Failure™ Magazine

Spatially Challenged

The fall of NASA and the prospects for a new Space Age.

Written by Jason Zasky   Filed under Science & Technology

In the book I say that one of the reasons why NASA is so loathe to give up the shuttle is because it was so hard to get in the first place. In the late sixties and early seventies NASA needed a new vehicle, wanted a new vehicle, wanted something to keep the jobs in place. Having gotten that gravy train they don’t want to jeopardize it by saying, “Right, we’re going to terminate the vehicle at ‘X’ date, regardless of whether or not we have a new vehicle.” What you have in place now with the Bush Administration mandate [a new space policy directive] is basically a timeline to get rid of the shuttle. It’s supposed to be gone by 2010, irrespective of whether or not there’s a new launch vehicle. However, that date has already slipped within NASA and I suspect it’s going to slip a lot further because you have the same sort of political motivation in place to keep it going.

What is your reaction to the recent news that the shuttle gears were installed backwards? Was that an accurate media report?
It was an accurate report. But I don’t make too much of that because when you have a vehicle which has in the neighborhood of three million independent parts, every now and then something will be installed backwards. But the larger issue that report speaks to is the over-complexity of the shuttle. This is its fundamental problem. In the book I talk about one case where there was a shuttle upgrade and they removed thousands of pounds of wiring that wasn’t even being used. It’s what they call a “multi-generational vehicle” that is just too complicated for the task, and if the shuttle keeps flying we will lose another one. I’m very confident in making that statement and a lot of other people would agree.

Has the thrill of human space travel been lost? And if so, why?
I think it has been lost in the broader culture. There are certainly pockets of people in society who are very interested in human space flight and obviously I am [in] one of those pockets. The Space Age is no longer with us—that may be the easiest way to put it. The reason is because at its core the Space Age was geo-politically motivated—it was about beating the Soviets in space. Once that happened with the Moon landing people turned their attention elsewhere. I would call NASA and its political minders to task for that because rather than find a new way to engage people they simply tried harder to engage them in the same old way—by saying that we have this competition with other countries. People saw through that very quickly. That’s part of the reason that interest in space declined as rapidly as it did and it really hasn’t recovered. I do think there’s hope for recovery but I’m not sure it’s going to come through NASA.

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