ARTICLE IN PRESS
Space Policy 22 (2006) 226–234
www.elsevier.com/locate/spacepol
Assessing the legacy of the Space Shuttle
Roger D. Launius
Division of Space History, Smithsonian Institution, P.O. Box 37012, NASM Room 3550, MRC 311, Washington, DC 20013-7012, USA
Available online 12 October 2006
Abstract
This article reviews the core legacies of the Space Shuttle program after 25 years and suggests that, while it was not an unadulterated
success, on balance the Shuttle served a valuable role in the development of spaceflight and deserves an overall positive assessment in
history. There are five core legacies that deserve discussion. First, the Space Shuttle has a reputation as a mistake resulting from a policy
failure that should never have been pursued. Second, it has been criticized as a program that prohibited other paths for the US space
program. Third, and more positively, the Space Shuttle provided more than two decades of significant human spaceflight capability and
stretched the nature of what could be accomplished in Earth orbit much beyond where it had previously been. Fourth, it served as a
relatively flexible platform for scientific activities. Finally, and perhaps most significantly since the US human spaceflight program has
always been focused on national prestige, the Space Shuttle served well as a symbol of American technological verisimilitude.
Published by Elsevier Ltd.
1. Introduction
On 12 April 2006 NASA celebrated the 25th anniversary
of the first flight of the Space Shuttle. In 114 missions,
including two catastrophic failures, the shuttle proved itself a
vehicle filled with contradictions and inconsistencies. It
demonstrated on many occasions remarkable capabilities,
but always the cost and complexity of flying this first in the
world reusable space transportation system ensured controversy and difference of opinion. Because of its age, cost of
operations, and a new mission for NASA to move beyond
Earth orbit and return to the Moon, the space agency is
moving to retire the Shuttle before the vehicle’s 30th
anniversary and to replace it with a new capsule concept,
the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV). As the Space Shuttle
completes 25 years in space and NASA moves toward its
retirement, what are its core legacies? I would offer five for
consideration. These are: (1) its reputation as a 30-year
mistake that should never have been pursued; (2) its standing
as a constraint on the ‘paths not taken’ in the US space
program; (3) its broad flexibility as a human spaceflight
vehicle; (4) its use as a platform for scientific research; and (5)
its symbolic role as a measure of US technological capability.
Without question, each of these legacies suggest that the
Space Shuttle program was not an unadulterated success
E-mail address: [email protected].
0265-9646/$ - see front matter Published by Elsevier Ltd.
doi:10.1016/j.spacepol.2006.08.008
story, but on balance the Shuttle served a valuable role in the
development of spaceflight and deserves an honorable
recollection as it approaches the end of its service life.
2. The legacy of the Space Shuttle as a 30-year mistake
One of the most powerful legacies of the Space Shuttle
program is that it resulted from a ‘policy failure’ made in
planning for the post-Apollo space program and that it was,
in essence, a mistake relentlessly pursued by NASA for more
than a generation. The most recent major statement of this
position came in the autumn of 2005 when the NASA
administrator of some 6 months, but a long-time member of
the space community, publicly called the Space Shuttle a
mistake. Mike Griffin commented that NASA had pursued
the wrong path with the Shuttle when conceived in the 1960s
and developed in the 1970s, and persisted with it long after its
flaws had been discovered. That poor decision now had to be
corrected, he noted, albeit more than 30 years after the fact.
‘‘It is now commonly accepted that was not the right path,’’
Griffin told USA Today in an interview that appeared as a
page one story on 28 September 2005. ‘‘We are now trying to
change the path while doing as little damage as we can.’’
When asked pointedly if the shuttle had been a mistake the
NASA Administrator responded, ‘‘My opinion is that it
wasyIt was a design which was extremely aggressive and just
barely possible [1].’’
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Griffin’s assertion that the Shuttle had been the ‘wrong
path’, a mistake persisted in for more than a generation, set
off a firestorm of debate within the spaceflight community
to the extent that NASA issued a point paper explaining
what Griffin had meant [2]. It also triggered not a little
soul-searching about the importance of the vehicle in both
the history of human space exploration and in the larger
context of world history and culture.1
Griffin’s statement was only the most recent, but certainly
the most influential, exposition of a long-standing criticism
of the Shuttle program among a large segment of the space
intelligentsia as well as among certain elements of the
broader space community. The first serious, well publicized
statement of this belief came in 1985 when Alex Roland, a
former member of the NASA History Division who went on
to become a professor at Duke University, offered a
thoughtful and reasoned criticism of the Shuttle in the era
before the Challenger accident. Far from the muckraking
journalism of some, Roland approached his subject with
detachment and an attention to analysis. He asserted that the
Shuttle was over-sold as a practical and cost-effective way to
gain routine access to space. It had not delivered on that
promise, he noted, and it was essentially an experimental
vehicle that offered a spectacle but its costs outweighed its
benefits. Its much-touted capabilities had not been realized
and, he concluded, the Shuttle program had been misguided,
uninspired and wasteful [4].
Roland’s arguments about the shuttle as a mistake have
continued to the present. He summarized his critique in
testimony before the US Senate in the aftermath of the
2003 Columbia accident:
Briefly stated, NASA made two mistakes in shuttle
development in the late 1960s and early 1970s. First, it
traded development costs for operational costs. Second,
it convinced itself that a recoverable launch vehicle
would be inherently more economical than an expendable. NASA promised savings of 90%, even 95%, in
launch costs. In practice, it costs more to put a pound of
payload in orbit aboard the shuttle than it did aboard
the Saturn launch vehicle that preceded it. These
mistakes produced a program that cannot work. NASA
could conceivably operate the shuttle safely and reliably,
but it dares not admit what it would cost. The evidence
for this was abundant before the Challenger accident.
Instead of listening to the data, NASA consistently
allowed its judgment to be clouded by its hopes and
predictions for human activities in space. The agency
cares about astronaut safety, but it is trapped by its own
claims about shuttle costs. And, unlike expendable
launch vehicles, the shuttle grows more dangerous and
more expensive to fly with each passing year.2
227
Other space policy analysts, including the dean of the
community, John M. Logsdon, also weighed in to criticize
the Space Shuttle as a flawed decision that was unable to
meet expectations. In a thoughtful and influential 1986
article in Science Logsdon contended that the decision to
build the Space Shuttle emerged from a murky policymaking process that did not properly analyze the approach
or gauge the operational capability and, more importantly,
compromised the funding levels so badly that serious
technological concessions resulted as well. He noted that
NASA allowed its shuttle hopes to be held hostage by
political and economic forces, and that the program only
gained its support on a cost-effective basis, rather than on
scientific, technological or other grounds. This ensured that
the budget-cutters would hack away at the program every
year. The program also suffered from a lack of strong
support from key political figures, as there were no
Kennedys or Johnsons to champion the Space Shuttle
and the result was a politicization of the process. It was, in
Logsdon’s parlance, a ‘policy failure’ that set in train a
succession of negative consequences that eventually led to
the Challenger accident on 28 January 1986 [6].
Since that time many others have criticized the Space
Shuttle effort as ill-conceived, politically suspect, and
poorly executed. The result has been a steady stream of
critiques of the Shuttle program, especially whenever there
is a public failure. Virtually all these appraisals emphasize
the convoluted history of the Space Shuttle’s origins,
evolution, operation, and the continuing challenge of space
access. Sometimes the criticisms are well reasoned and
temperate, and at other times they are muckraking and
outrageous; sometimes they are also erroneous. Always
they emphasize mis-steps, policy reversals, organizational
inertia, and leadership failings, as well as seemingly
impossible technical challenges, which combined to prevent
the realization of the vision that NASA had set for itself in
advocating the Space Shuttle.3
Ironically, while there is no question that the Space
Shuttle is a creature of compromise that does not enjoy a
universally positive perception, its faults may have been
exaggerated over the years. As only one measure of Shuttle
program performance, the cost of the development effort
has come under heavy scrutiny and overruns of the budget
have received considerable attention from such organizations as the General Accounting Office (GAO), which
criticized it in the latter half of the 1970s [9]. But the cost
from program approval through first flight was $5.974
billion (when adjusted for inflation to 1972 dollars), a 17%
overrun above the $5.15 billion budget originally approved. For the development effort, NASA did not do too
badly in estimating costs in an era of rampant inflation. In
contrast, the Apollo program, which has a reputation as a
highly successful, well managed program spent $13.45
1
As an example see [3].
Ref. [5]. The cost that Roland noted is incorrect. The cost per pound to
orbit was $21,300 per pound for shuttle and $36,000 per pound for Saturn
(combined I/IB/V)—all assuming a full payload for each launch.
2
3
Examples of thoughtful criticisms of the shuttle program may be found
in [7] Muckraking approaches to the subject may be found in such works
as [8].
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R.D. Launius / Space Policy 22 (2006) 226–234
billion (in 1961 adjusted dollars, $21.4 billion in nonadjusted funds) from project start to first Moon landing.
NASA engineers had told NASA Administrator James E.
Webb that Apollo would cost between $8 and $12 billion to
complete the first mission. ‘‘Because no one could
anticipate all contingences, he [Webb] enlarged the figure
NASA sent Kennedy to $20 billion for the first lunar
journeyyusing administrative realism to counter technical
optimism in setting Apollo’s deadline and price.’’ If Webb
had accepted the lower numbers, and instinct was the only
reason he did not, clearly NASA would have seriously
underestimated the cost of the lunar landing program.4
Other factors beyond the management of the research and
development (R&D) effort for the shuttle must account for
its poor reputation. Likewise, in terms of operational costs,
individual shuttle missions are comparable to individual
Apollo missions when adjusted for inflation although, of
course, there is a difference between an orbital mission on
the Space Shuttle and the lunar landings.5
Rather, it seems that NASA officials created seriously
false expectations about what the Shuttle would be able to
do in terms of costs. George M. Low, NASA’s deputy
administrator, set the bar quite high in 1970 when he
announced: ‘‘I think there is really only one objective for
the Space Shuttle program, and that is to provide a lowcost, economical space transportation system. To meet this
objective, one has to concentrate both on low development
costs and on low operational costs [11].’’ From the outset,
therefore, the economics of the Shuttle outweighed any
other aspects of the program. This was strikingly different
from the Apollo program and certainly unfortunate if the
objective was really to lower the cost of space access
significantly.
At a fundamental level, from the perspective of its
operational era, NASA spent heavily on the Shuttle
program. All NASA spending on the shuttle through
2002 totaled roughly $85 billion (real year dollars), which
approaches the amount spent to put Americans on the
Moon when adjusted for inflation. Accordingly, it has been
widely acknowledged that the cost of operating the Space
Shuttle did not meet its original expectations. However,
surprisingly, if NASA could have launched 50 missions per
year as it originally envisioned it would not have been far
off the original estimates. This has been a difficult reality
for the Shuttle program [12].
Couple that with a persistent drumbeat for the Shuttle as
the end-all, one-size-fits-all space truck, and expectations
could never be realized. Indicative of these broad expectations, NASA published in 1983 a marketing brochure
entitled We Deliver that touted the vehicle as ‘‘the most
reliable, flexible, and cost-effective launch system in the
4
The story of the NASA estimate for Apollo is told in [10].
5
These calculations were based on budget data contained in the
President’s Report for Aeronautics and Space, Fiscal Year 2004 Activities,
NASA Pocket Statistics, 1997; and project summaries, all available in the
NASA Historical Reference Collection.
world.’’6 It suggested that the Space Shuttle could satisfy
every requirement in the USA. NASA and the Space
Shuttle program may have fallen victim to its own highly
successful marketing. Public opinion polls have consistently shown a perception of the Space Shuttle as a good
investment [14].7 Over time, as two Shuttle accidents and
other difficulties with the program became apparent, it
took on the perception of a failure rather than the
unadulterated success that Apollo was perceived to be. It
probably did not deserve that characterization, but
perceptions and myths are almost as significant as facts
and reality in public discourse and the result has been a
legacy of the entire shuttle program as a mistake persisted
in for over 30 years (On myth in public discourse see [15].)
Perhaps the Shuttle program is no more deserving of being
remembered as a mistake than the Apollo program is
deserving of its perception as an unmitigated success.
Certainly, the shuttle’s appropriate legacy rests between
those two poles. In reality, it was the first attempt at a
reusable, experimental vehicle. The Shuttle program
probably achieved about 90% of its technical objectives,
but failed miserably in meeting its economic objectives.
There are many reasons for this, including the fact that
there ended up being no reason to fly 24 missions a year
since satellites became larger, more capable, and longer
lived. There was also a huge mis-step in how NASA chose
to operate the vehicle, where the standing army necessary
to develop it was maintained into the ‘operational era’
since 1982 because NASA managers (and their contractors)
did not want to diminish capability by reducing personnel
and budgets. NASA could probably have operated the
vehicle with significantly less personnel—and about twothirds of the budget—ultimately used. Beyond that, its
principal failing may have been in staying with the Shuttle
for so many years instead of treating it as an experimental
program that would lead to future reusable vehicles.
3. The legacy of the Space Shuttle as a constraint on other
possibilities
A second powerful legacy of the Shuttle program points
up the possibilities of the paths not taken. Because NASA
pursued the Shuttle program it was unable to undertake
other projects that might have been more fruitful. There is
no question that this is true, and several in the spaceflight
community have noted this in recent articles and presentations. There is, unfortunately, no evidence—since NASA
did not pursue those other paths—that they would have
been better than the Shuttle. Usually critiques along these
lines take one of three forms. The first is a criticism that
NASA spent the past 30 years in Earth orbit and it could
6
The quote is from page 2 of the We Deliver brochure, reproduced in
[13].
7
This analysis is based on a set of Harris, Media General, NBC/
Associated Press, NBC, Gallup, CBS/New York Times, and ABC/WP
polls conducted between the 1980s and the present, available in the NASA
Historical Reference Collection, see also [14].
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R.D. Launius / Space Policy 22 (2006) 226–234
have—indeed should have—used the same funding that it
received for the Shuttle to return to the Moon or to explore
Mars.
Robert Zubrin, a persistent advocate for a mission to
Mars, made this case in testimony before the US Senate in
2003. He said:
In today’s dollars, NASA[‘s] average budget from 1961
to 1973 was about $17 billion per year. This is only 10%
more than NASA’s current budget. To assess the
comparative productivity of the Apollo Mode with the
Shuttle Mode, it is therefore useful to compare NASA’s
accomplishments between 1961 and 1973 and 1990 and
2003, as the space agency’s total expenditures over these
two periods were equal.
During that earlier period, Zubrin asserted, NASA was
able to undertake Apollo as well as a broad array of
scientific probes and other missions. In the later Shuttle era
it spent the majority of its resources on this space access
vehicle. He concluded: ‘‘Comparing these two records, it is
difficult to avoid the conclusion that NASA’s productivity
in both missions accomplished and technology development
during its Apollo Mode was at least ten times greater than
under the current Shuttle Mode [16].’’
Despite the validity of his facts, Zubrin makes two
assumptions that are important to consider explicitly. First,
the Shuttle was a program approved through the democratic process in place in the USA. Other programs,
especially continued lunar exploration and a human
mission to Mars, were explicitly rejected in the policy
process despite their recommendation in the Space Task
Group report of 1969 [17]. There is no reason to believe
that the nation’s leaders would have allowed NASA to
reprogram funds from one endeavor to another, even if its
leaders had wanted to do so. Second, these alternative
missions might have been successful, but there is no
evidence to believe this since we are engaging in a
counterfactual consideration [18]. It never happened; the
assumption that it would have worked as intended is
problematic. That is not to deny that Zubrin might not be
correct and that the unfolding of space history might have
been dramatically different, and presumably better, had
another course been pursued. We simply will never know.
A second criticism of ‘paths not taken’ comes from
representatives of the scientific community and usually
involves questioning the role of humans in space altogether. Many scientists have questioned the viability of the
Shuttle for scientific activities and suggested that its budget
could have more usefully been applied to expendable
systems and robotic probes that promised higher scientific
returns on investment. University of Iowa astrophysicist
and discoverer of the radiation belts surrounding Earth
that bear his name, James A. Van Allen, never believed
that the Space Shuttle was worth the expense. In 2004 he
remarked, ‘‘Risk is high, cost is enormous, science is
insignificant. Does anyone have a good rationale for
sending humans into space?’’ [19].
229
Undoubtedly large numbers of scientific missions could
have been developed had funding used for the Shuttle been
used instead to fund other types of scientific missions. But
it is not a zero-sum-game. Again, as in the case with
Zubrin’s argument, there is very little reason to believe that
the political process would have put the kind of funds used
to support Shuttle into scientific missions. NASA administrator between 1992 and 2001, Daniel S. Goldin, observed
in 1992 that they would be more likely to be put into some
other congressional priority rather than space science.
‘‘NASA’s budget is $14 billion,’’ he said. ‘‘Our federal
budget is $1.5 trillion. We could take the whole NASA
budget and, in a feeding frenzy in the US Congress,
vaporize that budget in 2 h [20].’’
At the same time the human spaceflight program has
long served as a stalking horse for the space science budget.
John E. Naugle, successor to Homer Newell as NASA
Associate Administrator in the 1970s and later the agency’s
chief scientist, recalled that he often made the case to his
scientist colleagues that everyone gained by having the
much larger human spaceflight activity essentially serving
as political cover for the much smaller space science
program. If not for human spaceflight, he asserted,
Congress, the public, the media, and those representing
competing interests would raid the space science budget. As
it was, such programs as the large and highly visible Space
Shuttle program would become the target of budgeters. His
experience suggests, furthermore, that reductions in the
human spaceflight budget did not result in a corresponding
increase in funding for space science.8 Even so, internecine
warfare between advocates of human exploration of
regions beyond Earth and supporters of space science has
not abated. It remains a significant attribute of the legacy
of the Space Shuttle.
Finally, regarding ‘paths not taken’ we might consider
what the exploration of space might have been like had
NASA not pursued the Space Shuttle, but took another
path in developing launch vehicles. Would the $85 billion
spent to build and fly the Space Shuttle between 1972 and
2002 have been better spent on a different combination of
launchers? Some certainly thought that, with the investment made in Apollo technology, it should not have been
abandoned in favor of the Space Shuttle, that it was a
waste of both money and a fully reliable technology, and
that the costs of moving in an entirely different technological direction at the conclusion of Apollo far outweighed
the benefits that might accrue. This ‘minority position’ on
the Space Shuttle created a scandal in 1969–1971.
Iconoclastic aerospace engineer Robert C. Truax, for
one, suggested that abandoning Apollo technology was
ill-advised. He thought there was no necessity of building a
new winged space vehicle. Instead, the approach taken in
Apollo would do just as well and be both recoverable
and reusable. That would cut down development costs
8
Interview with John E. Naugle, by Roger D. Launius, October 17,
1995.
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R.D. Launius / Space Policy 22 (2006) 226–234
drastically, but since capsules were ‘‘inelegant,’’ he
thought, NASA was committed to a winged spacecraft
that ‘‘could be an unparalleled money sponge [21].’’
So why did NASA turn away from effective launch
vehicle technology in favor of creating a new launch system
from scratch? While the timetable of the Apollo project,
tied as it was to cold war public policy concerns, certainly
drove NASA to exploit ballistic missile technology, the
budget pressures in the post-Apollo era replaced it. Given
that the era of virtually unlimited budgets that Congress
gave NASA in the 1960s had ended, again one might
think that adaptation of existing technology would have
been attractive. As things turned out, it took almost a
decade between the political announcement to build
the Shuttle and launch its first flight, so it ended up
costing much more than anticipated for development
alone (see [22]). NASA certainly could have stayed with a
variant of Saturn launch technology. Would that have been
better? Opinions range all over the place, and it is
impossible to reach any decisions that might be considered
definitive.
4. The legacy of the Space Shuttle as a flexible space access
vehicle
There is no question about the overwhelming complexity
of the Space Shuttle, and its role as a driver for the
technology of spaceflight. It is indubitably a magnificent
machine. The Space Shuttle has proven itself one of the
most flexible space vehicles ever flown. Most assuredly, the
range of possibilities for operations in orbit expanded
dramatically with the launch of Columbia in 1981. The
ability to carry a diversity of payloads, to accomplish a
myriad of tasks on orbit, and to deploy and retrieve
satellites is an attribute that needs to be considered in any
effort to develop a follow-on system. The USA, as well as
its partners in the International Space Station (ISS) will
certainly miss the Space Shuttle should the CEV or some
other vehicle be unable to provide comparable capabilities
in the future. In this regard it is important to realize that
the CEV as currently conceived is not a replacement for
shuttle, but the next human spaceflight vehicle. It has little
up-mass or down-mass past its crew, can not easily conduct
independent EVAs, can not supply a large amount of cargo
to ISS, and it remains to be seen whether or not it will be
more economical, although that is clearly an important
goal of the program.
No flights demonstrate the shuttle’s flexibility more
effectively than the four Hubble Space Telescope servicing
missions. After it was launched in 1990, many believed that
a spherical aberration in the mirror of the telescope would
cripple the instrument. Because of the difficulties with the
mirror, in December 1993 NASA launched the shuttle
Endeavour on a dramatic repair mission to insert new
components to correct for the aberration and to service its
other instruments. During a weeklong mission, Endeavour’s
astronauts conducted five spacewalks and successfully
completed all programmed repairs to the spacecraft. The
first reports from the Hubble spacecraft afterward showed
that the images were more than an order of magnitude
crisper than those obtained before. For this outstanding
effort NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope Recovery Team
received the Robert J. Collier Trophy ‘‘for outstanding
leadership, intrepidity, and the renewal of public faith in
America’s space program by the successful orbital recovery
and repair of the Hubble Space Telescope [23].’’ Three
additional servicing missions extended the capabilities of
the telescope into the first decade of the 21st century;
perhaps another mission will yet extend the life of the
telescope another decade.
Through the end of 2005 there had been 114 Space
Shuttle missions, including the Challenger and Columbia
accidents, and the range of activities on each of these has
been impressive. They included ISS construction and
logistics missions, pure science missions, Department of
Defense missions, collaborative flights with Russian
Cosmonauts to the Mir space station and satellite
deployments, retrievals and repairs.
Undoubtedly, and this is a significant aspect of the
Shuttle’s flexibility, its size and capability greatly expanded
the opportunity for human spaceflight. From a crew of
three for Apollo missions, the shuttle routinely flew seven,
and by the end of 2005 the number of astronauts flown
aboard Shuttles stood at more than 250. Accordingly,
among other notable developments, the Shuttle allowed
NASA to expand the astronaut corps beyond the white
male test pilots who had exclusive domain during the
Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo eras. The Shuttle enabled an
expansion of the astronaut complement to non-pilots
and to women and minorities. As is well known, in June
1983 Sally K. Ride, a NASA scientist-astronaut, became
the first American woman to fly in space aboard STS-7,
and in August 1983 Guion S. Bluford became the
first African American astronaut to fly on STS-8. The
Shuttle era also saw flights by people who were not truly
astronauts. NASA inaugurated both a payload specialist
program to fly individuals associated with specific experiments as well as a ‘Space Flight Participant Program’
aimed at allowing non-scientists or engineers to experience orbital flight. The first person was a teacher,
Christa McAuliffe, who died in the Challenger accident in
January 1986, but a journalist and perhaps a poet were
also possibilities for future missions. Notably, educator
Barbara Morgan is scheduled to fly before the end of the
Shuttle program. In addition, astronauts from many other
nations have flown aboard the Shuttle, including astronauts from Russia, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Canada, France,
Germany, Italy, Japan, and Switzerland. This democratization of human spaceflight was a major attribute of the
Shuttle era, and the result of its flexibility as a space
vehicle.
It also led to what many view as abuses of the system as
politicians flew on the Shuttle. Senator Jake Garn (RUtah) and Representative Bill Nelson (D-Florida) both left
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R.D. Launius / Space Policy 22 (2006) 226–234
Congress long enough to fly on the Shuttle in late 1985 and
early 1986, respectively. Critics accused NASA of pandering to Congress and other constituencies for support by
offering such perquisites to a carefully selected few.
Doonesbury cartoonist Gary Trudeau skewered Garn with
a succession of appearances. In one, he showed Garn
rehearsing memorable statements that he might make from
orbit. He rejected all of them until he decided upon, ‘‘One
giant leap towards approving the 1986 NASA budget.’’9
Despite such criticisms, the ploy worked. After his flight,
Nelson offered this assessment of the space program: ‘‘If
America ever abandoned her space ventures, then we
would die as a nation, becoming second-rate in our own
eyes, as well as in the eyes of the worldy.Our prime reason
for commitment can be summed up as followsyspace is
our next frontier [24].’’ Of course, the most famous
instance of a politician flying was the return to flight of
John Glenn in 1998 aboard STS-95. While this was clearly
a favor for a valued Democratic leader in the US Senate, it
was also at some level recognition of Glenn’s life of
sacrifice and courage as a marine combat pilot and
Mercury astronaut. Walter Cronkite, who came out of
retirement to cover this mission, perhaps summed it up best
when he said, ‘‘as far as I’m concerned, John Glenn is a
hero and he can do pretty much whatever he wants.’’10 It is
obvious that the flexibility of the Space Shuttle as a human
space vehicle has been, again, both a positive and a
negative over time.
5. The legacy of the Space Shuttle as a platform for science
Throughout its quarter-century career the Space Shuttle
has served as a versatile platform for scientific inquiry.
While the program was not conceptualized as a science
effort—rather it was a technology demonstrator and
workhorse for space access—it has been used as an
exemplary platform for all manner of microgravity and
space science experiments. President Nixon, announcing
the decision to build the Space Shuttle in 1972, minimized
its scientific role. Instead, he argued that it was ‘‘the right
step for America to take, in moving out from our present
beach-head in the sky to achieve a real working presence in
space—because the Space Shuttle will give us routine
access to space [25].’’
Even so, the Space Shuttle has been a useful instrument
in the hands of scientists. Each of its more than 100 flights
has undertaken some scientific experiments ranging from
the deployment of important space probes to other planets,
through the periodic flight of the European-built Spacelab
science module, to a dramatic set of Earth observations
over a 25-year period. One example of a valuable science
experiment, among others that might be offered, is the
flight of the Italian Tethered Satellite System designed to
9
Quoted in Klerkx [8], Lost in Space, p. 177.
Walter Cronkite remarks via telecon at NASA Headquarters, October
15, 2005.
10
231
investigate new sources of spacecraft power and ways to
study Earth’s upper atmosphere in 1992 and again in 1996.
It demonstrated that tethered systems might be used to
generate thrust to compensate for atmospheric drag on
orbiting platforms such as the International Space Station.
Deploying a tether towards Earth could place movable
science platforms in hard-to-study atmospheric zones.
Tethers also could be used as antennas to transmit
extremely low frequency signals able to penetrate land
and sea, providing for communications not possible with
standard radio. In addition, non-electrical tethers can be
used to generate artificial gravity and to boost payloads to
higher orbits [26].
Additionally, a stunning science experiment occurred
with the flight of the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission
(SRTM) in 2000. This flight on Endeavour obtained
elevation data on a near-global scale to generate the most
complete high-resolution digital topographic data ever
created. It consisted of a specially modified radar system
that flew during an 11-day shuttle mission. Virtually, the
entire land surface between 7601 latitude was mapped by
SRTM and it has been an enormously significant data set
for land use scientists [27].
The Shuttle has also served as well for the deployment of
scientific probes. Perhaps most importantly, there have
been seven major scientific payloads that required the
unique capabilities of the shuttle since the Challenger
accident in 1986. It launched the Magellan spacecraft to
Venus, the Galileo spacecraft to Jupiter, and the Ulysses
spacecraft to study the sun. The Shuttle has also deployed
the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, the Hubble Space
Telescope, the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite, and
the Chandra X-ray Telescope [28].
In addition, 16 Spacelab and Spacehab missions could
not have been conducted by any other existing spacecraft.
These Shuttle missions allowed significant scientific work
to be undertaken, and shuttle advocates often cite these
activities as important contributions that justified the cost
of the program. Spacelab, a sophisticated laboratory built
by the European Space Agency, fit into the shuttle’s cargo
bay and enabled a complex array of scientific experiments
to be completed [29]. Others noted the more than 2000 life
sciences experiments flown aboard the Space Shuttle, as
well as numerous other demonstration science activities on
orbit (see [30]).
Once again, this is a mixed legacy. The Hubble
Space Telescope, for one, had to undergo repeated
alterations to fly on Shuttle, then be launched on something else after the Challenger accident, then be reconfigured for Shuttle deployment. All this added to the
schedule and the cost of the Hubble program [31].
This happened in other spacecraft R&D projects as well.
Could issues such as these have been handled more
effectively? Probably, but hindsight is a skill project
managers did not have at the time. Even so, the significance
of the Shuttle as a platform for scientific investigation is
secure.
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6. The legacy of the Shuttle as symbol of American
technological prowess
From first flight to the present the Space Shuttle has
been an important symbol of US technological capability,
universally recognized as such by both the American
people and the larger international community. NASA’s
Space Shuttle remains after two-and-a-half decades one of
the most highly visible symbols of American excellence
worldwide, and a positive one, unlike the nation’s
enormous military might.
No other nation on the face of the Earth had the
technological capability to build such a sophisticated
reusable vehicle during the 1970s. Few could do so today.
A massively complex system—with more than 200 000
separate components that must work in synchronization
with each other and to specifications more exacting than
any other technological system in human history—the
Space Shuttle must be viewed as a triumph of engineering.
As such it has been an enormously successful program. The
research, development, and operation of the Space Shuttle
represents a worthy follow-on to the positively viewed
Apollo program of the 1960s and early 1970s.
Indeed, if there is one hallmark of the American people,
it is their enthusiasm for technology and what it can help
them to accomplish. Historian Perry Miller wrote of the
Puritans of New England that they ‘‘flung themselves in the
technological torrent, how they shouted with glee in the
midst of the cataract, and cried to each other as they went
headlong down the chute that here was their destiny’’ as
they used technology to transform a wilderness into their
‘‘City upon a hill [32].’’ Since that time the USA has been
known as a nation of technological system builders who
could use this ability to create great machines of wonder
and the components of their operation.
Perceptive foreigners might be enamored with American
political and social developments, with democracy and
pluralism, but they are more taken with US technology.
The USA is not just the nation of George Washington,
Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglas,
and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, but also of Thomas Edison,
Henry Ford, the Tennessee Valley Authority, Apollo,
and the Manhattan Project. These reinforced the
belief throughout the world that the USA was the
technological giant of the world. Until the loss of
Challenger and Columbia NASA and its accomplishments symbolized America’s technological creativity
more than any other institution. That symbolism, misplaced as it might have been all along, accounts more
than any other for the difficulties the agency has felt
in the recent past. Every NASA failure raises the question
of US technological virtuosity in the world. Since
questioning of much American capability in so many other
areas is already underway, setbacks in this one are all the
more damaging to the American persona. American doubts
have increased with every perceived failure in the space
program [33].
Everyone seems to agree on this symbolism. As
conservative columnist Tony Blankley opined in 2005:
The Shuttle is the most complex moving machine ever
built by man. Conceived in the 1960s, the current
machines are up to 25 years old and weigh 4.5 million
pounds at launchy.Despite the age of the machines and
the technology, no other people on the planet yet have
had the skill, wealth and will to build such a thing. It is a
triumph of engineering to assemble millions of parts into
the necessary complexity that permits the machine to
function with only two failures in a quarter of a century
under the extreme pressures of launch, space, reentry
and re-use [34].
Even critics of the program, such as journalist Greg
Easterbrook acknowledge this. As he wrote eloquently in
Time just after the Columbia accident:
A spacecraft is a metaphor of national inspiration:
majestic, technologically advanced, produced at dear
cost and entrusted with precious cargo, rising above the
constraints of the earth. The spacecraft carries our secret
hope that there is something better out there—a world
where we may someday go and leave the sorrows of the
past behind. The spacecraft rises toward the heavens
exactly as, in our finest moments as a nation, our hearts
have risen toward justice and principle [35].
Easterbrook appropriately characterized the sense of
wonder and awe that the shuttle has evoked around the
world. Because of its technological magnificence, the Space
Shuttle has become an overwhelmingly commanding
symbol of US technological virtuosity. Ask almost anyone
outside the USA what ingredients they believe demonstrate
its superpower status in the world, and they will quickly
mention the Space Shuttle as a constant reminder of what
Americans can accomplish when they set their minds to it.
7. Conclusion
At the time of the Shuttle’s 25th anniversary, it enjoys
the same praises and suffers from the same criticisms that
have been voiced since shortly after the program first
began. It remains the only vehicle in the world with the
dual capability to deliver and return large payloads to and
from orbit. The design, now more than three decades old, is
still state-of-the-art in many respects: computerized flight
controls, airframe design, electrical power systems, thermal
protection system, and main engines. It is also the most
reliable human launch system now in service anywhere in
the world, with a success rate of more than 98%.
At the same time, it is extremely expensive to fly and has
been unable to deliver on its promise of routine access to
space. Costing between $400 million and $1 billion for every
flight, the Shuttle program should be replaced by a modern
launch system that will be more economical. Indeed, the
inability of the Space Shuttle to meet the nation’s
space launch needs was emphasized in 1990 in a report by
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a presidentially appointed Advisory Committee on the
Future of US Space Programs, headed by aerospace
corporation Martin-Marietta chief executive officer Norman
R. Augustine. The report stated that ‘‘the most significant
deficiency in the nation’s future civil space program is
an insufficiency of reliable, flexible, and efficient space
launch capability’’ [36]. It is now time to move on, to give
the Space Shuttle an honorable retirement, and to ponder
its legacy.
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