annual weight of all nasa satellites for 1966-70 averaged about 15,000 pounds??less than a fourth of the system's capacity for one flight...

...The question of whether the shuttle is a legitimate requirement or a hobby-shop project cannot be answered in isolation...

...Satellites have earned a permanent place in the skies, and their uses are expanding...

...A recent intensive effort funded mainly by nasa has distilled dozens of preliminary designs into one that looks like a fat airplane with an oversized fuselage, tiny wings, and a huge rump stuffed with rocket engines...

...Its estimate for the shuttle, on the other hand, does not take the cost of the reusable orbiter or booster into account...

...Each orbiter would be designed to make 100 round trips, while the boosters would be reused perhaps only 10-20 times, and the throw-away fuel tank would have to be replaced for each launch...

...Senators Walter Mondale (D.-Minn...

...From a strictly technical standpoint, nasa's decision to make the shuttle a priority project is backed by solid logic...

...If you like the SST," quipped the Wall Street Journal, "you'll love the HST...

...The shuttle," said nasa's Bob Voss, "will lead to future development of a . . . transportation system . . . capable of reaching speeds of perhaps Mach 12 and above...

...the total since the program began in 1958 is approximately 200 (excluding booster development flights...

...If the shuttle lofted a single satellite of, say, 2,000 pounds (most are not even this heavy), the cost would be a disastrous $12,500 per pound...

...When James Fletcher took over nasa in 1971, he saw that the shuttle, as then conceived, required too great an advance in the "state of the art...

...Moreover, the shuttle cannot be counted on to do the entire job by itself: To retrieve or place a satellite, it would have to rocket its own great mass into the precise orbit desired, a maneuver requiring a tremendous quantity of propellant...

...Spokesmen for science and technology have always contended that "progress" must be allowed to continue unimpeded, lest our spirit as a people stagnate...

...To reach that estimate, the agency divided the expected launch cost of $7-8 million by the vehicle's full payload capacity of 65,000 pounds...

...The size and cost of the shuttle project has given it a turbulent history within nasa itself...

...It is a plane, we are told, within the atmosphere, but a spacecraft once it enters the vacuum of space...

...Therefore the program itself must first be defined and then examined to determine how well it pertains, directly or indirectly, to society's goals today...

...If its 3-million-pound annual capacity is to be 80 per cent satellites, a fully loaded shuttle (necessary to maintain low operating costs) would haul 2.4 million pounds into orbit every year...

...Whether the six-year development project is approved or aborted will ultimately depend upon how well it is understood by the American people and where it is ranked in the order of the nation's priorities...

...the number of flights [to] expect out of these systems...

...Proponents see it as opening the door to space...

...The shuttle, designated the Space Transportation System (STS) by the Air Force, naturally invites compar-inson with the supersonic transport (SST), whose defeat in Congress last year sent a cold chill through nasa and the aerospace industry...

...Whatever the reasoning here, it would seem appropriate to charge one-hundredth of the $250 million orbiter ($2.5 million) and one-twentieth of the $50 million booster (by coincidence, also $2.5 million) to each flight...

...The design now proposed is an honest solution to the most pressing problems of space flight, though nasa may have weakened its case by overstating the argument of economy...

...Between them, the orbiter and booster had 14 large engines for space propulsion, 48 small thrusters for attitude control, and 14 air-breathing jet engines for flying back within the atmosphere to an airplane-like landing...

...Press reaction, meanwhile, has been generally favorable, but some writers are closely examining nasa's cost estimates...

...It is a bold attempt to solve several central problems that were simply too great to tackle during the first decade of space flight, including the reusability of hardware...

...leaders in the fight against the SST, are doing business at their old stand...

...First of all, the comparison is not really accurate...

...He also spoke of technological and employment benefits, and the opportunity for international cooperation...