"We've known for years that the shuttle was not the proper vehicle for serving a space station, even if the station was the appropriate goal for NASA -- which it is not. We've known for a long time the shuttle is the wrong vehicle," said Lewis Branscomb, a former Chief Scientist for IBM.
"The [NASA] goal is not there to motivate the money to get out from under the burden of inappropriate technology," Branscomb told SPACE.com. "You've got shuttles that are dangerousyou've got a space station that really has no purpose in being, but there it is. It's almost finished in its cut-down version," he said.
Branscomb's analysis draws upon a lengthy career in science policy and space matters. U.S. President Lyndon Johnson named him to the President's Science Advisory Committee in 1964, and he chaired the subcommittee on Space Science and Technology during Project Apollo.
In his view, the NASA infrastructure of centers spread across the country is far too large. It is much bigger than it needs to be, especially in a world where now, clearly, industry can provide much of the needed expertise, Branscomb said.
Rafter rattling
NASA is in deep trouble. To sort out solutions, leadership is essential.
"It can't be fixed without the President understanding the problem and deciding to fix it," Branscomb said. "It's going to take some really tough rafter rattling to make the internal structural transformation. Most important is restructuring the NASA mission in a way that is challenging," he added.
That "mission" of NASA, Branscomb said, needs to be realistic. It also must deal with how dollars flow to engrained constituencies. Also paramount is dealing with astronaut safety, he said.
Sending an exploratory crew to Mars, and accomplishing the feat in a decade's time is a "semi-plausible" mission for NASA, but still requires a lot of analysis, Branscomb said. "But the fact-of-the-matter is, just getting up there and back is dangerous."
"If you don't have a compelling mission, then the public has no tolerance for danger. And that's the problem with the Columbia disaster. We killed a bunch of people for no good reason. The science going on in that mission was not worth the death of those fine people," Branscomb concluded.
Abolish NASA
Shuttle Challenger was lost in January 1986, followed over 17 years later by the destruction of Columbia.
Both accidents offered a chance to abolish the space shuttle, said Freeman Dyson, a distinguished physicist, educator and author. He's also a former member of the NASA Advisory Council, recently leaving that post after two years of duty.
"There was a golden opportunity to finish with the shuttle altogether. And they just flubbed it," Dyson told SPACE.com. "It looks like the present administration is determined to keep it going."
Dyson advised that many parts of NASA are very good. But he had few kind words in regards to the space agency's lead office.
"I'd like to abolish the entire Washington, D.C. bureaucracy and keep places like JPL and the Goddard Space Flight Center. Give them some real autonomy and I think we might have a chance. I'd love to see what we can do without NASA," Dyson said.
"I don't put much faith in NASA as an institution. They are wonderful people who work for NASA. But a bureaucracy ought to be abolished after 40 years and make a fresh start," Dyson said.
Essential personnel only
There are several outcomes that could stem from the Columbia Accident Investigation Board findings, said Bruce Murray, a professor of Planetary Science and Geology at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California.
A co-founder of The Planetary Society with Carl Sagan, Murray is also no stranger to NASA officialdom, serving as director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in the 1976-1982 time period.
One post-Columbia alternative, Murray said, is probably the most likely. NASA will continue to muddle along the same path they've been on. That is, fix the shuttle as much as they can in order to "complete the space station", which is much less of a station than originally planned, he said.
"They should restrict the shuttle to only essential personnel for that purpose. That was the lesson of Challenger and one that NASA forgot. We've forgotten that twice now," Murray said. "Don't use people for these things if it's not worth dying for. It is a very simple rule. But it can be blurred by hype, by enthusiasm, by forgetfulness."
Murray said that it makes sense to utilize humans in areas that haven't been explored before. "Earth orbit is very well explored. The space station is not an exploratory endeavor," he added.
Although the space shuttle was billed as being cheap, safe, and reliable, it is none of those things. These claimed attributes are myth, Murray said. "We're stuck with it. That's the problem."
Murray made it clear that he has great sympathy for NASA Administrator, Sean O'Keefe, as well as the shuttle workforce.
"The natural political and public thing is to look for a villain. And these people are all victims. They were caught in a situation that was created by events before their time. I suppose in extreme cases, this goes back several generations of NASA leadership," Murray advised.
Knotty tangle of woes
Another alternative that might result from a shakeout of NASA is phasing out the shuttle as quickly as possible. A fast-paced project could be pursued in parallel to develop a human transport system replacement, Murray said.
One other prospect is "standing down", whereby no U.S. astronauts would fly into space for an extended period of time. Meanwhile, a new space transportation system could be pursued. The space station would be placed into moribund mode, but not allowed to come crashing down to Earth.
"We could go 10 years without Americans in space. We've had that experience in the past when shuttle development began in 1972, and we didn't fly the shuttle until 1981," Murray said. "That's a very painful thing to do politically."
As suggested by others at the Telluride Tech Festival, Murray also believes that the White House must be front and center in dealing with the knotty tangle of current NASA woes.
"It's not up to NASAthey've lost their place at the table," Murray concluded.
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