Challenger's impact on NASA space program

[czokletmuss]

Challenger‘s last crew comprised astronauts Francis “Dick†Scobee, Michael Smith, Ellison Onizuka, Judith Resnik, Ronald McNair, Gregory Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe. Their mission was the 25th of the Space Shuttle Program. By the time they flew, the Shuttle had already shown itself to be a finicky beast. Mission STS 51-L illustrates this as well as any; NASA had originally scheduled its launch for 22 January, and it was rescheduled, scrubbed, or held six times before it finally lifted off from Launch Pad 39-B.

After Challenger, NASA sought to “fix†the Shuttle and make it “safe.†It did this in three ways: it altered procedures and reset limits; it modified or eliminated hardware; and it abandoned many of the missions for which the Space Shuttle had, ostensibly, been built. The faulty Solid Rocket Booster (SRB) design that destroyed Challenger was modified. Nearly all planned satellite launch or repair missions went by the boards. The Manned Maneuvering Unit, which had never performed quite as well as hoped, was consigned to storage.

The Centaur G’ upper stage, long a political football, was cancelled. It had been meant to fly for the first time later in 1986. Those robotic planetary missions that could abandon the Shuttle’s payload bay moved to expendable rockets; those that could not – Galileo, Magellan, Ulysses – waited for years to depart Earth. The Department of Defense cancelled most of its planned Shuttle missions and abandoned plans to launch Shuttle Orbiters from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. Launch and landing weather conditions became an obsession at Kennedy Space Center. Light blue jump suits gave way to bulky orange pressure suits.

Challenger also kicked off the messy Space Station redesign process. NASA unveiled its massive, 500-foot-wide Dual-Keel station design months after the accident, and it was instantly and loudly derided as unrealistic given the Space Shuttle’s revealed frailties. The Space Station shrank in size and capability with each new annual budget cycle and was almost cancelled outright in 1993.

All of this means that, after Challenger, we settled for a reduced space program. That fact leads (finally!) to my question, which is simply this: why?

Source: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2014/01/responses-challenger/

[crazyewok]

I think the cock up destroyed the shuttle program and turned it into a next to useless white elephant and set NASA back 3 decades.

If the original designers and engineers had done their job and botherd to design it right and politicians had kept there gruby litle paws off it then MAYBE the shuttle may have been the revolution that it was meant to be. But alas it turned into a overcomplicatef, over expensive death trap that ended uo asigned to tasks cheaper and less complex craft could have done.

[DerekL1963]

If the original designers and engineers had done their job and botherd to design it right

That presupposes there is an unarguable, black-and-white, unequivocal definition of 'right'. Sadly, there is no such thing.

But alas it turned into a overcomplicatef, over expensive death trap that ended uo asigned to tasks cheaper and less complex craft could have done.

Sure, but it was also assigned to missions that only it could do. (Spacelab/hab for example.) And it's overcomplexity often relieved it's payloads of complexity. (ISS components didn't need to carry the excess weight and cost needed to support themselves on orbit in transit or to maneuver independently for example.)

Shuttle opponents like to portray the situation as black-and-white, with the Shuttle decidedly on the 'wrong' side of the line... but the real world is not so simple. The real world is an endless succession of trade-offs and compromises.

[crazyewok]

$10,000 per KG to orbit. Thats all I have to say.

http://www.futron.com/upload/wysiwyg/Resources/Whitepapers/Space_Transportation_Costs_Trends_0902.pdf

[jwenting]

I think the cock up destroyed the shuttle program and turned it into a next to useless white elephant and set NASA back 3 decades.

If the original designers and engineers had done their job and botherd to design it right and politicians had kept there gruby litle paws off it then MAYBE the shuttle may have been the revolution that it was meant to be. But alas it turned into a overcomplicatef, over expensive death trap that ended uo asigned to tasks cheaper and less complex craft could have done.

Because of those politicians driving the engineers to create the lemon that they did (despite their best efforts and attempts to create something useful) the SSTS was a failure long before Challenger.

It should have been replaced around 1980, 1985 at the latest, as originally intended.

[crazyewok]

Because of those politicians driving the engineers to create the lemon that they did (despite their best efforts and attempts to create something useful) the SSTS was a failure long before Challenger.

It should have been replaced around 1980, 1985 at the latest, as originally intended.

I agree. The original plan may have worked. They just made it to big and too complicated. Over ambition and latter penny saving killed it.

[Soda Popinski]

It should have been replaced around 1980, 1985 at the latest, as originally intended.

The Space Shuttle's maiden flight was in 1981. Seems a bit premature to replace it before it was even used.

[Kerbart]

Shuttle opponents like to portray the situation as black-and-white, with the Shuttle decidedly on the 'wrong' side of the line... but the real world is not so simple. The real world is an endless succession of trade-offs and compromises.

The shuttle was originally “sold†to its customers as a reusable vehicle that would be able to go to space on a high-frequent basis with minimal cost for the payload, revolutionizing spaceflight. It is hard to argue that the shuttle lived up to those claims.

I don't think the Shuttle was a technical failure. It did what it was supposed to do, and when disaster struck that was more the result of a failing organization than of a failing design. The real problem is that NASA is a large bureaucratic organization divide into many factions each pursuing their own interest and each having their own stakeholders with different agendas. In 1959 NASA started with a program to put a Kerbal man in orbit. In 1969, 10 years later, they put one on the friggin' Mun. It's amazing what was achieved in those 10 years. But everyone was working towards the same goal and had the same interest. It's a well known fact that if you asked a 1965 janitor at a Nasa office who is scrubbing the toilets what he's doing, he would proudly answer that "he's helping to put a man on the moon."

Nowadays that's different and that's not really NASA's fault. We've slashed the budget, programs have become politicized and without any doubt contractors are picked for other reasons than "delivering the best product for the best price."

In an ironic way it's good. Would there be an incentive for companies like SpaceX to innovate and do what they're doing now? Commercial enterprise will increase reliability (accidents are bad for business) and drive down cost better than NASA ever could, even in the 1960s.

[G'th]

It did what it was supposed to do, and when disaster struck that was more the result of a failing organization than of a failing design.

This. Regardless of how STS was still overly complicated for what it was doing , the programs two catastrophic failures happened because NASA administration let it happen.

[Soda Popinski]

But everyone was working towards the same goal and had the same interest.

Not true. NASA was doing concurrent non-manned missions, such as the Mariner program.

[mdatspace]

snip

I agree with this.

Bureaucracy is complicated and inefficient. I used to be skeptical of commercial crew, but I am now less so. I want to see them send their first man into orbit and then I will throw my skepticism off of a cliff.

Companies tend to do the cheapest thing. They use current technology and build on it. They use what works. Also, they are not strangled by bureaucracy. That is why I have hope for them.

Edited January 31, 2014 by mdatspace

[J.Random]

Oh, let's not transform this topic into another "shuttle-good, shuttle-bad" argument. It's stupid.

On topic: however harsh or rude it may sound, in the end, Challenger's accident was beneficial for the shuttle program. As I recall, in some 20 flights before Challenger there were only three without problems with o-rings. And of those which had problems, 2/3 had hot gas getting through cracks. ANY of them could become Challenger. It became a problem which is considered "normal". Like, "yeah, there's a leak, but there's always a leak, that's OK, probably". The closest analogy I can make is having to reboot a production server with memory-leaky app every day and not attempting to fix the root cause. Only the tragedy made americans reconsider their approach and finally reinforce boosters, fixing the problem. So yeah, it was a loss, it was a tragedy, but in no way it was a setback.

[Soda Popinski]

ANY of them could become Challenger.

Except it happened to be the one that had a Teacher on board, and hence millions of children watching in their classrooms live. I remember being in Mr. Davis' 5th grade class watching it on a wheeled in television. That was my Kennedy Assassination. Sadly, it also lead to a lot jokes in bad taste. I guess a coping mechanism.

Edited February 1, 2014 by Soda Popinski

[PakledHostage]

Except it happened to be the one that had a Teacher on board, and hence millions of children watching in their classrooms live.

And arguably, that was why there was so much pressure to launch that day despite the air temperature being out of limits. IIRC, Reagan was making his state of the union address that same day or the next and NASA wanted to have Challenger and her "Teacher in space" crew member in orbit for the occasion...

I agree though, that it was a story as big as Kennedy's assasination or maybe even 9-11 when it happened. I believe it was that public grief that had the biggest impact on the US space program.

Edited February 1, 2014 by PakledHostage
Fixed a spelling mistake

[jwenting]

The Space Shuttle's maiden flight was in 1981. Seems a bit premature to replace it before it was even used.

nope, it should never have flown in the configuration that eventually was flown

[jwenting]

I agree with this.

Bureaucracy is complicated and inefficient. I used to be skeptical of commercial crew, but I am now less so. I want to see them send their first man into orbit and then I will throw my skepticism off of a cliff.

Companies tend to do the cheapest thing. They use current technology and build on it. They use what works. Also, they are not strangled by bureaucracy. That is why I have hope for them.

Companies do what needs doing to get the job done. If that means developing new technology, they develop new technology...

If that means taking risks, they take risks.

Of course if the company is hampered and chained down by a hundred million lawyers just waiting for a reason to sue them into bankruptcy they may not take that risk because the potential loss is too great. Which is a main reason why innovation and product development in the USA has come to a virtual screeching halt over the last decade or so.

[crazyewok]

Companies do what needs doing to get the job done. If that means developing new technology, they develop new technology...

If that means taking risks, they take risks.

Of course if the company is hampered and chained down by a hundred million lawyers just waiting for a reason to sue them into bankruptcy they may not take that risk because the potential loss is too great. Which is a main reason why innovation and product development in the USA has come to a virtual screeching halt over the last decade or so.

I agree the private sector gets the job done.

Just look at space X, for 60 years Boeing and Lockheed charged NASA 5-10K per kg per orbit with little innovation, they new they were on easy money and by the looks of it didn't care. Space X come in wanting to be competitive and make money and they manage to get the cost down by a grand.

[architeuthis]

Oh, let's not transform this topic into another "shuttle-good, shuttle-bad" argument. It's stupid.

I second that. Also the NASA-bad private industry-good arguments. North American Rockewell designed and built the Space Shuttle. Martin Marietta built the external tanks, Morton Thiokol built the solid boosters, Rocketdyne built the RS-25 SSMEs. Also to anyone who thinks big corporations (e.g. most aerospace companies) aren't bureaucratic, try working at one.

David Portee's Beyond Apollo post linked in the OP posed an interesting question. He seems to imply that it was not NASA particularly that lost it's nerve after the loss of Challenger, but that America herself shrank away from the danger and challenge of spaceflight. The Challenger accident itself was stupid and avoidable. But was also terribly symbolic. It is completely self-evident to me that the taming of a frontier as harsh and extreme as space will not occur without sacrifices. Martyrdom for seven people for the conquest of space. Accidents were expected to happen eventually, but the question is why did it test our resolve so greatly and how did we abandon our ambitious, glorious dreams so easily when the inevitable accident did finally happen? Are we not stronger than that? D Portee implies that bold as NASA was during the moon race something similar happened after the loss of the Apollo 1 crew. It wasn't the successful landing of Apollo 11 that led to the rapid decline of NASA's budgets, and the scaling back of its expansive future plans to just the Space Shuttle (and even that was historically tenuous), the American people had already started abandoning NASA after the Apollo 1 fire, and Apollo 13 made it assured... Werner von Braun might have seen a manned Mars landing in his own lifetime...

Edited February 2, 2014 by architeuthis

[DerekL1963]

The Challenger accident itself was stupid and avoidable.

Not really, not once the Shuttle's design was frozen it wasn't - that's J.Random's point, and one most often missed when discussing the Challenger accident. The design flaw that destroyed the Challenger was baked into the design and could have happened on any flight regardless of the air temperature, the cold made the failure more likely but it didn't cause the failure. There's only two ways to avoid a Challenger type accident, the first is to redesign the joint back in the early/mid 70's when the joint rotation problem was discovered, or to ground the shuttle once it was understood that the jury rigged fix (the backup o-ring) wasn't working and the joint was still blowing by.

[Soda Popinski]

For people following this thread, I recommend watching the 5th episode of When We Left Earth. I found it very interesting, as most of the documentaries I come across just cover Apollo, or even Mercury.

I just watched it on Netflix, but here it is on the YouTubes complete with Viet-namese subtitles!

[CalculusWarrior]

I agree with some of the above comments, commercial companies are really (pardon the pun) taking off. I originally wasn't really trusting of SpaceX's grandiose promises, but as they are beginning to deliver on them, I'm starting to believe. That's not to say I'm not supportive of NASA. I hope the Commercial Crew Development program succeeds and NASA can focus on manned missions beyond LEO, but that will require a bit of a shift in its budget and goals, I am sure.

[SFJackBauer]

I second that. Also the NASA-bad private industry-good arguments. North American Rockewell designed and built the Space Shuttle. Martin Marietta built the external tanks, Morton Thiokol built the solid boosters, Rocketdyne built the RS-25 SSMEs. Also to anyone who thinks big corporations (e.g. most aerospace companies) aren't bureaucratic, try working at one.

David Portee's Beyond Apollo post linked in the OP posed an interesting question. He seems to imply that it was not NASA particularly that lost it's nerve after the loss of Challenger, but that America herself shrank away from the danger and challenge of spaceflight. The Challenger accident itself was stupid and avoidable. But was also terribly symbolic. It is completely self-evident to me that the taming of a frontier as harsh and extreme as space will not occur without sacrifices. Martyrdom for seven people for the conquest of space. Accidents were expected to happen eventually, but the question is why did it test our resolve so greatly and how did we abandon our ambitious, glorious dreams so easily when the inevitable accident did finally happen? Are we not stronger than that? D Portee implies that bold as NASA was during the moon race something similar happened after the loss of the Apollo 1 crew. It wasn't the successful landing of Apollo 11 that led to the rapid decline of NASA's budgets, and the scaling back of its expansive future plans to just the Space Shuttle (and even that was historically tenuous), the American people had already started abandoning NASA after the Apollo 1 fire, and Apollo 13 made it assured... Werner von Braun might have seen a manned Mars landing in his own lifetime...

I share the same thoughts as you. I see people die horribly every day for the most absurd and banal reasons, and nobody gives a damn. Perhaps because its not being televised live. Which points, at least for me, to the most dreadful of the human traits - hypocrisy.

Edited February 4, 2014 by SFJackBauer