The sleek new vehicle was sold as cheap and easy to run. But after 15 years, it costs 100 times more to use than it was supposed to and it doesn’t run nearly as often as the salesmen promised.
But it’s yours, and it’s paid for. It’s America’s space shuttle fleet.
Fifteen years after the first space shuttle flight, NASA has four shuttles with millions of miles on them. But they have not fulfilled NASA’s original dream of a space truck that could make 24 to 60 flights a year and cost only $100 a pound to haul materials into space.
Instead, it costs NASA $8,000 to $10,000 a pound to haul payloads into space with the shuttle–and that’s after the space agency made lots of cost savings recently, spokesman Ed Campion said. So far, the best the shuttle has done is nine flights a year; eight are scheduled for 1996. “It was sold as a truck. It turned out to be a yacht,” said John Logsdon, director of space policy at George Washington University.
The next sales pitch is set to start, as NASA moves toward replacing the shuttle. Three companies have until May 13 to submit plans for a scaled-down version of completely reusable rocket plane. NASA and the White House will pick one in July.
In an industry-government partnership, NASA plans to spend $941 million through 1999 toward the experiment. The idea is to develop a smaller version of a shuttle replacement to see if a full-scale spaceplane will work. The program, said Gary Payton, NASA’s reusable launch vehicle manager, is “to provide our nation with reliable, affordable means of access to space.”
But foes of human space flight, such as Duke University history chairman Alex Roland, said they have ammunition in the shuttle’s record on costs.
“You would hope that Congress would be smarter this time along,” said Roland, a former NASA historian. The shuttle “is a vehicle whose sole purpose is to sustain the notion that manned spaceflight is realistic and practical. It has proved just the opposite.”
Other experts disagree. Like a yacht, the shuttle is valuable and coveted — the most complex and versatile space vehicle ever invented, they say.
