NASA Shuttle Launch-Friday

[Guest meta]

Due to budget problems, there will be at least a four-year gap between 2010 and 2015, during which the United States will not be capable of launching a manned space mission. We will require assistance from the Europeans or the Russians to reach the space station that we built. Our exit from manned space exploration could also lead the US to seek assistance from the Indian or Chinese space programs.

I think that would be a good thing. Pushing everyone to work together for one common goal.

[Guest endymion]

I think that would be a good thing. Pushing everyone to work together for one common goal.

In theory, maybe. In practice:

During the last [six-year] gap in spaceflight, which ended in 1981, the agency had a brain drain in which experienced engineers and technicians left for other opportunities and "essentially, the manned space program went off the radar screen," Lambright said.

"When you don't fly for four or more years, people become stale," [NASA Administrator Michael] Griffin said recently. "Very good people often move into other enterprises where there is more action. Facilities degrade. It's not a good thing."

There is a second dot-com boom building speed right now, just as the manned spaceflight gap begins. If you're a freshman right now in a university engineering program, you're going to be looking forward to working at Google or Apple or Microsoft when you graduate in 2010 or 2011, not NASA.

[Guest pod]

The Shuttle's a great concept on paper, but in reality it didn't make anything faster or cheaper. The plan was to have them going up at least twice a month at full tilt, and do it cheaper.

Never happened, and it put a lot of stuff (Moon mission, Mars mission) on the back burner since the Shuttle took up a lot of the budget.

We should have just relied on plain old BDB (Big Dumb Boosters) to lift things into orbit and beyond, until the tech and costs were more ready to support a spaceplane.