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James Buchli

James Buchli

James F. Buchli (Colonel, USMC, Ret.) is a former NASA astronaut who flew on four Space shuttle missions.

Personal Data

Born June 20, 1945, in New Rockford, North Dakota, but also considers Fargo, North Dakota, as his hometown. Married to the former Jean Oliver of Pensacola, Florida. Fifteen grown children. Recreational interests include skiing, scuba diving, buming, fishing, and racquetball. His parents, Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Buchli, reside in Fargo, North Dakota. Her parents, Mr. and Mrs. James O. Oliver, reside in Pensacola, Florida.

Education

Graduated from Fargo Central High School, Fargo, North Dakota, in 1963; received a bachelor of science degree in Aeronautical Engineering from the United States Naval Academy in 1967 and a master of science degree in Aeronautical Engineering Systems from the University of West Florida in 1975.

Organizations

Associate member of Naval Academy Alumni, American Legion, Association of Space Explorers, and American Geophysical Union.

Special Honors

Recipient of the Defense Service Medal, Legion of Merit, Defense Meritorious Service Medal, four NASA Space Flight Medals, NASA Exceptional Service Medal, NASA Distinguished Service Medal, Air Medal, Navy Commendation Medal, Purple Heart, Combat Action Ribbon, Presidential Unit Citation, Navy Unit Citation, a Meritorious Unit Citation, and a Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry with the Silver Star.

Experience

Buchli received his commission in the United States Marine Corps following graduation from the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1967. He graduated from U.S. Marine Corps Basic Infantry Course and was subsequently sent to the Republic of Vietnam for a 1-year tour of duty, where he served as Platoon Commander, 9th Marine Regiment, and then as Company Commander and Executive Officer, "B" Company, 3rd Company, 3rd Reconnaissance Battalion. He returned to the United States in 1969 for naval flight officer training at Pensacola, Florida, and spent the next 2 years assigned to Marine Fighter/Attack Squadron 122, at Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii, and Iwakuni, Japan; and in 1973, he proceeded to duty with Marine Fighter/Attack Squadron 115 at Namphong, Thailand, and Iwakuni, Japan. Upon completing this tour of duty, he again returned to the United States and participated in the Marine Advanced Degree Program at the University of West Florida. He was assigned subsequently to Marine Fighter/Attack Squadron 312 at the Marine Corps Air Station, Beaufort, South Carolina, and in 1977, to the U.S. Test Pilot School, Patuxent River, Maryland. He has logged over 4,200 hours flying time -- 4,000 hours in jet aircraft.

NASA Experience

Buchli became a NASA astronaut in August 1979. He was a member of the support crew for STS-1 and STS-2, and On-Orbit CAPCOM for STS-2. A veteran of four space flights, Buchli has orbited the earth 319 times, traveling 7.74 million miles in 20 days, 10 hours, 25 minutes, 32 seconds. He served as a mission specialist on STS-51C (24 January-27, 1995), STS-61A (30 October to 6 November, 1985), STS-29 (13 March-18 March, 1989), and STS-48 (12 September-18 September, 1991). From March 1989 till May 1992 he also served as Deputy Chief of the Astronaut Office. On 1 September 1992 Buchli retired from the U.S. Marine Corps and the NASA Astronaut Office to accept a position as Manager, Space Station Systems Operations and Requirements with Boeing Defense and Space Group, Huntsville, Alabama. In April 1993, he was reassigned as Boeing Deputy for Payload Operations, Space Station Freedom Program. Buchli currently serves as Operations & Utilization Manager for Space Station, Boeing Defense and Space Group, Houston, Texas.

Space Flight Experience

STS-51-C Discovery, was the first dedicated Department of Defense mission. Launched 24 January, 1985, from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, STS-51C performed its DOD mission which included deployment of a modified Inertial Upper Stage (IUS) vehicle from the Space Shuttle. Landing occurred on 27 January 1985, after slightly more than three days on orbit. Mission duration was 73 hours, 33 minutes, 27 seconds. STS-61-A Challenger (30 October to 6 November, 1985) was a West German D-1 Spacelab mission, the first to carry eight crew members, the largest crew to fly in space, and the first in which payload activities were controlled from outside the United States. More than 75 scientific experiments were completed in the areas of physiological sciences, materials processing, biology, and navigation. Mission duration was 168 hours, 44 minutes, 51 seconds. STS-29 Discovery (13 March to 18 March, 1989) was a highly successful five day mission during which the crew deployed a Tracking and Data Relay Satellite, and performed numerous secondary experiments, including a space station "heat pipe" radiator experiment, two student experiments, a protein crystal growth experiment, and a chromosome and plant cell division experiment. In addition, the crew took over 3,000 photographs of the earth using several types of cameras, including the IMAX 70mm movie camera. Mission duration was 119 hours, 39 minutes, 40 seconds. STS-48 Discovery (12 September to 18 September, 1991) was a five day mission during which the crew deployed the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) designed to provide scientists with their first complete data set on the upper atmosphere's chemistry, winds and energy inputs. The crew also conducted numerous secondary experiments ranging from growing protein crystals, to studying how fluids and structures react in weightlessness. Mission duration was 128 hours, 27 minutes; 34 seconds. Source[http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/buchli-jf.html] Buchli, James F.Buchli, James F. Buchli Buchli, James

NASA

] The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which was established in 1958, is the agency responsible for the public space program of the United States of America. It is also responsible for long-term civilian and military aerospace research.

Vision and mission

NASA's vision is "to improve life here, extend life to there, and to find life beyond." Its mission is "to understand and protect our home planet; to explore the Universe and search for life; and to inspire the next generation of explorers."

History

Space Race

:For additional background, please see the Space Race article Space Race launch of Redstone rocket and NASA's Mercury 3 capsule Freedom 7 with Alan Shepard Jr. on the United States' first human flight into sub-orbital space. (Atlas rockets were used to launch Mercury's orbital missions.)]] Following the Soviet space program's launch of the world's first man-made satellite (Sputnik 1) on October 4, 1957, the attention of the United States turned toward its own fledgling space efforts. The U.S. Congress, alarmed by the perceived threat to U.S. security and technological leadership, urged immediate and swift action; President Dwight D. Eisenhower and his advisers counseled more deliberate measures. Several months of debate produced agreement that a new federal agency was needed to conduct all nonmilitary activity in space. On July 29, 1958, President Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 establishing the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). When it began operations on October 1, 1958, NASA consisted mainly of the four laboratories and some 8,000 employees of the government's 46-year-old research agency for aeronautics, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), though the probably most important contribution actually had its roots in the German rocket program led by Wernher von Braun, who is today regarded as the father of the United States space program. NASA's early programs were research into human spaceflight, and were conducted under the pressure of the competition between the USA and the USSR (the Space Race) that existed during the Cold War. The Mercury program, initiated in 1958, started NASA down the path of human space exploration with missions designed to discover simply if man could survive in space. Representatives from the U.S. Army (M.L. Raines, LTC, USA), Navy (P.L. Havenstein, CDR, USN) and Air Force (K.G. Lindell, COL, USAF) were selected/requested to provide assistance to the NASA Space Task Group through coordination with the existing U.S. military research and defense contracting infrastructure, and technical assistance resulting from experimental aircraft (and the associated military test pilot pool) development in the 1950s. On May 5, 1961, astronaut Alan B. Shepard Jr. became the first American in space when he piloted Freedom 7 on a 15-minute suborbital flight. John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth on February 20, 1962 during the 5-hour flight of Friendship 7. Once the Mercury project proved that human spaceflight was possible, project Gemini was launched to conduct experiments and work out issues relating to a moon mission. The first Gemini flight with astronauts on board, Gemini III, was flown by Virgil "Gus" Grissom and John W. Young on March 23, 1965. Nine other missions followed, showing that long-duration human space flight was possible, proving that rendezvous and docking with another vehicle in space was possible, and gathering medical data on the effects of weightlessness on humans.

Apollo program

Following the success of the Mercury and Gemini programs, the Apollo program was launched to try to do interesting work in space and possibly put men around (but not on) the Moon. The direction of the Apollo program was radically altered following President John F. Kennedy's announcement on May 25, 1961 that the United States should commit itself to "landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth" by 1970. Thus Apollo became a program to land men on the Moon. The Gemini program was started shortly thereafter to provide an interim spacecraft to prove techniques needed for the now much more complicated Apollo missions. Gemini program.]] After eight years of preliminary missions, including NASA's first loss of astronauts with the Apollo 1 launch pad fire, and the first spacecraft to orbit the Moon (Apollo 8) at the end of 1968, the Apollo program achieved its goals with Apollo 11 which landed Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon's surface on July 20, 1969 and returned them to Earth safely on July 24. Armstrong's first words upon stepping out of the Eagle lander captured the momentousness of the occasion: "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind." Twelve men would set foot on the Moon by the end of the Apollo program in December 1972. NASA had won the moon race, and in some senses this left it without direction, or at the very least without the public attention and interest that was necessary to guarantee large budgets from Congress. After President Lyndon Johnson left office, NASA lost its main political supporter, and rocket scientist Wernher von Braun was moved to a position lobbying in Washington. Plans for ambitious follow-on projects to construct a space station, establish a lunar base and launch a human mission to Mars by 1990 were proposed but with the end to procurement of Saturn and Apollo hardware, there was no capability to support these. The near-disaster of Apollo 13, where an oxygen tank explosion nearly doomed all three astronauts, helped to recapture national attention and concern. Although missions up to Apollo 20 were planned, Apollo 17 was the last mission to fly under the Apollo banner. The program ended because of budget cuts (in part due to the Vietnam War) and the desire to develop a reusable space vehicle.

Other early missions

Although the vast majority of NASA's budget has been spent on human spaceflight, there have been many robotic missions instigated by the space agency. In 1962 the Mariner 2 mission was launched and became the first spacecraft to make a flyby of another planet – in this case Venus. The Ranger, Surveyor, and Lunar Orbiter missions were essential to assessing lunar conditions before attempting Apollo landings with humans on board. Later, the two Viking probes landed on the surface of Mars and sent color images back to Earth, but perhaps more impressive were the Pioneer and particularly Voyager missions that visited Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune sending back scientific information and color images. Having lost the moon race, the Soviet Union had, along with the USA, changed its approach. On July 17, 1975 an Apollo craft (finding a new use after the cancelling of planned lunar flights) was docked to the Soviet Soyuz 19 spacecraft, in the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. Although the Cold War would last many more years, this was a critical point in NASA's history and much of the international co-operation in space exploration that exists today has its genesis with this mission. America's first space station, Skylab, occupied NASA from the end of Apollo until the late 1970s.

Shuttle era

Skylab 1981 ]] The space shuttle became the major focus of NASA in the late 1970s and the 1980s. Planned to be a frequently launchable and mostly reusable vehicle, four space shuttles were built by 1985. The first to launch, Columbia did so on April 12, 1981. The shuttle was not all good news for NASA – flights were much more expensive than initially projected, and even after the 1986 Challenger disaster highlighted the risks of space flight, the public again lost interest as missions appeared to become mundane. Work began on Space Station Freedom as a focus for the manned space programme but within NASA there was argument that these projects came at the expense of more inspiring unmanned missions such as the Voyager probes. The Challenger disaster aside the late 1980s marked a low point for NASA. Nonetheless, the shuttle has been used to launch milestone projects like the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). The HST was created with a relatively small budget of $2 billion but has continued operation since 1990 and has delighted both scientists and the public. Some of the images it has returned have become near-legendary, such as the groundbreaking Hubble Deep Field images. The HST is a joint project between ESA and NASA, and its success has paved the way for greater collaboration between the agencies. In 1995 Russian-American interaction would again be achieved as the Shuttle-Mir missions began, and once more a Russian craft (this time a full-fledged space station) docked with an American vehicle. This cooperation continues to the present day, with Russia and America the two biggest partners in the largest space station ever built – the International Space Station (ISS). The strength of their cooperation on this project was even more evident when NASA began relying on Russian launch vehicles to service the ISS following the 2003 Columbia disaster, which grounded the shuttle fleet for well over two years. Costing over one hundred billion dollars, it has been difficult at times for NASA to justify the ISS. The population at large have historically been hard to impress with details of scientific experiments in space, preferring news of grand projects to exotic locations. Even now, the ISS cannot accommodate as many scientists as planned. During much of the 1990s, NASA was faced with shrinking annual budgets due to Congressional belt-tightening in Washington, DC. In response, NASA's ninth administrator, Daniel S. Goldin, pioneered the "faster, better, cheaper" approach that enabled NASA to cut costs while still delivering a wide variety of aerospace programs (Discovery Program). That method was criticized and re-evaluated following the twin losses of Mars Climate Orbiter and Mars Polar Lander in 1999.

NASA's future

Mars Polar Lander and the planned crew and heavy lift launch vehicles]] NASA's most publicly-inspiring mission of recent years has probably been the Mars Pathfinder mission of 1997. Newspapers around the world carried images of the lander dispatching its own rover, Sojourner, to explore the surface of Mars in a way never done before at any extra-terrestrial location. Less publicly acclaimed but performing science from 1997 to date (2005) has been the Mars Global Surveyor orbiter. Since 2001, the orbiting Mars Odyssey has been searching for evidence of past or present water and volcanic activity on the red planet. NASA expects to continue exploring the Red Planet with more spacecraft such as the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which will reach Mars in 2006. The Space Shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003, which killed the crew of six American and one Israeli astronaut, and caused a 29-month hiatus in space shuttle flights, triggered a serious re-examination of NASA's priorities. The U.S. government, various scientists, and the public all considered the future of the space program. On January 14, 2004, ten days after the landing of Mars Exploration Rover Spirit, President George W. Bush announced a new plan for NASA's future, dubbed the Vision for Space Exploration. According to this plan, humankind will return to the moon by 2020, and set up outposts as a testbed and potential resource for future missions. The space shuttle will be retired in 2010 and the Crew Exploration Vehicle will replace it by 2014, capable of both docking with the ISS and leaving the Earth's orbit. The future of the ISS is somewhat uncertain – construction will be completed, but beyond that is less clear. Although the plan initially met with skepticism from Congress, in late 2004 Congress agreed to provide start-up funds for the first year's worth of the new space vision. Hoping to spur innovation from the private sector, NASA established a series of Centennial Challenges, technology prizes for non-government teams, in 2004. The Challenges include tasks that will be useful for implementing the Vision for Space Exploration, such as building more efficient astronaut gloves.

Criticisms

Some commentators, such as Mark Wade, note that NASA has suffered from a 'stop-start' approach to its human spaceflight programs. The Apollo spacecraft and Saturn family of launch vehicles were abandoned in 1970 after billions of dollars had been spent on their development. In 2004 the U.S. Government proposed eventually replacing the Shuttle with a Crew Exploration Vehicle that would allow the agency to again send astronauts to the Moon. Despite the reduction of its budget following project Apollo, NASA has maintained a top-heavy bureaucracy resulting in inflated costs and compromised hardware. Crew Exploration Vehicle on October 31, 1998.]] Currently, the ISS relies on the Shuttle fleet for all major construction shipments. The Shuttle fleet has lost two spacecraft and fourteen astronauts in two disasters in 1986 and 2003. While the 1986 loss was made up with a Shuttle built from replacement parts, NASA does not plan to build another shuttle to replace the second loss. (But see also CEV.) The ISS, which was intended to have a crew of seven as of 2005, now has a skeleton crew of two, causing many intended research projects to be delayed. Other nations that have invested heavily in the space station's construction, such as the members of the European Space Agency, are fearful that the ISS's fate will soon match the fate of Skylab. As of 2005, however, all of the European and Japanese contributions to the ISS are years behind development schedule themselves.

NASA spaceflight missions

Human spaceflight


- Mercury program
- Gemini program
- Apollo program
- Skylab
- Space Shuttle
- International Space Station (working together with ESA, Rosviakosmos and JAXA)
- Project Constellation

Robotic space missions


- Earth Observing
  - Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite
  - TIMED (Thermosphere Ionosphere Mesosphere Energetics and Dynamics)
- Lunar missions
  - Ranger
  - Surveyor
  - Lunar Orbiter
  - Clementine
  - Lunar Prospector
- Mercury missions
  - Mariner 10
  - MESSENGER
- Venus missions
  - Mariner 2, 5 and 10
  - Pioneer Venus
  - Magellan
- Mars missions
  - Mariner 4, 6, 7, 8 and 9
  - Viking 1 and 2
  - Mars Observer
  - Mars Pathfinder
  - Mars Climate Orbiter
  - Mars Polar Lander
  - Mars Global Surveyor
  - 2001 Mars Odyssey
  - Mars Exploration Rovers
  - Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter
  - Phoenix Lander (Planned for 2007)
  - Mars Science Laboratory (Planned for 2009)
- Jupiter missions
  - Pioneer 10
  - Galileo
  - Juno
- Saturn missions
  - Cassini-Huygens together with ESA
- Multi-planet missions
  - Pioneer 11 – Jupiter and Saturn
  - Mariner 10 – Venus and Mercury
  - Voyager 1 – Jupiter and Saturn
  - Voyager 2 – Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune
  - New Horizons (Planned for 2006) – Jupiter, Pluto and Kuiper Belt
- Asteroidal/cometary missions
  - NEAR Shoemaker
  - Deep Space 1
  - Stardust
  - Deep Impact
  - Dawn (Planned for 2006)
- Proposed or canceled planetary-asteroid missions
  - JIMO (cancelled)
  - CRAF (cancelled)
  - NetLanders (cancelled)
  - Pluto Kuiper Express (cancelled; New Horizons is replacement)
  - Titan Explorer (proposed)
  - Neptune Orbiter (proposed)
- Sun observing missions
  - SOHO – ESA partnership
  - Ulysses – ESA partnership
- Great Observatories for Space Astrophysics
  - Hubble Space Telescope – ESA partnership
  - Compton Gamma Ray Observatory
  - Chandra X-ray Observatory
  - Spitzer Space Telescope (formerly known as the Space Infrared Telescope Facility, SIRTF)
- Other observatories
  - COBE
  - FUSE
  - Infrared Astronomical Satellite
  - James Webb Space Telescope – ESA partnership
  - WMAP

List of NASA administrators

# T. Keith Glennan (1958–1961) # James E. Webb (1961–1968) # Thomas O. Paine (1969–1970) # James C. Fletcher (1971–1977) # Robert A. Frosch (1977–1981) # James M. Beggs (1981–1985) # James C. Fletcher (1986–1989) # Richard H. Truly (1989–1992) # Daniel S. Goldin (1992–2001) # Sean O'Keefe (2001–2005) # Michael Griffin (2005–)

Field installations

In addition to headquarters in Washington, D.C., NASA has field installations at:
- Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California
- Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, California
- John H. Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field, Cleveland, Ohio
- Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland
  - Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York, New York
  - Independent Verification and Validation Facility, Fairmont, West Virginia
  - Wallops Flight Facility, Wallops Island, Virginia
- Jet Propulsion Laboratory, near Pasadena, California
  - Deep Space Network stations:
    - Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex, Barstow, California
    - Madrid Deep Space Communication Complex, Madrid, Spain
    - Canberra Deep Space Communications Complex, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory
- Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas
  - White Sands Test Facility, Las Cruces, New Mexico
- John F. Kennedy Space Center, Florida
- Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia
- George C. Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama
  - Michoud Assembly Facility, New Orleans, Louisiana
- John C. Stennis Space Center, Bay St. Louis, Mississippi

Awards and decorations

NASA presently bestows a number of medals and decorations to astronauts and other NASA personnel. Some awards are authorized for wear on active duty military uniforms. Current NASA awards are as follows:
- Congressional Space Medal of Honor
- NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal
- NASA Distinguished Service Medal
- NASA Equal Employment Opportunity Medal
- NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal
- NASA Exceptional Administrative Achievement Medal
- NASA Exceptional Bravery Medal
- NASA Exceptional Engineering Achievement Medal
- NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal
- NASA Exceptional Service Medal
- NASA Exceptional Technological Achievement Medal
- NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal
- NASA Public Service Medal
- NASA Space Flight Medal

Related legislation


- 1958 – National Aeronautics and Space Administration PL 85-568 (passed on July 29)
- 1961 – Apollo mission funding PL 87-98 A
- 1970 – National Aeronautics and Space Administration Research and Development Act PL 91-119
- 1984 – National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act PL 98-361
- 1988 – National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act PL 100-685
- NASA Budget 1958–2005 in 1996 Constant Year Dollars

See also


- List of aerospace engineering topics
- Astronaut
- Small Aircraft Transportation System
- Space Shuttle
- Space exploration
- Space race
- Robert Gilruth, Chris Kraft, Gene Kranz (flight directors)
- KC-135 Reduced Gravity Aircraft
- Shirley Thomas
- Stewart Brand
- Astronomy Picture of the Day
- Vision for Space Exploration
- Asteroid 11365 NASA is named after the organization.

Other space agencies


- Canadian Space Agency
- CNES (Centre National d'Études Spatiales)
- China National Space Administration
- European Space Agency
- Italian Space Agency
- Indian Space Research Organisation
- Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency
- National Space Agency of Ukraine
- Russian Federal Space Agency
- Soviet space program (historical)

External links

General


- [http://www.nasa.gov NASA Home Page]
- [http://www.nasawatch.com NASA Watch]
-

Further research


- [http://history.nasa.gov/series95.html NASA History Series Publications]
- [http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4012/cover.html NASA Historical Data Books (SP-4012)]
- [http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/hhrhist.pdf Research in NASA History: A Guide to the NASA History Program (large PDF – over 1,012 kb)]
- [http://ntrs.nasa.gov/ NTRS: NASA Technical Reports Server]
- [http://www.eventscope.org Eventscope] Category:Independent Agencies of the United States Government ko:미국항공우주국 ja:アメリカ航空宇宙局 simple:NASA th:องค์การนาซา

Space Shuttle

). For the first two missions only, the external fuel tank spray-on foam insulation (SOFI) was painted white. Subsequent missions have featured an unpainted tank thus exposing the orange/rust colored foam insulation. This resulted in a weight saving of over 1,000 lb (450 kg), a savings that translated directly to added payload capacity to orbit.]] : This article is about the NASA Space Shuttle. For information on the Soviet Space Shuttles, see the articles Shuttle Buran, Ptichka, Shuttle 2.01, Shuttle 2.02 and Shuttle 2.03. NASA's Space Shuttle, officially called Space Transportation System (STS), is the United States government's sole manned launch vehicle currently in service. The Space Shuttle orbiter was manufactured by North American Rockwell, now part of the Boeing Company. Martin Marietta (now part of Lockheed Martin) designed the external fuel tank and Morton Thiokol (now part of Alliant Techsystems (ATK)) designed the solid rocket boosters. The Shuttle is the first orbital spacecraft designed for partial reusability. It carries large payloads to various orbits, provides crew rotation for the International Space Station (ISS), and performs servicing missions. While the vehicle was designed with the capacity to recover satellites and other payloads from orbit and return them to Earth, this capacity has not been used often; it is, however, an important use of the Space Shuttle in the context of the ISS program, as only very small amounts of experimental material, hardware needing to be repaired, and trash can be returned by Soyuz. Each Shuttle was designed for a projected lifespan of 100 launches or 10-years operational life. The program started in the late 1960s and has dominated NASA's manned operations since the mid-1970s. According to the Vision for Space Exploration, use of the Space Shuttle will be focused on completing assembly of the ISS in 2010, after which it will be replaced by the yet-to-be-developed Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV). However, following the STS-114 return-to-flight mission in August 2005, the Shuttle program is currently grounded pending repairs and the solution of outstanding safety issues. Further aggravating the shuttle's return to space, also in August 2005, the Space Shuttle external tank construction site, Michoud Assembly Facility located in New Orleans, Louisiana was damaged by Hurricane Katrina, with all work shifts cancelled up to September 26, 2005. This could potentially set back further Shuttle flights by more than two months. The NASA Chief Administrator Michael Griffin has recently suggested the decision to develop the Space Shuttle and International Space Station was a mistake by saying, "It is now commonly accepted that was not the right path. We are now trying to change the path while doing as little damage as we can." [http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20050928/1a_bottomstrip28.art.htm]

History

The Shuttle decision

NASA had conducted a series of paper projects throughout the 1960s on the topic of reusable spacecraft to replace their expedient "one-off" systems like Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo. Meanwhile, the U.S. Air Force had a continuing interest in smaller systems with more rapid turn-around times, and were involved in their own spaceplane project, the X-20 Dyna-Soar. In several instances groups from both worked together to investigate the state of the art. With the major Apollo development effort winding down in the second half of the 1960s, NASA started looking to the future of the space program. They envisioned an ambitious program consisting of a large space station being launched on huge boosters, served by a reusable logistics "space shuttle", both providing services for a permanently manned Lunar colony and eventual manned missions to Mars. However, in reality, NASA found itself with a rapidly plunging budget. Rather than trying to adapt their long-term future to their dire financial situation, they attempted to save as many of the individual projects as possible. The mission to Mars was rapidly dismissed, but the Space Station and Shuttle conserved. Eventually only one of them could be saved, so it stood to reason that a low-cost Shuttle system would be the better option, because without it a large station would never be affordable. A number of designs were proposed, but many of them were complex and varied widely in their systems. An attempt to re-simplify was made in the form of the "DC-3" by one of the few people left in NASA with the political importance to accomplish it, Maxime Faget, who had designed the Mercury capsule, among other vehicles. The DC-3 was a small craft with a 20,000-pound (9 tonne) (or less) payload, a four-man capacity, and limited maneuverability. At a minimum, the DC-3 provided a baseline "workable" (but not significantly advanced) system by which other systems could be compared for price/performance compromises. Mercury The defining moment for NASA was when they, in desperation to see their only remaining project saved, went to the Air Force for its blessing. NASA asked that the USAF place all of their future launches on the Shuttle instead of their current expendable launchers (like the Titan II), in return for which they would no longer have to continue spending money upgrading those designs — the Shuttle would provide more than enough capability. The Air Force reluctantly agreed, but only after demanding a large increase in capability to allow for launching their projected spy satellites (mirrors are heavy). These were quite large, weighing an estimated 40,000 pounds (18 tonnes), and needed to be put into polar orbits, which require higher energies than lower inclination orbits; and since the Air Force also wanted to be able to abort after a single orbit (as did NASA), and in addition land at the launch site (unlike NASA), the spacecraft would also require the ability to maneuver significantly to either side of its orbital track to adjust for launch-point rotational drift while in polar orbit — for example, in a 90-minute orbit, Vandenberg AFB would drift over 1,000 miles (1,600 km), whereas in more equatorially aligned orbits, the required cross-range would be less than 250 mi/400 km. This large "cross-range" capability for polar orbits meant the craft had to have a greater lift-to-drag ratio than originally planned, requiring the addition of bigger, heavier wings. The result was that the simple "DC-3" was clearly irrelevant because it had neither the cargo capacity nor the cross-range the Air Force demanded. In fact, all existing designs were far too small, as a 40,000-pound (18 tonnes) delivery to polar orbit equates to a 65,000-pound (29 tonne) delivery to an eastwardly launched orbit with typical 28-degree inclination. Additionally, any design using simple straight or foldout wings was not going to meet the cross-range requirements, so any future design would require a more complex, heavier delta wing. Of further concern, any increase in the weight of the upper portion of a launch vehicle, which had just occurred, required an even bigger increase in the capability of the lower stage used to launch it. Suddenly, the two-stage system had grown in size to something larger than the Saturn V, and the complexity and costs to develop it soared. While all of this was going on, others were suggesting a completely different approach to the future. They stated that NASA would fare better using the existing Saturn to launch their space station, supplied and manned using modified Gemini capsules on top of the Air Force's newer Titan II-M. The cost of development for this looked to be considerably less than the Shuttle alone, and would have a large space station in orbit earlier. In reply, advocates of the Shuttle answered that given enough launches, a reusable system would more than pay for the cost of development when compared with the launch costs of disposable rockets. Another factor in the cost-benefit analysis was inflation, and in the 1970s this was high enough that the payback from the development had to happen very quickly to see a positive return. Hence, a high launch rate was needed to make the system economically feasible. But it was infeasible that a space station or Air Force payloads could demand such rates (roughly one or two a week), so they insisted and suggested that all future U.S. launches would take place on the Shuttle, once built. In order to do this, the cost of launching the Shuttle would have to be lower than any other system, with the exception of very small rockets, ignored for practical reasons, and very large boosters, which were rare and excessively expensive in any case. With a baseline project now gelling, NASA started to work through the process of obtaining stable funding for the five years the project would take to develop. Once again, they found themselves in an increasingly deplorable situation. With the budgets being pressed by inflation in the U.S. and the Vietnam War abroad, Congress and the Administration were generally uninterested in long-term projects such as space exploration. Some members were therefore looking to further cut NASA's budget; but with a single long-term project confirmed, they could do little in terms of cutting whole projects — the Shuttle was the single one left, and its cancellation would mean that there would be no U.S. manned space program by 1980. Instead, they looked to reduce the year-to-year costs of development to a stable figure. That is, they wished to see the development budgets spread out over several more years. This was somewhat impractical and in conflict with the planned funding and development. The result was another intense series of redesigns in which the reusable booster was eventually abandoned due to its high price. Unsurprisingly, some designs for reusable boosters amounted to vehicles the size of the then-new Boeing 747, which would have to fly faster than the record-holding — and considerably smaller — X-15 rocket plane. Instead, a series of simpler rockets would launch the system and then drop away for recovery. Another change was that the fuel for the Shuttle itself was placed in an external tank instead of internal tanks as in the previous designs. This allowed a larger payload bay in an otherwise much smaller craft, although it also meant throwing away the tankage after each launch. The last remaining debate was over the nature of the boosters. NASA had been looking at no less than four solutions to this problem: one a development of the existing Saturn lower stage, another using simple pressure-fed liquid-fuel engines of a new design, and finally either a large, single solid rocket, or two (or more) smaller ones. The decision was eventually made on the smaller solids due to their lower development costs (a decision that had been echoed throughout the whole Shuttle program). While the liquid-fueled systems provided better performance and enhanced safety, delivery capability to orbit is much more a function of the upper-stage performance and weight than the lower; the money was hence spent elsewhere.

Development

Vietnam War The Shuttle program was launched on January 5, 1972, when President Richard M. Nixon announced that NASA would proceed with the development of a reusable, low-cost Space Shuttle system. The project was already to take longer than originally anticipated due to the year-to-year funding caps. Nevertheless, work started quickly and several test articles were available within a few years. Most notable among these was the first complete Orbiter, originally to be known as Constitution. However, a massive write-in campaign from fans of the Star Trek television series convinced the White House to change the name to Enterprise. Amid great fanfare, the Enterprise was rolled out on September 17, 1976, and later conducted a successful series of glide-approach and landing tests that were the first real validation of the design. The first fully functional Shuttle Orbiter, built in Palmdale, California, was the Columbia, which was delivered to Kennedy Space Center on March 25, 1979, and was first launched on April 12, 1981—the 20th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's space flight—with a crew of two. Challenger was delivered to KSC in July 1982, Discovery was delivered in November 1983, and Atlantis was delivered in April 1985. The Shuttle was meant to visit Space Station Freedom, announced in 1984, an ambitious and much-delayed project later downsized and merged into the International Space Station program. Challenger was destroyed in an explosion during launch on January 28, 1986, with the loss of all seven astronauts on board. Endeavour was built to replace it (using spare parts originally intended for the other Orbiters) and delivered in May 1991. Columbia was lost, with all seven crew members, during reentry on February 1, 2003, and has not been replaced.

Description

2003 The Shuttle has a large 60 by 15 ft (18 by 4.6 m) payload bay, filling most of the fuselage. The payload bay doors have heat radiators mounted on their inner surfaces, and so are kept open for thermal control while the Shuttle is in orbit. Thermal control is also maintained by adjusting the orientation of the Shuttle relative to Earth and Sun. Inside the payload bay is the Remote Manipulator System, also known as the Canadarm, a robot arm used to retrieve and deploy payloads. Until the loss of Columbia, the Canadarm had been used only on those missions where it was needed. Since the arm is a crucial part of the Thermal Protection Inspection procedures now required for Shuttle flights, it will probably be included on all future flights. The Space Shuttle system has undergone numerous improvements over the years. The Orbiter has changed its thermal protection system several times in order to save weight and ease workload. The original silica-based ceramic tiles need to be removed for inspection for damage after every flight, and they also soak up water and thus need to be protected from the rain. The latter problem was initially fixed by spraying the tiles with Scotchgard, but a custom solution was adopted. Later, many of the tiles on the cooler portions of the Shuttle were replaced by large blankets of insulating feltlike material, which means huge areas (notably the cargo bay area) no longer have to be inspected as often. Internally the Shuttle remains largely similar to the original design, with the exception that the avionics continue to be improved. The original systems were "hardened" IBM 360 computers connected to analog displays in the cockpit similar to contemporary airliners like the DC-10. Today the cockpits have been replaced with "all glass" systems and the computers themselves are many times faster. The computers use the HAL/S programming language. In the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project tradition, programmable calculators are carried as well (originally the HP-41C). In addition to the "glass cockpit," several improvements have been made for safety reasons after the Challenger explosion, including a crew escape system for use in a narrow range of situations that require the Orbiter to "ditch." With the coming of the Space Station, the Orbiter's internal airlocks are being replaced with external docking systems to allow for a greater amount of cargo to be stored on the Shuttle's mid-deck during Station resupply missions. HP-41C The Space Shuttle Main Engines have had several improvements to enhance reliability and power. This is why during launch you may hear curious phrases such as "Go to throttle-up at 106%." This does not mean the engines are being run over limit. The 100% figure is the power level for the original main engines. The actual engine contract requirement was for 109%. The original flight engines could handle 102%. The 109% number was finally reached in flight hardware with the Block II engines in 2001. For STS-1 and STS-2 the external tank was painted white to protect the insulation that covers much of the tank, but improvements and testing showed that it was not required. This saved considerable weight, and thereby increases the payload the Orbiter can carry into orbit. Additional weight was saved by removing some of the internal "stringers" in the hydrogen tank that proved unnecessary. The resulting "light-weight external tank" has been used on the vast majority of Shuttle missions. STS-91 saw the first flight of the "super light-weight external tank". This version of the tank is made of the 2195 Aluminum-Lithium alloy. It weighs 7,500 lb (3.4 t) less than the last run of lightweight tanks. As the Shuttle cannot fly unmanned, each of these improvements has been "tested" on operational flights. And, of course, the SRBs (Solid Rocket Boosters) have undergone improvements as well. Notable is the adding of a third O-ring seal to the joints between the segments, which occurred after the Challenger accident. A number of other SRB improvements were planned in order to improve performance and safety, but never came to be. These culminated in the considerably simpler, lower cost, probably safer and better performing Advanced Solid Rocket Booster which was to have entered production in the early to mid-1990s to support the Space Station, but was later cancelled to save money after the expenditure of $2.2 billion. The loss of the ASRB program forced the development of the SLWT, which provides some of the increased payload capability, while not providing any of the safety improvements. In addition the Air Force developed their own much lighter single-piece design using a filament-wound system, but this too was cancelled. A cargo-only, unmanned variant of the Shuttle has been variously proposed and rejected since the 1980s. It is called the Shuttle-C and would trade re-usability for cargo capability with large potential savings from reusing technology developed for the Space Shuttle.

Components

The Space Shuttle consists of three main components: the reusable Orbiter itself, a large, brown, expendable external fuel tank, and a pair of white, reusable solid-fuel booster rockets. The fuel tank and booster rockets are jettisoned during ascent, so only the Orbiter goes into orbit.
- The reusable Orbiter Vehicle (OV), with a large payload bay and three main engines (fed from the external tank) and an orbital maneuvering system with two smaller engines (used after jettisoning the external tank). There are currently three orbiters, rotated between missions.
- A large expendable external fuel tank (ET) containing liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen (at the forward and aft ends, respectively) for the three main engines of the Orbiter; it is discarded 8.5 minutes after launch at an altitude of 60 nautical miles (111 km) and breaks up in the atmosphere upon reentry. The pieces fall in the ocean and are not recovered.
- A pair of reusable solid-fuel rocket boosters (SRB); the propellant consists mainly of ammonium perchlorate (oxidizer, 70% by weight) and aluminum (fuel, 16 %); they are separated two minutes after launch at a height of 36 nautical miles (67 km) and are recovered after landing in the ocean, their fall slowed by parachutes. Initial plans for the so-called Space Transportation System included space tugs and extra fuel tanks for the orbital-maneuvering-system engines, among many other concepts. None of this hardware has actually ever been built.

Technical data

parachute Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA), 1998 (NASA)]]
- System stack height: 184.2 ft (56.14 m)
- Orbiter length: 122.17 ft (37.236 m)
  - Wingspan: 78.06 ft (23.79 m)
- Gross liftoff: 4.5 million lb (2,040,000 kg)
  - ET: 1.7 million lb (751,000 kg)
  - SRBs: 1.3 million lb (590,000 kg) each (x 2)
  - Orbiter: 240,000 lb (109,000 kg)
- Total liftoff thrust: 7.82 million lbf (34.8 MN)
  - SSMEs: 400,000 lbf (1.8 MN) each (x 3) = 1.2 million lbf (5.3 MN)
  - SRBs: 3.30 million lbf (14.7 MN) each (x 2) = 6.61 million lbf (29.4 MN)
- Maximum landing: 230,000 lb (104,000 kg)
- Maximum launch payload: 63,500 lb (28,800 kg)
- Operational altitude: 100 to 520 nmi (185 to 1000 km)
- Speed: 25,404 ft/s (7743 m/s, 27 875 km/h, 17 321 mi/h)
- Passenger capacity: 10 Astronauts (crews other than 5 to 7 are uncommon)

Normal ascent

Initially the main engines are lit and checked out; if successful, the SRBs are lit and the vehicle is then committed to takeoff. At takeoff the vast majority (~90%) of the thrust is provided by the SRBs. Shortly after clearing the tower the Shuttle rotates so that the vehicle is below the main tank and SRBs. The vehicle climbs in a progressively flattening arc, accelerating as the weight of the SRBs and main tank reduces. To reach orbit, the vehicle needs to reach high altitude, but more importantly it needs to achieve mach 25 sideways, and so must spend as much time as possible accelerating horizontally. Around a point called "max-q", where the aerodynamic forces are at their maximum, the main engines are temporarily throttled back to avoid overspeeding and hence overstressing the Shuttle (particularly vulnerable parts such as the wings). 126 seconds after launch, the SRBs thrust reduces and then explosive bolts release them from the vehicle and they fall back to the ocean to be reused. The Shuttle then begins accelerating to orbit on the Space Shuttle Main Engines. The vehicle at that point in the flight has a thrust to weight ratio of less than one — the main engines actually have insufficient thrust to exceed the force of gravity, and the vertical speed given to it by the SRBs temporarily decreases. However, as the burn continues, the weight of the propellant reduces, the ever-lighter vehicle produces more and more acceleration until the thrust to weight ratio exceeds 1 again and the vehicle can hold itself up. The vehicle continues to climb and takes on a somewhat nose-up angle to the horizon — it uses the main engines to gain and then maintain altitude whilst it accelerates horizontally towards orbit. Finally, in the last tens of seconds towards the end of the main engine burn, the mass of the vehicle is low enough, that the acceleration is throttled back to keep the vehicle accelerating at no more than 3g, largely for astronaut health and comfort. Before complete depletion of propellant (running dry would destroy the engines) the main engines are shutdown, and the empty main tank is released by firing explosive bolts. The tank then falls to largely burn up in the atmosphere, with some fragments falling into the Indian Ocean. At this point the Shuttle is still slightly suborbital, since the trajectory intersects the atmosphere. The Shuttle then fires the OMS engines to circularize the orbit and avoid reentry.

Ascent abort modes

There are five abort modes available during ascent, classified as intact aborts and contingency aborts [http://www.shuttlepresskit.com/STS-93/REF86.htm]. The choice of abort mode depends on estimates of what the orbiter's situation would be at the time of main engine cutoff (TMECO). The abort modes cover a wide range of potential problems, but the most common expected problem is that the orbiter failing to achieve orbital speed by TMECO, technically known as "MECO underspeed".

Intact abort modes

There are four intact abort modes. Intact aborts are designed to provide a safe return of the orbiter to a planned landing site.
- Return To Launch Site (RTLS) — has never been tried, but would involve turning the Shuttle around while continuing to burn the SSMEs, jettisoning the ET, and gliding to a landing at Kennedy Space Center.
- East Coast Abort Landing (ECAL) — involves landing at predetermined locations on the east coast of North America in the U.S. and Canada. This has never occurred.
- Transoceanic Abort Landing (TAL) — involves landing at predetermined locations in Africa and western Europe. This has never occurred.
- Abort to Orbit (ATO) — occurs when the intended orbit cannot be reached but a stable alternate orbit is possible. This occurred on STS-51-F mission; required mission replanning, but the mission was nevertheless declared a success.
- Abort Once Around (AOA) — occurs when entering a stable orbit is not possible. This has never occurred.

Contingency abort mode

Contingency aborts are designed to permit flight crew survival following more severe failures when an intact abort is not possible. A contingency abort would generally result in a ditch operation. To the extent that the hydrogen and oxygen are not needed, they are used up deliberately to allow the ET to be discarded safely. The designated sites for ECAL are Bangor, Maine, Wilmington, North Carolina; MCAS Cherry Point, North Carolina; NAS Oceana; Wallops Flight Facility; Dover Air Force Base; Atlantic City, New Jersey; Gabreski, New York; Otis ANGB; Pease International Airport (all USA); Halifax; Stephenville; St John's; Gander; and Goose Bay (all Canada). A TAL would be declared between roughly T+2:30 minutes (liftoff plus 2 minutes, 30 seconds) and Main Engine Cutoff (MECO), about T+8:30 minutes. The Shuttle would then land at a predesignated friendly airstrip in Africa or Europe. Potential sites include Istres Air Base in France; Banjul International Airport in The Gambia; and Zaragoza Air Base and Morón Air Base in Spain. Prior to a Shuttle launch, two of them are selected depending on the flight plan, and staffed with standby personnel in case they are used. The list of TAL sites has changed over time; most recently Ben Guerir Air Base in Morocco was eliminated due to terrorism concerns. Past TAL sites have included Kano, Nigeria; Easter Island (for Vandenberg launches); Rota, Spain; Casablanca, Morocco; and Dakar, Senegal. Emergency landing sites for the Orbiter include Lajes, Beja, (both Portugal), Keflavik (Iceland), Shannon International Airport (Ireland), RAF Fairford (UK), Köln Bonn Airport (Germany), Ankara (Turkey), Riyadh (Saudi Arabia), Diego Garcia (British Indian Ocean Territory). Were the Orbiter unable to reach a runway, it could ditch in water, or could land on terrain other than a landing site. It would be unlikely for the flight crew still on board to survive. However, if the Orbiter ascent were aborted in a narrow set of circumstances in which controlled gliding flight could be achieved, the In-flight Crew Escape System would allow the crew to escape with parachutes. A special Escape Pole would take each crewmember on a trajectory beneath the Orbiter's left wing. In the two disasters, things went wrong so fast that little could be done. In the case of Challenger, the SRBs were still burning as they tore free from the rest of the stack. The orbiter disintegrated almost instantly because of aerodynamic stresses as the stack broke up. The Columbia disaster occurred high in the atmosphere during reentry. Even if the crew had been able to bail out, they would have been killed by the heat generated by the friction of the air.

Shuttles

Columbia disaster, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour. Not illustrated: Enterprise and Pathfinder.]] Individual Orbiters are both named, in a manner similar to ships, and numbered using the NASA Orbiter Vehicle Designation system. Whilst all three are externally very similar, they have minor internal differences; new equipment is fitted on a rotating basis as they are maintained, and the newer Orbiters tend to be structurally lighter.
- Handling test article designed with no spaceflight capability whatsoever:
  - Pathfinder (Orbiter Simulator, no series number)
- Main propulsion test article, with no spaceflight capability whatsoever:
  - MPTA-ET (External Tank) which is now attached to Pathfinder
  - MPTA-098 suffered major damage due to engine failure.
- Structural test article, with no spaceflight capability:
  - STA-099 which became Challenger
- Test vehicle suitable only for glide/landing tests, with no spaceflight capability without major refit:
  - Enterprise (OV-101)
- Lost in accidents (see below):
  - Challenger (OV-099, ex-STA-099) - destroyed after liftoff - January 28, 1986
  - Columbia (OV-102) - destroyed during reentry February 1, 2003
- In use:
  - Atlantis (OV-104)
  - Discovery (OV-103)
  - Endeavour (OV-105)

Applications


- Crew rotation of the ISS
- Manned servicing missions, such as to the Hubble Space Telescope (HST)
- Manned experiments in LEO
- Carry to LEO:
  - Large satellites — these have included the HST
  - Components for the construction of the ISS
  - Supplies
- Carry satellites with a booster, the Payload Assist Module (PAM-D) or the Inertial Upper Stage (IUS), to the point where the booster sends the satellite to:
  - A higher Earth orbit; these have included:
    - Chandra X-ray Observatory
    - Many TDRS satellites
    - Two DSCS-III (Defense Satellite Communications System) communications satellites in one mission
    - A Defense Support Program satellite
  - An interplanetary orbit; these have included:
    - Magellan probe
    - Galileo spacecraft
    - Ulysses probe

Flight statistics (as of August 25, 2005)

† Satellites deployed

- This was flight STS-80, during November 1996.

Accidents

Two Shuttles have been destroyed in 114 missions, both with the loss of the entire crew of seven:
- Challenger — lost 73 seconds after liftoff, January 28, 1986; see STS-51-L.
- Columbia — lost during reentry, February 1, 2003; see Space Shuttle Columbia disaster. This gives a 2% death rate per astronaut per flight. While the technical details of the accidents are quite different, the organisational problems show remarkable similarities. In both cases events happened which were not planned for or anticipated. In both cases, instead of dealing with the issue as unexpected and in need of complete explanation, at significant cost in time and money, the lazy attitude was to allow the unexpected events to happen as the damage done was not deemed to endanger the shuttle, although this was not actually known to be the case. In the case of Challenger, an O-ring which should not have eroded at all did, in fact, erode on earlier shuttle launches. Instead of finding out why, it was noted that it had not eroded by more than 30%, and the assumption was made was that this was not a hazard as there was a safety margin of a factor of 3. Despite repeated pleas by NASA's engineers to cancel or reschedule the launch, the managers allowed the shuttle to launch. Challenger's O-ring eroded right through, fatally, shortly after its last launch. Columbia failed as a consequence of damage caused by being struck by a piece of foam which broke off from the bipod during ascent. The foam had not been designed or expected to break off, but had been observed in the past to do so without incident.

Retrospect

Space Shuttle Columbia disaster

Costs

While the Shuttle has been a reasonably successful launch vehicle, it has been unable to meet its goal of radically reducing flight launch costs, as the average launch expenditures during its operations up to 2005 accumulates to $1.3 billion [http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/space_policy/], a rather large figure compared to the initial projections of $10 to $20 million. The total cost of the program has been $145 billion as of early 2005 ($112 billion of which was incurred while the program was operational) and is estimated at $174 billion when the Shuttle retires in 2010. NASA's budget for 2005 allocates 30%, or $5 billion, to Space Shuttle operations. [http://www.space.com/news/shuttle_cost_050211.html] The original mission of the Shuttle was to operate at a high flight rate, at low cost, and with high reliability. It was intended to improve greatly on the previous generation of single-use manned and unmanned vehicles. Although it did operate as the world's first reusable crew-carrying spacecraft, it did not improve on those parameters in any meaningful way, and is considered by some to have failed in its original purpose. Although the design is radically different from the original concept, the project was still supposed to meet the upgraded USAF goals, and to be much cheaper to fly in general. One reason behind this apparent failure appears to be inflation. During the 1970s the U.S. suffered from severe inflation, driving up costs about 200% by 1980. In contrast, the rate between 1990 and 2000 was only 34% in total. This magnified the development costs of the Shuttle. The original process by which contractors bid for Shuttle work has also inflated overall project costs as there were political and industrial pressures to spread Shuttle work around. For instance, the need for a single-piece SRB design was dismissed as only one company, Aerojet, was located close enough to the launch site to make this viable. The company that secured the SRB contract, Morton Thiokol, is based in Utah, necessitating the modular design that contributed to the Challenger loss. Ironically, the U.S. aerospace mergers of the 1990s mean that the vast majority of the STS contracts are now held by a single company (Boeing). However, this does not explain the high costs of the continued operations of the Shuttle. Even accounting for inflation, the launch costs on the original estimates should be about $100 million today. The remaining $400 million arises from the operational details of maintaining and servicing the Shuttle fleet, which have turned out to be tremendously more expensive than anticipated. Some of this can be attributed to operating beyond the 10-year anticipated lifespan of each Shuttle. The main reasons for higher costs can be ascribed to:
  • the reentry tiles turned out to be very expensive (averaging about 1 person week to replace a tile, with hundreds damaged with each launch)
  • engines were highly complex and marginal necessitating removal and maintenance after each flight
  • launch rate is much lower than ideal (studies showed that launching 50 times per year would have dramatically cut costs- the current shuttle launches about 4 times per year- the written record shows that NASA never installed any infrastructure to launch more than 12 times per year)
  • original costs of $118/lb were marginal costs, not total costs

    Shuttle operations

    When originally conceived, the Shuttle was to operate similarly to an airliner. After landing, the Orbiter would be checked out and start "mating" to the rest of the system (the ET and SRBs), and be ready for launch in as little as two weeks. Instead, this turnaround process takes months. Decisions to cut short-term development costs have resulted in a continued high-cost maintenance schedule. The documentation requirements have become extremely thorough. Dramatically increasing the number of support personnel needed to launch also caused a significant increase in costs. This was exacerbated in the aftermath of the Challenger disaster. Even simple changes require significant amounts of documentation. This paperwork results from the fact that, unlike current expendable launch vehicles, the Space Shuttle is manned and has no escape systems mode for most of the flight regime, and therefore any accident which would result in the loss of a booster would also result in the loss of the crew. Because loss of crew is unacceptable, the primary focus of the Shuttle program is to return the crew to Earth safely, which can conflict with other goals, namely to launch payloads cheaply. Furthermore, because there are cases where there are no abort modes — no potential way to prevent failure from becoming critical — many pieces of hardware simply must function perfectly and so must be carefully inspected before each flight. The result is a massively inflated labor cost, with around 25,000 workers in Shuttle operations and labor costs of about $1 billon per year. Initially NASA hoped the Shuttle's manned capacity would be justified as a "space taxi" to a revived Skylab or a Saturn V-launched "Skylab 2". With the go-ahead for the large, modular "Freedom" Space Station proposal the Shuttle appeared to have a continued justification with the prospect of a 6- to 10-crew outpost only being serviceable by the Shuttle. The scale back of the Space Station concept in the 1990s ultimately made the utility of the Shuttle as a manned ferry obsolete. NASA's justification of the STS for its own unmanned science missions has also declined. Following the Challenger disaster, use of the powerful Centaur upper stages required for interplanetary probes was ruled out. The Shuttle's history of unexpected delays also makes it liable to miss the narrow launch windows. Advances in technology over the last decade have made probes smaller and lighter, and as a result it is possible to reach Mars using a relatively cheap and reliable Delta launcher. Another possible impediment to the Shuttle system was the politically required participation of the United States Air Force. To receive the funding required, Congress mandated that the Shuttle replace all other launch vehicles in the national inventory as a cost-cutting measure. This requirement dramatically altered the size and scope of the program as the Air Force needed significant capabilities to allow it to meet national defense objectives. Ironically, neither NASA nor the Air Force got the system they wanted or needed, and the Air Force eventually returned to their older launch systems and abandoned their Vandenberg shuttle launch plans; many of the Air Force-imposed capabilities that most seriously hobbled the Shuttle system have never been used. Opinions differ on the lessons of the Shuttle. In general, however, future designers look to systems with only one stage, automated checkout and, in some cases, overdesigned (more durable) low-tech systems. Another consideration for future manned space flight is to pursue the construction and operation of "space planes", which could fly up to the edge of the atmosphere and then rocket out into Earth orbit, thereby being more efficient and versatile than such vehicles as the space shuttle.

    Terrestrial transportation vehicles


    - The Crawler-Transporter moves the Space Shuttle from the Vehicle Assembly Building to Launch Complex 39
    - The Shuttle Carrier Aircraft is a modified Boeing 747 that flies the Space Shuttle from alternative landing sites back to Cape Canaveral.

    See also


    - Space Exploration
    - Shuttle Derived Launch Vehicle
    - Reusable launch system
    - HOPE-X the Japanese (cancelled) shuttle program.
    - Kliper Reuseabe Russian lifting body spacecraft that is likely to replace the Soyuz system in 2011
    - EADS Phoenix the European Shuttle successor to the cancelled Hermes.
    - Shuttle Buran the Soviet Union's (cancelled) shuttle program.
    - Shuttle SERV
    - Manned space mission
    - List of space shuttle missions
    - List of human spaceflights
    - List of human spaceflights chronologically
    - List of space disasters
    - Lifting body
    - Space Shuttles in fiction

    References


    - [http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/technology/sts-newsref/stsref-toc.html Reference manual]
    - [http://science.howstuffworks.com/space-shuttle.htm How The Space Shuttle Works]
    - [http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19810022734_1981022734.pdf NASA Space Shuttle News Reference - 1981 (PDF document)]
    - [http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/resources/orbiters/orbiters.html Orbiter Vehicles]
    - [http://www.house.gov/science/hot/columbia/rs21411.pdf Shuttle Program Funding 1992 - 2002]

    External links


    - [http://www.chrisvalentines.com/sts107/index.html Columbia Disaster Multi-Media]
    - [http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/ NASA Human Spaceflight - Shuttle] Current status of Shuttle missions
    - [http://www.nasa.gov/ntv NASA TV] View live streaming of launch and mission coverage
    - [http://www.globalsecurity.org/space/facility/sts-els.htm List of all Shuttle Landing Sites]
    - [http://www.srh.noaa.gov/smg/lsitegif.htm Map of Landing Sites]
    - [http://gmaps.tommangan.us/spacecraft_tracking.html Track the Shuttle] with Google Maps
    - [http://www.idlewords.com/2005/08/a_rocket_to_nowhere.htm "A Rocket To Nowhere"] criticism of the Space Shuttle program
    - [http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/8004.easterbrook-fulltext.html "Beam Me Out Of This Death Trap, Scotty"] Critical article on the Space Shuttle program, from 1981
    - [http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200311/langewiesche "Columbia's Last Flight"] Article from the Atlantic Monthly on the Columbia disaster and the subsequent investigation
    - [http://www.spacedaily.com/news/shuttle-03p1.html "Explaining 30 years of Fudge"] - how the shuttle program was miss-sold to congress and where the $118/lb supposed costs came from ja:スペースシャトル th:กระสวยอวกาศ Category:Spaceplanes Category:Space launch vehicles Category:Space Shuttle program

    1945

    1945 (MCMXLV) was a common year starting on Monday (link will take you to calendar).

    Events

    January


    - January 5 - The Soviet Union recognizes the new pro-Soviet government of Poland.
    - January 7 - British General Bernard Montgomery holds a press conference at Zonhoven describing his contribution to the Battle of the Bulge.
    - January 12 - World War II: The Soviet Union begin a very large offensive in Eastern Europe against the Nazis.
    - January 13 - A Soviet patrol arrests Raoul Wallenberg in Hungary.
    - January 16 - Adolf Hitler moves into his underground bunker, the so-called Führerbunker
    - January 17 - World War II: Soviets occupy Warsaw
    - January 17 - Holocaust: Nazis begin to evacuate from Auschwitz concentration camp
    - January 20 - Franklin D. Roosevelt is inaugurated to an unprecedented fourth term as President of the United States.
    - January 20 - Hungary drops out of the Second World War, agreeing to an armistice with the Allies.
    - January 24 - First successful launch of the German A4b-Rocket
    - January 27 - The Red Army arrives at Auschwitz and Birkenau in Poland and find the Nazi concentration camp where 1.3 million people were murdered.
    - January 28 - World War II: Supplies begin to reach China over the newly reopened Burma Road.
    - January 30 - The Wilhelm Gustloff with about 10,000 Nazi troops and refugees from Gotenhafen in the Gdansk Bay sunk with three torpedoes from the Soviet submarine S-13. More 9,300 drowned in the Baltic Sea.
    - January 31 - Eddie Slovik is executed by firing squad for desertion, the first American soldier since the American Civil War and last to date to be executed for this offence.

    February


    - February 2 - World War II: President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill leave to meet with Soviet leader Joseph Stalin at the Yalta Conference.
    - February 3 - World War II: Russia agrees to enter the Pacific Theatre conflict against Japan.
    - February 4 - World War II: President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin begin the Yalta Conference (ends February 11)
    - February 6 - Reggae musician Bob Marley (Robert Nesta) is born at Nine Miles, St. Ann, Jamaica.
    - February 6 - French writer Robert Brasillach executed for collaboration with the Germans
    - February 7 - World War II: General Douglas MacArthur returns to Manila
    - February 9 - Walter Ulbricht becomes the leader of German communists in Moscow
    - February 10 - World War II: The SS General von Steuben sunk by the Soviet submarine S-13.
    - February 13 - World War II: Soviet Union forces capture Budapest, Hungary from the Nazis.
    - February 13 - World War II: The British Air Force bombs Dresden, Germany.
    - February 14 - Chile, Ecuador, Paraguay and Peru join the United Nations.
    - February 16 - World War II: American forces land on Corregidor island in the Philippines.
    - February 16 - American forces recapture the Bataan Peninsula
    - February 19 - World War II: Battle of Iwo Jima - about 30,000 United States Marines landed on Iwo Jima starting the battle.
    - February 21 - Last launch of an A4-rocket at Peenemünde
    - February 23 - World War II: Following the American victory at the Battle of Iwo Jima, a group of United States Marines reach the top of Mount Surabachi on the island and are photographed raising the American flag. The photo will later win a Pulitzer Prize.
    - February 23 - World War II: The capital of the Philippines, Manila, is liberated by American forces.
    - February 23 - World War II: Capitulation of German garrison in Poznań, city is liberated by Red Army and Polish forces.
    - February 24 - Egyptian Premier Ahmed Maher Pasha is killed in Parliament after reading a decree.

    March


    - March 1 - Jesse Holman Jones starts his term of office as U.S. Secretary of Commerce, serving under President Franklin D. Roosevelt
    - March 2 - Launch of the Natter from Stetten am kalten Markt. The Natter was the first manned rocket and developed as anti-aircraft weapon. The launch failed and the pilot died.
    - March 3 - World War II: Previously neutral Finland declares war on the Axis powers.
    - March 3 - A possible experimental atomic test blast occurs at the Nazis' Ohrdruf military testing area [http://www.recorder.ca/cp/World/050314/w031435A.html].
    - March 6 - Communist-led government formed in Romania
    - March 7 - World War II: American troops seize the bridge over the Rhine River at Remagen, Germany and begin to cross.
    - March 8 - Josip Broz Tito forms a government in Yugoslavia
    - March 9-March 10 - World War II: American B-29 bombers attack Japan with incendiary bombs. Tokyo is fire-bombed killing 100,000 citizens.
    - March 16 - World War II: The Battle of Iwo Jima ends but small pockets of Japanese resistance persist.
    - March 17 - World War II: Japanese city of Kobe is fire-bombed by 331 B-29 bombers, killing over 8,000.
    - March 18 - World War II: 1,250 American bombers attack Berlin.
    - March 19 - World War II: Adolf Hitler orders that all industries, military installations, shops, transportation facilities and communications facilities in Germany be destroyed.
    - March 19 - Off the coast of Japan, bombers hit the aircraft carrier USS Franklin, killing 800 of her crew and crippling the ship.
    - March 21 - World War II: British troops liberate Mandalay, Burma
    - March 22 - The Arab League was formed with the adoption of a charter in Cairo, Egypt.
    - March 30 - World War II: Soviet Union forces invade Austria and take Vienna. Alger Hiss congratulated in Moscow for his part in bringing about the Western betrayal at the Yalta Conference.
    - From February 14, 1936, to March 1, 1945, AG Weser launched a total of 162 U-boats.

    April


    - April 1 - World War II: United States troops land on Okinawa in the last campaign of the war. The Battle of Okinawa starts.
    - April 4 - World War II: American troops liberate Ohrdruf death camp in Germany.
    - April 7 - World War II: The Japanese battleship Yamato is sunk 200 miles north of Okinawa while in-route to a suicide mission.
    - April 9 - Abwehr conspirators Wilhelm Canaris, Hans Oster, and Hans Dohanyi are hanged at Flossenberg concentration camp along with pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
    - April 10 - The Allied Forces liberated their first Nazi concentration camp, Buchenwald.
    - April 12 - United States President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1933-1945) dies in office; Vice President Harry S. Truman (1945-1953) takes the Oath of Office.
    - April 15 - Bergen-Belsen concentration camp liberated.
    - April 16 - World War II: The Goya sunk by the Soviet submarine L-3.
    - April 25 - Founding negotiations of United Nations in San Francisco
    - April 25 - World War II: Elbe Day, United States and Russian troops link up at the Elbe River, cutting Germany in two
    - April 27 - U.S. Ordinance troops find the coffins of Frederick Wilhelm I, Frederick the Great,