When The Space Shuttle Flies Again, Let's Use It Better

[Editor's note: If all had gone according to plan, the space shuttle Discovery would have already blasted into orbit to usher in a new, if more modest, era of manned space flight in the United States. It didn't happen; delays have pushed the expected launch date back to at least next month. To some space scientists, like James Van Allen (see below), Discovery's plight is just another sorry reminder of NASA's wrongheaded policies. By relying almost exclusively on the shuttle to launch payloads, Van Allen argues, the agency has seriously set back U.S. space science. Other scientists are more sanguine about the shuttle's role in space science. Burton Edelson (see below) points out that the manned orbiter has opened up entirely new areas such as microgravity experimentation and manufacturing. For many of NASA's own scientist/astronauts, however, it is abundantly clear that the shuttle has not lived up to its full potential at as a vehicle for space science. In the following condensation of an interview with The Scientist's John Carey, NASA astronaut and mission specialist Anthony England explains why—and offers advice on how the science community can tackle the problem.] For scientists, the special lure of the space shuttle was its promised easier access to space. Because it was planned to go up into orbit so often, it seemed to offer the chance for a more spontaneous kind of science, with a quicker turnaround. Scientists like myself had hoped that we could learn something from an experiment on a shuttle mission and then, in a relatively short time, one to two years, fly a sequel to build and expand on what we had-learned the first time. The reality, of course, is that we never achieved that potential. In fact, the lead time in the maimed space program was—and still is— so long that some of the questions various experiments were designed to address had lost some of their importance by the time the experiments were carried into space. The infrared telescope, for example, which was aboard on the mission I flew, had originally been scheduled to fly before IRAS (the infrared as tronomical satellite). But IRAS went up first, boosted into orbit on an expendable rocket, and scooped us on most of the interesting first-order science. Even before the loss of Challenger, the time between go-ahead for an experiment and flight was excessive—often seven years or more. We have to do better. There is a move afoot now in the science community in the planning for the space station that we call "quick is beautiful." The goal is to go from go-ahead to flight in less than three years for a class of simpler experiments and payloads—and I would argue that the idea should be applied to the shuttle as well as to the space station. A time of three years doesn't sound like much, but would be revolutionary in the manned program right now. Unless the time scale can be shortened, scientists can't ensure the involvement of graduate students and postdocs (who generally do much of the work), since these researchers' average length of stay is not much more than three years. Compressing the time scale, however, requires a major reshaping of NASA's priorities. Right now, the shuttle is viewed as a transportation system—a bus that leaves the depot at a certain time. And the burden is on each payload to prove that it is ready to fly and can justify being on a flight. This approach has focused everyone's attention on the launch rate and the amount of mass the shuttle carries into space, rather than on whether we are doing the most important things in space. Somehow we've got to recognize that the relationship between the shuttle and its scientific cargo is not one of customer and vendor. Often the science payloads are the main—or only—reason for going up. Science payloads can't be treated like commercial satellites. One of the characteristics of science is that all the questions are not nailed down when design work for an experiment begins. As a result, both hardware and software for a project evolve as development proceeds. And the scientist needs to work closely with the people who fly the shuttle in order to make sure that the experiment will work aboard the vehicle—and that the astronauts will be able to operate it. It is a messier interface than working with commercial satellites. A number of us within NASA have tried to push for change to make the shuttle more flexible. But progress is slow because the shuttle program is preoccupied with getting itself going again. What is the solution? I have never felt that the primary reason for the manned program is science. The shuttle's objectives are much broader than as a support for science. However, the science that is done on the shuttle should be done well. And here, I think, the scientific community needs to do more. Too often scientists have taken the view, 'Well, since the shuttle program isn't doing the things that I most want to do, I'm not going to pay any attention to it." Consequently, we haven't had the benefit of pressure from scientists to make the manned program more scientifically responsive. The science community should simply demand that the shuttle—and later, the space station—become more flexible, responsive, and thus, more scientifically productive. I am optimistic that this can happen and that the shuttle can be made less of a space truck. But I think it won't happen fast. As a result, I have decided to leave NASA while, at 46, I still have time to help build a research group at a university. NASA astronaut Anthony England, who flew aboard the Spacelab-2 shuttle mission in the summer of 1985, will become a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Michigan next month. England will be working with remote sensing of Earth and planets.

When The Space Shuttle Flies Again, Let's Use It Better

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