Bring the Shuttle Program Back to Earth

Another call for dropping STS:

NASA was robbed of focus and purpose after the glory days of the Apollo program. Not long after the last moon mission returned to earth, America (or was it Jimmy?) decided that our national malaise precluded investing in things that could produce unvalued commodities such as quantum leaps in scientific progress and the sense of national purpose and pride. So we went on to build the space shuttle, a workhorse reusable launch vehicle that could carry large payloads into orbit, but not beyond. And to have something for the shuttle to do, we joined with fifteen other nations to build the International Space Station to perform cooperative research for the common good. But like so many other multinational projects, the International Space Station inevitably became an orbital kumbaya platform. It ranks, in efficiency and productivity, somewhere above the U.N. and below the League of Arab States. (If you Google "international boondoggle," almost all of the results say "international space station.")

Two years ago, a blue ribbon panel issued a report called "Factors Affecting Utilization of the International Space Station in Biological and Physical Sciences." That report, the second from the panel, elaborated on earlier findings that were severely critical of the cost-benefit ratio that the ISS produced. The 2003 report said that too many US-sponsored experiments were being delayed indefinitely, the payloads delivered by the shuttle flights were reduced greatly by shuttle unreliability, and NASA's record for meeting schedule, budget and priority goals was bad enough to drive away international money to sponsor ISS projects. In the past two years, it's only gotten worse. The ISS can brag of projects such as ARISS: the amateur radio station that occupies a permanent place on the space station, presumably to keep astronauts occupied during their typical 20-hour work week. From its energetically American start, the ISS has devolved to its current French status.

In the Challenger and Columbia disasters of 1986 and 2003, the shuttle proved itself neither inexpensive nor reliable. At this writing, the shuttle Discovery is in orbit, having survived by the narrowest of margins precisely the same failure of insulating foam that caused Columbia to explode. Its bold mission, as the headline of an AP story yesterday encapsulated, is to unload supplies and gather up the mounds of trash that have accumulated on the ISS since the Columbia disaster grounded the shuttle program two years ago. When Discovery returns to earth, we hope intact, it and all the other shuttles will be grounded, again, for an indefinite period. That period should be made definite. And permanent.