In Honor of The Last Flight - How the Space Shuttle Was Born

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/06/ ... -was-born/
How the Space Shuttle Was Born
By Mike Wall
Published June 30, 2011

The last-ever space shuttle launch — that of Atlantis, scheduled for July 8 — will come just over three decades after the first one, which took place April 12, 1981.

But that's not to say NASA's iconic shuttle program just turned 30 years old. It's actually pushing 40, since President Richard Nixon officially announced its existence in January 1972. And the shuttle's roots go much deeper than that, stretching all the way back to a 1930s concept vehicle the Nazis hoped could drop bombs on New York City.

The story of the shuttle's birth is one of big dreams and slashed budgets, of shifting visions, of NASA and the nation's attempt to find their way in space after beating the Soviets to the moon in 1969. Here is a synopsis of that long, involved tale. url=http://www.space.com/11319-nasa-space-shuttle-program-pictures-tribute.html:2py866lf]NASA's Space Shuttle Program in Pictures[/url

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Launch of STS-1 (Columbia)
The first shuttle launch April 12, 1981

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First Ever Space Shuttle Landing (STS-1, Columbia)

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/333/6038/28.full
NASA's Busload of Science
For 30 years, the shuttle has been the main ticket into space for NASA astronauts. But it has also delivered—and fixed—massive observatories and served as an orbiting laboratory. As the program ends, what is its scientific legacy?
Dan Charles
Science 1 July 2011:
Vol. 333 no. 6038 pp. 28-29
DOI: 10.1126/science.333.6038.28

Next week, a controversial chapter in space science is scheduled to end with the launch of the space shuttle Atlantis. In the 3 decades since Columbia carried Cowles's payload, NASA's five shuttles have flown 134 missions. Although science was never their primary purpose (see timeline, p. 30), the shuttles served as a singular platform from which to observe Earth and the effects of weightlessness. They also launched a half-dozen major scientific satellites and gave new life to the once-crippled Hubble Space Telescope.

Yet the shuttles' accomplishments are haunted by unfulfilled promises.

Instead of 18 to 24 flights each year, the maximum was nine (in 1985, the year before the Challenger orbiter exploded), and the average was fewer than five. “A scientific career can't depend on flights every 3 years. You'll stay an assistant professor a long time that way,” says Raymond Bula, formerly director of the Center for Space Automation and Robotics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. The inability of NASA to keep its promise of frequent research flights “poisoned the relationship between human space flight and the science community,” Kennel says. He says “things are better now” because NASA has decided to support work on the space station until 2020.

Among some scientists, however, antipathy to the shuttle—or any human space flight—runs deep. “It indulged humankind's impractical space fantasies at a cost that retarded genuine progress,” says physicist Robert Park of the University of Maryland, College Park.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/333/6038/30.full
The Highs and Lows of Shuttle Science
The contributions of the shuttle to science have come in many flavors and at an irregular pace. Science has created a timeline of shuttle science missions.
Dan Charles

For 3 decades, the shuttle has served as NASA's Swiss Army knife. It is capable of performing a remarkable variety of tasks, but it is not always the ideal tool for a particular job.

To tease out the scientific contributions of the shuttle, Science has grouped the program's 134 missions into five categories. (The sixth, and largest, category is those missions with little or no scientific activity.) By frequency, the exploration of microgravity leads the way, with a substantial amount of such research aboard 45 missions. In second place are major observations of Earth or the heavens (12 missions), followed by the launching of large scientific instruments (seven missions), repairs and upgrades to the Hubble telescope (five missions), and research on the effects of the external space environment (three missions).

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/333/6038/30/suppl/DC1
30 Years of Science Missions - A Timeline
Science 1 July 2011:
vol. 333 no. 6038 pp. 30-33
DOI: 10.1126/science.333.6038.30

The above timeline shows that the contributions of the shuttle to science have come in many flavors and at an irregular pace. The timeline oversimplifies the picture, however. During the first 2 decades, many shuttle missions that were devoted to nonscientific tasks also carried small experiments on board. More recently, the shuttle's primary focus has been building the space station, a facility that, among its many purposes, will carry out scientific research.

Viking, according to the Science articles I posted,

roughly $1.5 billion per launch, in 2010 dollars.

Now, I don't know if that includes the cost of each satellite/equipment/experiment/etc that was done in each flight, or overhead for NASA employees/scientists/engineer subcontractors, etc. or other expenses I haven't thought of off the top of my head. A Google search might yield some answers, and I'm sure it's in Congressional budgets (sorry, I have things to do and reading reports that would make me fall asleep right now are not on my agenda!)

Guest blog:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/ ... 2011-07-08
Next generation: We want a spaceship, not a freight truck
By Dave Mosher | Jul 8, 2011

NASA’s original plan was to usher in an efficient, make-America-proud kind of space program to follow Apollo. A glorious sunset, if you will. But political winds neutered half the $10 billion or so in the early 1970s that NASA felt it needed to develop a truly robust, reusable human launch system (and build a space station).

They hoped for 64 launches a year, but we ultimately got four and change. Each launch cost Americans about $1.5 billion (totaling about $209 billion for the entire program, by popular estimates).

And we didn’t go very far. Most of the time the shuttle sped into orbit just a couple hundred miles above the Earth. Granted, the program sent up and repaired Hubble, sent off a planetary spacecraft, and built the International Space Station. Missions accomplished.

But the promise of glorious spaceflight Americans came to expect—the stuff of risky expeditions to the moon, for example—never materialized. Instead of a spaceship, my generation got the most complex and expensive freight truck ever created.

I can’t speak in behalf of all starry-eyed 20-somethings, but I want the political leadership of this country to conjure up a daring and focused vision for the future of human spaceflight, and deliver it to NASA. Not a lame-duck promise to go somewhere when budgets are crumbling, but a unified, John F. Kennedy-esque mission Americans can get behind.