Stop shuttle after Hubble repair?

[Dr Mordrid]

Robert Zubrin, an astronautical engineer, is president of the Mars Society.

In this SPACE.com opinion piece he proposes shutting down the shuttle program after the Hubble repair mission and using the funds to get an early start on CEV and a heavy launch vehicle. I cannot argue with his logic.

Space.com article

Griffin’s HLV design will be able to deliver 125 metric tons to low Earth orbit. The shuttle can only deliver 20 tons. With a single launch then, the HLV will be able to deliver as much payload as the shuttle program can during a year — and that’s during a good year.

Compared to current shuttle launch rates, which will have managed only one flight between February 2003 and February 2006, (at a cost of $15 billion), the HLV will be able to launch in an afternoon everything the shuttle program would be able to launch for the next 18 years.

Operating the shuttle program for the next five or six years to deliver a few space station payloads early will cost us $30 billion. All that money could be saved simply by shutting the shuttle down after Hubble repair, and shifting the shuttle program funds over to immediate development of the HLV and the other Lunar exploration hardware elements. We could then use the HLV to complete the space station and reach the Moon by 2012 instead of 2018.

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina and the financial burdens it will impose on the nation, gratuitously wasting $30 billion of the taxpayers’ money in order to dogmatically fulfill an old scriptural document is unacceptable. The new NASA architecture is a good plan for implementing a flawed policy. We need a good policy. We have real talent at NASA now, and we should make use of it to revise the policy itself.

Dr. Mordrid

[VJ]

Robert Zubrin, an astronautical engineer, is president of the Mars Society.

In this SPACE.com opinion piece he proposes shutting down the shuttle program after the Hubble repair mission and using the funds to get an early start on CEV and a heavy launch vehicle. I cannot argue with his logic.

Well, as much as the Hubble has done (and still does), I wonder if it justifies keeping the space shuttle program alive. Wouldn't it be better to abandon Hubble, and not invest in the shuttle program?
IIRC, a Hubble successor is in the works (very early stage though).


Jörg

[Dr Mordrid]

I agree with you, but as you know many people have an emotional investment in Hubble that is IMO clouding their reasoning.

If I were NASA's God I'd shut down the shuttle NOW and start on that heavy lifter ASAP. The next move would be to get cracking on the CEV, with lots of contact between NASA and the Rutan/Scaled Composites & t/SPACE people. As usual their ideas are among the most interesting under discussion.

Yes: building a new, more powerful telescope costs a fraction of what a Hubble repair mission would cost because of the changes in technology over the last 20 years. In fact many are now in orbit doing great things and the JWST (James Webb Space Telescope) is to follow in just a few years.

Dr. Mordrid

[KRSESQ]

I pushed virtually every one of those arguments 15 years ago when I campaigned for re-deployment of the Saturn 5 or development of a shuttle-derived HLV. No one in charge paid any attention then, either.

The S-D HLV design flashed around by NASA today is the same design floating around then and nearly 10 years previously. I think it has about as much likelihood of reaching hardware phase now as it did then. NASA is bound and determined to make itself irrelevant at any cost.

Kevin

[Nowhere]

When is this Hubble repair mission scheduled anyway? Perhaps Herschell will be up at about the same time...