Final Shuttle Flight: The True Start of Space Flight?

Published on Thursday, 21 July 2011 14:40

	By Gregg Bayes-Brown Follow @ATE_Gregg

Space shuttle Atlantis has landed, completing its final mission and bringing an end to the 30 year US orbiter programme.

The retirement, called by the US Government due to the high costs involved, leaves America without a way of putting astronauts in space. To many critics, the move reflects a decline in both US ambition and financial capability with both regards to space travel, and the country as a whole.

“We’re basically decimating the NASA human spaceflight program,” former astronaut Jerry Ross told Reuters. “The only thing we’re going to have left in town is the station and it’s a totally different animal from the shuttle.”

However, the reality of the situation is that the retirement of the space shuttle programme has opened up a new and highly exciting chapter in space flight, with the potential for our race to the stars to blast off like never before.

In a recent speech, NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden said, “When I hear people say, or listen to media reports, that the final shuttle flight marks the end of U.S. human space flight, I have to say … these folks must be living on another planet.”

While NASA will have to hitch rides to the international space station on the back of Russian Soyuz ships in the mean time, many companies are developing shuttle replacements, some of which will be available for flight in the next 3-4 years.

The thinking behind it is that companies such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin can come up with more both cost and operationally effective solutions for missions involving experiments, satellites and trips to the ISS. Handing over responsibility of these routine missions to private companies has in turn allowed NASA to cast its sights further.

“We're committed to safely transporting US astronauts on American-made spacecraft and ending the outsourcing of this work to foreign governments,” Charles Bolden said. “These agreements are significant milestones in NASA's plans to take advantage of American ingenuity to get to low-Earth orbit, so we can concentrate our resources on deep space exploration.”

NASA recently green lighted Lockheed’s Orion project as their new deep space exploration vessel. The deal, which is expected to generate billions of dollars in revenue for Lockheed, will secure Orion’s future as mankind’s ride to asteroids, the Moon, and Mars. Now renamed the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, Orion is being redesigned for 4 man crew missions and could be in service as early as 2016.

In addition to NASA’s efforts to ensure astronauts still get into space, great strides have been made for the rest of us. Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic made significant progress in their mission to provide sub-orbital flights to the general public. Alongside this, Virgin hopes to give support to scientific experiments, as well as satellite companies, with a long-term goal to offer true orbital flights to the public.

Virgin Galactic recently demonstrated their feathered re-entry technique, a new design for return through the atmosphere. Based on a badminton shuttlecock, SpaceShipTwo (or the VSS Enterprise) utilises a new approach to re-entry that is both reliable for regular use, and places a heavy emphasis on safety. While the cost of a ticket currently stands at $200,000, it would be reasonable to assume that as more companies recognise the profit that can be made from space travel, that price will get more and more affordable.

The drift away from reliance on the shuttle programme has given opportunities to Virgin, Lockheed Martin, Boeing and others to develop more specific spacecraft. Whereas the shuttle was a jack of all trades, it was a master of none. Designed with the intention to be able to perform multiple roles in space, what it gained in flexibility, it had to sacrifice cost efficiency and safety.

The demands of a large crew capacity, the ability to transport large satellites into orbit, and that the shuttles must be reusable have not only been massively expensive to the American taxpayer in terms of maintenance and mission costs, but also led to a highly technical and dangerous design for the shuttle. The Challenger and Columbia crashes highlighted the need for a change that has been a long time coming.

So as Atlantis touches down and is decommissioned to spend the rest of its days inside of a museum, this powerful icon makes its transition from space flight present to space flight past. The shuttle’s passing is nothing to be mourned, however, as the future of space travel is just a few short years from lift-off.