TFARCHIVE FORUMS

I assert that it is a waste of money that needs to be replaced now. But rather than make a case for it, I'll be lazy and wait until there's a dissenting opinion to address.

The way NASA does things is not necessarily the only way, or cheapest way, or best way, to do things.

That's what the commercialization of space flight is supposed to help remedy.

To the junk heap with them!

Originally posted by Clay
That's what the commercialization of space flight is supposed to help remedy.

That's also why the news of the X Prize was buried in the paper.

Originally posted by fort_max
That's also why the news of the X Prize was buried in the paper.

?

Explain. The caffiene is starting to wear off.

They'll be falling apart soon (if they aren't already)...

Originally posted by Clay
?

Explain. The caffiene is starting to wear off.

Okay. Here's the basics (being as my memory sucks).

Last summer, several corporate types won the one million dollar "X Prize" by taking the first privately owned space craft into orbit twice. Now, obviously, this was a huge step forward when it comes to civilian space travel, but there was hardly any coverage whatsoever.

Why? Because a story like this brings into sharp contrast NASA's inability to have a single launch without months of technical difficulties.

Originally posted by fort_max
Why? Because a story like this brings into sharp contrast NASA's inability to have a single launch without months of technical difficulties.

Right, because rolling wildly out of control on ascent is exactly how I want to make my first flight into space...which is exactly what happened on the second launch of Spaceship One. :rolleyes:

And I don't know...personally, I think Spaceship One got a crap load of attention and news. All the major news stations carried live coverage of all three launches and landings. I know we were excited for it around here.

See, the thing is, NASA is needed to pave the way into further spaceflight because...the experimental and developement phases of such programs are not immediately profitable and therefore will never be picked up by the private sector.

The government is needed to get things started, and once it gets to a point where it can become profitable, the private sector should get in and take over, then NASA can move on to the next step.

Originally posted by saysadie
They'll be falling apart soon (if they aren't already)...

The shuttles aren't the problem...they've never been the problem.

Basically, Shuttle's about all we've got left, and it's our duty as a species to see what's out there. I do think the current fleet are derepid [what the Hell was Columbia doing in orbit at age 20+? Half the RAF's stuff is newer than that?], and costing a huge amount to maintain. I think the current fleet should be scrapped, and a couple of modified orbiters should be made. I do admit that it's different for me to say, because my taxes aren't paying for them. In an ideal world, NASA's budget would come out of the military, and be multi-nationally funded.

Space travel I don't see how it can be a waste of money, really. The way it's carried out isn't brilliant - we've effetively been going backwards to some extent since 1969 - but I agree to some extent that the current programme needs a major overhaul.

Originally posted by Cliffjumper
I do think the current fleet are derepid [what the Hell was Columbia doing in orbit at age 20+? Half the RAF's stuff is newer than that?], and costing a huge amount to maintain. I think the current fleet should be scrapped, and a couple of modified orbiters should be made.

20 years old is not that old for an aircraft...especially for one that gets refurbished after every flight. Also Columbia had the least number of flights of the whole fleet (aside from Endeavour). The only thing that was really old on the Columbia was it's structure, which was fine (until the plasma snuck in past the RCC and melted it away).

These bad boys are pristine in the operational sense of the word. Sure they don't look like much from the outside, but that's because there's no need to replace all the tile after every entry.

These birds are well taken care of, I don't care that they were originally built in the 1970s/1980s...there's nothing wrong with the shuttle itself. They even have brand new avionics systems and computer innerfaces (although they're still using rather old computers to run them...but they're a helluva lot more reliable).

What I would like to see in the next generation heavy lift reusable vehicle...that would be a single stage to orbit vehicle like the VentureStar (in a few years when materials technology has caught up with the ambition of that vehicle). Of course, I don't see there really being a true "replacement" for the space shuttle for a long time.

See, 20 years isn't old for an aircraft, no. But then most of the first world's [to use an old term] aircraft's most thorough work-out is an airshow, not re-rentry. I don't really think anything from military aircraft with regard to longenvity can be applied to Shuttle. The problems with Columbia and now Discovery lend weight to this, really. If there's nothing wrong with them, why have two successive missions had problems? Especially when you consider I doubt we'll be told the full extent of Discovery's woes.

Originally posted by Cliffjumper
Especially when you consider I doubt we'll be told the full extent of Discovery's woes.

I can tell you right now, Discovery's woes are pretty minimal. (at first glance...after it gets back to the Cape, more will be known as it goes through its post flight inspection process).

Please don't mis-understand me though...the shuttles are great. Some of its support systems (ET, SRB) are not so much. But I'm not sure what they expect. It's foam! Very light styrafoam-ish foam. Going Mach 10 and above, what kind of aerodynamic properties do they expect it to have? LOL!

Seriously though...that needs to be taken care of. That was a big damn piece. I've seen some reports...I'm looking forward to seeing what comes of the investigation.

And really...if you know where to look...NASA is pretty close to the most transparent (if not the most transparent) governmental agency we have (relatively speaking, of course).

The shuttles are not "great" by any means. They're the space program's answer to the Bradley Fighting Vehicle; a program that doesn't know what the hell it wants to be. The US Air Force and NASA got together and created a spacecraft with both scientific and military purposes, so it isn't good at either one.

For all the hype behind the shuttles' capabilities, where's the results? Sure, it can haul huge and heavy cargo into space... but when does it? If you check, you'll find the shuttle has been loaded to full weight capacity about once in its' entire history. Filling the cargo bay's entire volume? Never happened, as far as I known.

What you must remember is that the shuttle was supposed to make money, not lose money. NASA was going to rake-in the cash by sending up payloads for private companies... then again, the entire shuttle program was also only going to cost $400 million and it was going to have a launch every week.

Plus, of course, the shuttle is incredibly fragile. It's most critical system, the Thermal Protection System, is the only part of it that cannot have redundancy. Even the slighest incident can lead to a fatal flaw for the shuttle and once damaged, there's basically nothing that can be done. Their tile patch kit can only fix a small amount of damage to, at the most, a handful of tiles. Right now, they've yet to determine if those kits even work in the vacuum of space, nevermind actual reentry. And in the event of tile loss, those kits are completely worthless; you can't patch-up what you dropped at around 40 miles above earth.

And there's other complaints, such as the waste of drop tanks every mission or unpowered landings that allow for absolutely no error. Compare that to the soviet shuttle Buran... it had engines for a powered landing, it had greater cargo capacity, its' booster assembly was designed to be completely reusable (though only the discardable version was ever made), it's booster could be augmented for extremely long range missions (supposedly, all the way to Mars!), it's scalable, it used safer liquid propellants instead of SRB, and it's thermal tiles were much more resistant to damage. In fact, the launch of Buran occured in what was described as "bad weather"... correct me if I'm wrong, but the STS can't even pass through a cloud, due to risk of moisture damage, right? And for all its' advantages over STS, Buran was a copy of the STS from the early eighties. Imagine what could be done, if you started fresh...

The Space Transport System is an antiquated notion from 1972. It was only supposed to last ten years anyway. And Nasa hopes to push it all the way to 2025. Too much setimentallity and not enough rationallity. Upgrades can only do so much; replacement is inevitable. It's time for a new design, something that can take full advantage of scientific progress from the last 33 years.

Look at it this way; the awesome X-33 project got just 1 billion dollars for development. It ran out of money and was cancelled, citing structural problems with the fuel tank. NASA wants to blow 12x that amount on another 20 shuttle missions, and that's just if it runs to 2010. Materials science already has an answer for the X-33 and its' big brother; Carbon Nanofibers. 100x the strength of our best structural steel, 1/6th the weight, and hard as diamond. The only problem is cost... but a few billion would probably make those fibers easier to produce. Certainly enough for a few spaceplanes. The ultimate boon of space travel is that the technologies developed for it will eventually trickle-down to the average joe. Or at least that's what they say. The program is worth it just for the fringe benefit; carbon nanofibers will definitely be useful for society at large. Much more useful than the foam-glass they use on the space shuttle... which I don't think is sold to civilians anyway, because nobody has any "need" for such a material.

It is time to stop settling for the best 1972 had to offer. It's time for the next generation. It's time we spent the big money now and get our spaceship right instead of spending even bigger money over time trying to correct for the problems that developed due to skimping on the funding.

Originally posted by Snake
The ultimate boon of space travel is that the technologies developed for it will eventually trickle-down to the average joe. Or at least that's what they say. The program is worth it just for the fringe benefit; carbon nanofibers will definitely be useful for society at large.

Air travel trickle-down scheduled for 2008?:

http://www.idfuel.com/index.php?p=162&more=1&c=1

How many active shuttles does NASA have?
IIRC they have 2 left and NASA expects 2 ships to finish the space
station.
I think it's stupid to waste money to upgrade a ship that has been
upgraded to its limit.
NASA needs to bite the bullet and start to building a new (and hopfully better) generation of space shuttles if they ever hope to do anything like go back to the moon or go to Mars.

Don't they have Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour left?

God, Atlantis had a lame name. Mind, they gave Challenger a ****ing superb name

Originally posted by Snake
For all the hype behind the shuttles' capabilities, where's the results? Sure, it can haul huge and heavy cargo into space... but when does it? If you check, you'll find the shuttle has been loaded to full weight capacity about once in its' entire history. Filling the cargo bay's entire volume? Never happened, as far as I known.

I'm not sure if it has been filled to capacity. I know it will in four flights. STS-117 will be the max load the shuttle can carry. The S3/S4 truss is so heavy that food and clothing that would normally be launched with the crew will be prepositioned on the station (mind its only about 3 or 4 days worth of clothing and food). Originally, it wasn't going to be that heavy, but they've added a PVR (photo-volactic radiator...I think I spelled that right) full up on amonia. It was an incredibly heavy addition, but it was deemed better to launch that truss segment with a full radiator than to relocate one that is currently attached to the P6 truss.

The Chandra X-ray telecsope utelized the full size of the payload bay (although I doubt it also pushed the shuttle's max weight limit). Hubble was another satellite that utilized the shuttle's size.

For weight limits, you have to understand that when flights are manifested, early on there are ascent performance buffers (essentially built in weight limits) that have to be adhered to. The closer and closer launch gets, the smaller tha buffer is. It makes sure that the program offices can't overload the shuttle and helps to protect launch dates throughout the year. This wasn't so important with non-station missions, but with station missions, everything depends on ascent performance. If you don't get a perfect launch, say you have an underspeed or some other problem, it could be FD4 or even FD5 before you can catch up with the station...which would really put a damper on the mission...right off the bat you've lost one EVA.

Originally posted by Snake
What you must remember is that the shuttle was supposed to make money, not lose money. NASA was going to rake-in the cash by sending up payloads for private companies... then again, the entire shuttle program was also only going to cost $400 million and it was going to have a launch every week.

Unfortunatley, the STS-51L accident ended all that. President Reagan decreed that the shuttle would no longer deliver payloads to space for the private industry. It still did scientific experiments for private companies...but no more payload deployments.

Originally posted by Snake
Plus, of course, the shuttle is incredibly fragile. It's most critical system, the Thermal Protection System, is the only part of it that cannot have redundancy.

The shuttle isn't fragile. The shuttle is incredibly robust. The tiles are somewhat fragile, but what isn't to micrometeoroides (or a piece of foam traveling at Mach 1)? When testing for this unpresedented EVA during the last mission, they put an astronaut in a space suit (well, half a space suit) here on the ground and had him run at the tile board they'd set up. He didn't damage it at all. Now, I will say, that did surprise me...but certainly made me feel better about putting an astronaut out there under the vehicle.

I don't misunderstand, the criticality of the damage to the TPS is wholly dependent on where the damage is. Anything on the leading edge, of course, is bad. The further forward the damage is, the worse it is. And anything on or near the wheel well or ET attachment doors could be bad. Although not all (don't know if you saw the tiles on the nose landing gear door after re-entry, but the piece of tape...or whatever that was right there...that was exposed didn't even burn away...although it was slightly blackened on one side).

Originally posted by Snake
And there's other complaints, such as the waste of drop tanks every mission or unpowered landings that allow for absolutely no error.

Good thing there are smart people working on re-entry to take care of the worries of no error. It's all about energy conservation and bleeding. Pretty ingenious, in my opinion.

Originally posted by Snake
Compare that to the soviet shuttle Buran... it had engines for a powered landing, it had greater cargo capacity, its' booster assembly was designed to be completely reusable (though only the discardable version was ever made), it's booster could be augmented for extremely long range missions (supposedly, all the way to Mars!), it's scalable, it used safer liquid propellants instead of SRB, and it's thermal tiles were much more resistant to damage. In fact, the launch of Buran occured in what was described as "bad weather"... correct me if I'm wrong, but the STS can't even pass through a cloud, due to risk of moisture damage, right?

The shuttle can fly in bad weather...we just choose not too. The Buran was supposed to be able to do a lot of things. What it did, was nothing the shuttle can't do. If the Soviets had funded the Buran properly, it may have been able to do a lot of things (I still don't believe they could have gotten it to Mars...they couldn't even get a space craft large enough for humans to the Moon). As for its inflight engines, yeah, I'd like to see how well the shuttle or Buran flew powered. The thing has the aerodynamic properties of a brick. LOL!

Originally posted by Snake
Imagine what could be done, if you started fresh...

Don't get me wrong...I want a new shuttle. I was highly disappointed when the X-33/VentureStar program was canceled. But what could they do? It was too ambitious...material science hasn't quite caught up to that yet. At least not for the money they were spending on it.

Originally posted by Snake
It ran out of money and was cancelled, citing structural problems with the fuel tank.

Granted, I didn't work on this project, but from what I understand, it wasn't a structural problem, it was a weight issue. They couldn't make the tank light enough and strong enough at the same time. (oh...okay, I guess that could be construed as a structural problem)

Originally posted by Snake
Materials science already has an answer for the X-33 and its' big brother; Carbon Nanofibers. 100x the strength of our best structural steel, 1/6th the weight, and hard as diamond. The only problem is cost... but a few billion would probably make those fibers easier to produce.

Well, like I said above, for the amount being spent, it couldn't become a reality. You can only work with what you're given. NASA has very wide spectrum of what it does, not just manned space flight.

But the shuttle can do the job. Hell, it's finally doing the job it was designed to do: build the space station. And now people want to shut it down before it can finish its job.

Originally posted by Snake
It is time to stop settling for the best 1972 had to offer. It's time for the next generation. It's time we spent the big money now and get our spaceship right instead of spending even bigger money over time trying to correct for the problems that developed due to skimping on the funding.

I want a new space plane as well. Because the shuttle can't last forever. And I don't think it has anything to do with misplaced nostalgia or anything. We're working with what we've got. But there won't be another space plane...at least not for a long time. The next vehicle won't be a space plane, and I doubt it will be re-usable (although that has yet to be seen). A space plane isn't going to do you much good when you're trying to land without a runway.

Anyway, you've hit the nail on the proverbial head, so to speak. Money. NASA doesn't have much of it (even though it wins awards every year for being one of the most effecient government programs with its money...not sure how they grade this though...). And people don't want to increase NASAs budget because the return is not immediate in their eyes. Although a quick trip to nasa.gov's Spinoff page would show them how much better their life is thanks to technologies developed for or by NASA.

Originally posted by Cyberstrike nTo
How many active shuttles does NASA have?
IIRC they have 2 left and NASA expects 2 ships to finish the space
station.

Three, and yes, thank you very much.

Originally posted by Cyberstrike nTo
NASA needs to bite the bullet and start to building a new (and hopfully better) generation of space shuttles if they ever hope to do anything like go back to the moon or go to Mars.

Right, because that's exactly what we need, a space plane to land on the moon. That'll be a neat trick without a runway. :rolleyes:

Not that I'm so keen on the tiny capsule idea either...

Originally posted by Snake
It is time to stop settling for the best 1972 had to offer. It's time for the next generation. It's time we spent the big money now and get our spaceship right instead of spending even bigger money over time trying to correct for the problems that developed due to skimping on the funding.

Truer words never said... What we need is another space race. Perhaps if we can convince Dubya that Bin Laden has his own space program?

Originally posted by Brimstone I'm not sure if it has been filled to capacity. ...right off the bat you've lost one EVA.

That huge cargo bay is basically the whole point of the shuttle. Ever seen NASA's original shuttle design, before the Airforce got their hands on it? That's why it's glass-coated in the first place; the cargo bay's (and thus the shuttle's overall) size and likely payload weight preclude metal shielding (well, that and those big-assed main engines.) For argument's sake, let's say that the truss and both satellites fill the shuttle's capacity in both weight and volume each time. That's still less than 3% of launches going up with with either full weight or volume.

The shuttle was supposed to be carrying lots of cargo in each flight. But it doesn't, just like it's supposed to make profit carrying payloads, but doesn't. Most flights launch with comparitively little cargo. It's pretty sad.

Unfortunatley, the STS-51L accident ended all that. President Reagan decreed that the shuttle would no longer deliver payloads to space for the private industry. It still did scientific experiments for private companies...but no more payload deployments.

It's failed in one of its' primary purposes: launching of private payloads. And that makes for another failure; the space industry being profitable. But failure is one of those things that follows the shuttle around like a bad penny. Just like compromise. That's almost like the shadow of the shuttle; it can't shake it. In fact, originally, we were supposed to have a Space Transport System AND a US space station. We had to compromise and go with just one. And then we had to make compromises to that. Did you know the shuttle was supposed to have a reusable drop-tank at one point? But they compromised and made it disposable to "save money", as the reusable design was more costly to design and build. Yeah. The drop tank costs, what, $40 million? Well, let's be fair and say they've always only cost $20 million though. That means we've spent well over 2 BILLION dollars on drop tanks! Does this sound like a money-saving idea? Let's be realistic; a resuable tank would not have cost even $1 billion. And considering my estimate on the waste is very conservative, it's actualy closer to $4 billion, I think it's safe to say such compromises are huge wastes of money.

And this attitude of "No, keep using it because we don't have the money for new!!!" is exactly why we don't have the money for anything new. We design something, then we compromise on it because we don't have enough money, then we spend lots more money over time for it, mainly because we feel we've invested too much money already for it to go to waste. We end up spending more to get less.

And it's especially funny that private payloads are cancelled due to the the loss of Challenger when such payloads had absolutely nothing to do with such a failure. It's almost as though ole Ronnie said "Uh, did you say we make some money on shuttle launches? Where's my VETO stamppad?!"

The shuttle isn't fragile. The shuttle is incredibly robust. The tiles are somewhat fragile, but what isn't to micrometeoroides (or a piece of foam traveling at Mach 1)? When testing for this unpresedented EVA during the last mission, they put an astronaut in a space suit (well, half a space suit) here on the ground and had him run at the tile board they'd set up. He didn't damage it at all. Now, I will say, that did surprise me...but certainly made me feel better about putting an astronaut out there under the vehicle.

A chain is only as strong as it's weakest link and the TPS is a link made of glass. Not to mention that the shuttle is a gliderplane, which are fundamentally more fragile than other forms of spacecraft due to their composition of weight-saving materials.

That "astronaut test" is rather pointless to me. An astronaut is too big, far too slow, and too elastic to be a threat to the shuttle. Plus, we didn't see if those tiles had been loosened or suffered cracking that would cause them to fail upon reentry, That it looked fine outright means nothing; the tiles looked fine when applied by that worker who spit into the adhesive to make it cure faster, even though such a moisture exposure is very, very bad idea.

And there's a problem. Moisture... MOISTURE... can destroy the tiles. That's why they wear gloves for the installation; the moisture and oils in your skin will seriously compromise tile stability. Standard metal heat shields can take far greater a beating than the tiles. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to know that... mmm, pun-goodness...

I don't misunderstand, the criticality of the damage to the TPS is wholly dependent on where the damage is. Anything on the leading edge, of course, is bad. The further forward the damage is, the worse it is. And anything on or near the wheel well or ET attachment doors could be bad. Although not all (don't know if you saw the tiles on the nose landing gear door after re-entry, but the piece of tape...or whatever that was right there...that was exposed didn't even burn away...although it was slightly blackened on one side).

Ultimately though, the thing to keep in mind is that impactors can come in all shapes, sizes, densities and velocities. Any piece of space junk under 4 inches can't be tracked, so they pose a constant threat. The true threat to space travel. And most of those that will crack, shatter, or knock tiles right off will never touch metal shielding. And everyday, due to junk impacting itself, the volume of untrackable space junk grows. The shuttle is literally at more threat with each mission. When could it become too dangerous for a tile-covered craft? Well we don't know; we can't track the stuff to see how bad it's getting!

Good thing there are smart people working on re-entry to take care of the worries of no error. :) It's all about energy conservation and bleeding. Pretty ingenious, in my opinion.

Having to assign a ton of human resources to try to compensate for no-margin-of-error scenarios is hardly ingenious. Eliminating such scenarios and allowing for error, which humans will always be prone to, now that would be ingenious.

What sounds more comforting to you "We've got a whole bunch of people checking each other's work here, so that no mistakes are made, since there's no margin for error." or "If a mistake is made, just hit the thrusters, circle around, and make another approach." I'll take the powered-landing over the 1000-eyes-watching-the-skies plan any day of the week.

The shuttle can fly in bad weather...we just choose not too. The Buran was supposed to be able to do a lot of things. What it did, was nothing the shuttle can't do. If the Soviets had funded the Buran properly, it may have been able to do a lot of things (I still don't believe they could have gotten it to Mars...they couldn't even get a space craft large enough for humans to the Moon).

But, since moisture destroys the tiles, it sounds like their choosing not to fly is related to the same reason you "choose" to hand your wallet over to the mugger with a shotgun.

And that's what they claim. The practicallity of such a thing, I don't know. But they claim the Energyia booster can do it (120 ton launch capacity to the STS's 30 tons.)

As for its inflight engines, yeah, I'd like to see how well the shuttle or Buran flew powered. The thing has the aerodynamic properties of a brick. LOL!

Obviously, both have at least decent aerodynamic properties. The shuttle as a gliderplane is completely dependant on its' aerodynamic properties to keep it from slamming into the ground or tumbling out of control! Buran is virtually identicle, so it's performance is most likely the same. Though, they do mention Buran's tiles were designed to fit smoothly, so there are no sharp angles in the tiling. So if anything, it probably performs better than the shuttle.

Don't get me wrong...I want a new shuttle. I was highly disappointed when the X-33/VentureStar program was canceled. But what could they do? It was too ambitious...material science hasn't quite caught up to that yet.

At least not for the money they were spending on it.

There's never going to be enough money so long as we keep spending it on the shuttle. We refuse to spend the money up front to replace the shuttle, and then we spend much, much more keeping the shuttles in service. The cost of just two shuttle missions exceed the entire budget for the X-33.

Originally, they were supposed to serve ten years. The current retirement date is 2010 and there's talk of extending it to 2025. When does it end? Probably not then either; I'm sure there will be demand to keep the shuttles in service until 2050. And before you say "The shuttles don't have that kind of operational life", remember, the military said the same thing about various aircraft. And look how many of those aircraft were determined to be usable for periods well beyond their original life expectancy.

Granted, I didn't work on this project, but from what I understand, it wasn't a structural problem, it was a weight issue. They couldn't make the tank light enough and strong enough at the same time. (oh...okay, I guess that could be construed as a structural problem)Well, like I said above, for the amount being spent, it couldn't become a reality. You can only work with what you're given. NASA has very wide spectrum of what it does, not just manned space flight.

The tank is also part of the load-bearing frame. That definitely counts as structural.

And here's the problem; they can't work with what they've been given. So they compromise. And these compromises cost as 10x as much down the road. If we stop spending all this money on shuttle launches, we'll have more than enough money to iron-out that problem. And let's face it; having more than enough money to fix a glaring problem would be a first in NASA history.

You know, if we dumped that $12 billion for shuttle flights into nano-carbon research, we'd not only solve the X-33's woes, we'd have an incredible material that would revolutionize everything in the aerospace industry. Because what's the #1 problem with space travel? It's difficult to push things into space. Weight is the factor which shapes everything else. Carbon nanofibers and nanotubes, inch for inch, are 100x stronger than the strongest steel, 1/6th its' weight, and hard as diamond. Do you not see nearly-magical applications for this stuff? And when you consider the applications back on terra firma... can we afford not to develop this material as fast as possible? And isn't the public domain of government-funded programs the best place to develop it? As opposed to one company figuring it out, patenting it, and slowly selling it to us for years to come.

But the shuttle can do the job. Hell, it's finally doing the job it was designed to do: build the space station. And now people want to shut it down before it can finish its job.

You make it sound like this is its' destiny, as though the ISS is the entire reason we started STS back in '72. Many goals of STS were never attained. Why should this one be any different? Killing programs before they're finished is sort of a NASA tradition anyway. And if it's okay to extend the life of the shuttle program beyond ten years because it suited our needs (or did we just invest too much money to cancel by then?), why is it wrong to kill the program for the same reason?

Space Transport System, rather than pursuing that next-gen dream, embodies the essence of buearacracy; a mess of a program that didn't know what it wanted to be, underfunded, compromised, and overworked so that despite the budget cuts it actually costs even more than originally intended. We're at crossroads here. We can either start work on another new project that will end up with cost-cutting compromises and spend the next few decades paying out twice the original cost of the program on an annual basis... or we can get it right this time.

I want a new space plane as well. Because the shuttle can't last forever. And I don't think it has anything to do with misplaced nostalgia or anything. We're working with what we've got. But there won't be another space plane...at least not for a long time. The next vehicle won't be a space plane, and I doubt it will be re-usable (although that has yet to be seen). A space plane isn't going to do you much good when you're trying to land without a runway. :)

No runway... you must be talking about the Mars project. I hope you don't honestly expect the shuttle replacement to also work as the craft for that mission too. That's asking far too much from one craft, much more than just being a powered spaceplane. Local orbital work and long-range planetary exploration are two very different fields. I mean, I know I mentioned how they said Buran could make it to Mars, but that doesn't mean it's to actually be done. We didn't just slap a rocket on an apollo capsule and dump the astronauts on the moon; we made the Lunar Excursion Module. It was a purpose-built craft for travel to and from the lunar surface. Trying to shoe-horn that into the shuttle replacement will make for one helluva mess, not to mention that there will have to be many compromises made that will cost even more money down the road.

Anyway, you've hit the nail on the proverbial head, so to speak. Money. NASA doesn't have much of it (even though it wins awards every year for being one of the most effecient government programs with its money...not sure how they grade this though...).

How do they win awards? "Hey Phil, should we upgrade the launch control system?" "Uh, naw; just keep scouring the world for old intel 8086 processors to keep it running!" That's how they do it. Compromising. Unfortunately, some of their compromising costs us a lot more in the long run.

Though to be fair, remember; the average launch costs $600 million, 1/3 more than the entire program was supposed to cost. Being skeptical about NASA and their costs is not an unfounded apprehension.

And people don't want to increase NASAs budget because the return is not immediate in their eyes. Although a quick trip to nasa.gov's Spinoff page would show them how much better their life is thanks to technologies developed for or by NASA.

The people will not change their minds until they see dazzling results, and they won't see that until NASA has the money for such things. Well, that's not actually a catch-22. There's an option; NASA can sacrifice for a while, get that nano-carbon flowing, and build something that can really wow people again. And it is possible. The aforementioned X-33 would do it(though the VentureStar, as a commerical spaceliner, would do it much, much better.) Get it working, fly it, and while everyone's jaws are agape, get that hand out and start demanding coin...