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Decades Without Leadership Leaves US Space Policy Visionless

the space program was wrecked decades ago
 by Charles P. Vick
 Washington - Apr 14, 2003
The future of the manned space effort is in question unless we recognize certain realities which the United States leadership to date have both politically and Science & Technology policy wise have been unwilling to address.

At no time have unmanned scientific programs been allowed to wag the tail of the manned programs and vice versa. Indeed that policy has been and remains the rule in which unmanned precursors are used in support of future manned exploration development and it is not going to change because with out human beings there is no science.

Also where the humans are is where the political, economic support goes. We must recognize why we have been doing these large Science & Technology projects in the West, which is rarely if ever explained.

It has been the plan since the Eisenhower and subsequent Kennedy administrations if not earlier in the Truman administration to do the following. To apply about 40% of the available funds to push the basic sciences to push the basic technologies utilizing about 60% of the available funding to push the national economy and to provide for the Citizenry well being.

Above all it is to provide for the National Security of the nation by keeping the USA technologically ahead of the rest of the world that opposes our social system by two to two and one half generations strategically.

To a large degree we today are still benefiting from this policy that matured during the 1960's and early 1970's but since then it has been faltering (except for the SDI period) to a larger degree than one can feel comfortable with regardless of the independently developed military institutions used in part to address this policy.

In short, NASA is the basic organization helping to maintain this strategic S & T National Security balance and it has not been able to maintain it to the level required because of the consistent lack of appropriate support since the early 1970's and we are paying dearly for compromising our own selves for this right now if not in the long run.

The most vivid examples of this lies in the Space Transportation Systems technology and commercial aircraft industry support and the lessons learned that this government for every administration in office from the early 1970s has failed to display the leadership with vision required of this strategic policy that can not further endure the assault on it with out jeopardizing US National Security.

Some five times this nation has attempted to produce an economically viable fully reusable space shuttle system since the early 1970s and five times we have fallen on our face for the effort simply spinning our wheels going no place fast because we are not technologically there in the critical Science and Technological area's as the sitting NASA administrator has made painfully clear as he redirected the Space Launch Initiative.

First in the late 1960s early 1970s, we attempted to develop the two stage fly back shuttle system which the then sitting Nixon administration was not about to support. It had the same technological problems that later systems faced and failed to master.

Second, to paraphrase Dr. George Mueller in a Washington Conference in recent years, We then "got the shuttle we have today from the Bureau of the budget, Design Bureau" that NASA did not want, that was not cheaper than Saturn-V. Of course it fit the politically correct contractors desired for the required political payoff and anything with John F. Kennedy's name on it that was competitive with the Soviets had to go of course for D�tente sake.

Oh and by the way they could not allow Saturn-V to remain in production because it was cheaper quicker and more reliable than the shuttle we were then and are now still stuck with which was not intended to replace Saturn-V.

Shuttle also came at the expense as a ruse for the Soviets to copy the West's technology trait of the then existing Soviet leadership that really strained that science fiction economic system at the expense of N1-L3M.

The Soviet leadership was not up to the vision of Korolev & Mishin that would have placed the Soviets ahead of the Americans establishing a lunar base while we wasted our time with the technologically inadequate space shuttle.

They as well as our selves should have explored the limits of the sciences and technologies involved before committing to its development. So Saturn-V, which was becoming cheaper and more reliable with time, was put out of production well short of the intended 74 boosters originally envisioned.

The U.S. then tried the NASP National Aerospace Plane single stage Shuttle launch vehicle which is what it actually was (It was not a commercial transport) for its third attempt during the Reagan era but that administration had no intentions of completing it beyond pushing the Materials sciences, Propulsion and flight avionics technology for the military for such a grossly expensive launch system. It remains unknown officially which Black Programs if any benefited from this effort.

Then the U.S. attempted to develop the X-33 single stage to orbit space transportation system for our fourth attempt using the un-flown Aero-spike propulsion system technology.

It ran into the Soviet aero-spike N1 propulsion lessons as well as the composite hydrogen tank problems that we initially tried to develop back in the early 1970s.

NASA should have explored the limits of the sciences and technologies involved before committing to its development. Another grossly expensive system was stopped after the technological problem caused cost overruns.

This should have been forecasted because if you are not prepared to put out that which is required to make the Scientific & Technological break thoughts you are not going to move forward on the National security front as you must.

The NASA Industry partnership has consistently from the late 1960s and early 1970s been dammed if they did, and dammed if they did not lay out the reality of what it was going to take to get the S & T job done.

NASA was lucky to get appropriations from one year to the next much less over five to seven to ten or fifteen years required to make those technological breakthroughs that keeps us ahead of the rest of the world. I think NASA and Industry earnestly tried to do the job but it was an unrealistic game in futility.

Indeed to get Freedom Station that evolved into ISS they had to essentially tell a fib about the true cost to get the job done just to get administration approval. Thus they only advertised what it would cost to build it on Earth but not the launch, assemble and operational cost.

Oh and let us not forget the cry of the Republican apology to the space industry in the 1970s and 1980s that free enterprise is the answer to reducing the cost and complexity of space travel.

The repeated failures of these free enterprise efforts and their failure to combine their efforts and resources to take on the repeatedly displayed complex difficulty of rocket sciences invalidated that bad balderdash political joke for what it is a lie in the face of the technological reality of yesterday and today.

Finally we attempted to return to the two or three stage fly-back shuttle system for the fifth attempt under the Space Launch Initiative only to realize we were years from perfecting the materials sciences, propulsion systems and fabrication technology to make such a system possible much less economically viable.

In short, unfortunately we have been spinning our wheels going no place fast since the early 1970s because we were technologically not there in the critical Scientific and Technological arenas as the sitting NASA administrator has made so painfully clear as he redirected the Space Launch Initiative.

At the same time he was trying to retain some semblance of a critical Propulsion Initiative with no directed application in order to absorb the lessons learned from the crown jewels of Russian technology the Russian Rocket engine material science and technology to make up for over 25-30 years of National neglect.

As the person who did the initial background briefing in Huntsville Alabama in the last half of the 1980s on Russian Rocket Engine technology that brought that technology to the United States to be applied to U.S. and Japanese launch vehicles, be it understood that we must learn these lessons before we can build any future replacement for Shuttle which is years from being accomplished to the level of reusability required that the Soviets/Russians had already achieved.

It is too bad this effort was not directed to develop improved closed cycle versions of the engines used on the original Saturn-V to apply to an improved Saturn-V that would use multiple contractors with more experience with the Russian technology that could eventually be applied to a real shuttle several decades down the road.

To again paraphrase Dr. George Mueller, "If we can not launch Shuttle often enough to make it economically viable then we would have been better off to have stayed with Saturn-V."

The Shuttle system has correctly been characterized as "a very dangerous, grossly expensive, very confining inflexible system" that the American space program can ill afford.

Unfortunately we are at the present time dependent on the Space Shuttle to finish the assembly of the ISS but once that is completed Shuttle should be grounded and replaced by a more flexible launch vehicle system like a modernized Saturn-V.

A further expansion of the ISS should also consider in the near term combining the Evolutionary Expendable launch vehicle, EELV with a revised reusable ICM revised to a space tug tasking for station modules logistics.

Saturn-V could be launched on time on demand with greater flexibility than any shuttle system will ever give us at a level of safe reliability unsurpassed (Which in pure economic terms makes the system more economical or less costly by any standard) by any manned launch system except possibly Soyuz at a consistently far cheaper price than any shuttle system would ever allow.

To paraphrase John F. Kennedy if we are not prepared to do what is required to get the job done it would be better that we not go at all. I submit that that decision has long since been made we are committed and it had better not change.

In short, the political leadership of the United States had better get its S & T support act together and let us be about the business of putting and improved version of Saturn-V and an accelerated modernized Apollo-II, ISS applicable, lunar, Mars capable spacecraft with a six or seven person capacity back into production as a part of the orbital space plane effort and requiring Saturn-V's support infrastructure once ISS construction is completed and the remaining shuttle fleet is grounded to meet all challenges from our would be opponents such as China to get us back on track with our partners to where we belong as the leading space fairing power which the American people demand.

This article is copyright 2003 Charles P. Vick, All Rights Reserved
Original Version March 13, 2003: updated April 04, 2003

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