Battleangel

Since yesterdays little mishap with Columbia quite a few people have questioned the Space Shuttle program. And rightfully so. The loss of human lives seems to affect people more than the material and scientific losses. Maybe this was a good thing after all, a final nail in the coffin that was once a proud and high tech project.
It’s strange how the rules of economics can become such a prison for common sense and new technology. The Shuttles are based on technology that is almost 30 years old. And they have been flying for 20 years in one form or another. Apart from annual overhauls and scarce tune-ups nothing ever seems to change. Up until a couple of years ago they were running the damn thing on 8086-class processors. I mean, HELLO?!
The engines are obsolete and difficult to maintain. The payloads are modest. The heat shields peel off like an onion. And worst of all, the mission economy is really lousy. Probably something like $500M / launch.

And redesigning the Shuttles seems not to be an option. The only viable alternative is of course to go ahead with the next generation of orbiter planes. But, what is the next step and why haven’t we seen it yet? Prometheus? Single-stage-to-orbit? SCRAMJets?

While the US is strangely panic-stricken by all of this the ISS consortium can only turn to the Russian space agency. SOYUS vehicles will handle most of the crew and provision transports I suppose. While being cost efficient they can not carry nearly as much into orbit as the Shuttle.
I mentioned a Russian space shuttle the other day and I feel that I should perhaps explain the situation further. I was obviously talking about the BURAN (Snowstorm) orbiter. I know some people will see this as strange since it hasn’t been flying for 10 years and it only made one actual (unmanned) mission into orbit. That one flight however was impressive. Not only did it re-enter and land on autopilot despite turbulent weather but it only lost a handful of heat shield tiles. The scrutiny becomes even more gloomy as you view the tech specs of the US and Russian orbiters. BURAN handles automatic landings, can carry 4 times more cargo into space and also slightly more on re-entry. The heat shields proved to be more sturdy and better designed. I really don’t know if any recent tweaks has improved the US shuttles significantly but I doubt it. Tweaks is one thing but complete redesigns are unlikely.

I know that there was talk of finishing the BURAN project two years ago. What has happened since then I do not know. There hasn’t really been a need for more shuttles until the construction of the ISS. And up until now the three US shuttles in operation have, barely but still, been able to keep up. I also remember that Russian engineers were confident that they could enlarge the BURAN fuselage to accommodate twice as much cargo (up to 200 metric tons) as the standard BURAN.

The irony of it all is that the US market economy should have been able to deal with the shortcomings of the Shuttles and weed out the problems, right? Wrong … For various reasons they produced an inferior solution and then they stuck with it for 20 years. Who would have guessed. The only reason the BURAN project is dead is because of funding. While being a superior solution it is in no way a cheap solution.

More on the BURAN: BURAN.ru