A tense NASA finally let itself collectively exhale after astronaut Stephen Robinson dislodged two troublesome fabric pieces from the shuttle Discovery’s underbelly Wednesday. Robinson and his shipmates should be commended for a job well done under very difficult circumstances. But Discovery’s large array of cameras located additional potential problems with the ship, so no one can feel real relief until the shuttle has landed safely.
The fact is, Discovery is part of an aging fleet that should have been replaced long ago – yet NASA is far from ready to launch the next generation of space ships. Part of the trouble has been the lack of clear goals, an issue President Bush tried to address by giving NASA a mandate to return to the moon and go on to Mars.
NASA has announced plans to design a Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) by 2008 and ready the ship for its first manned mission by 2014. The CEV will cost an estimated $6.6 billion and use a service and command module similar to the old Apollo moonshot spacecraft, not anything resembling the shuttle.
Meanwhile, NASA has work to do and no good way to do it. The shuttles’ large carrying capacity is needed to finish building the $10 billion international space station, because smaller Russian vehicles just can’t haul big payloads. Unless the shuttles can fly safely, the station’s future seems stalled.
But it’s increasingly clear that NASA has gotten as much mileage as it can from the shuttles, whose technology was invented a generation ago and belongs to the ancient era of Atari and disco. The shuttles are museum pieces, more suited to hanging in the Smithsonian than launching into space.