Some people are criticizing Mike Griffin’s decision to overrule some of his managers, and go ahead with the next Shuttle flight, claiming that “schedule pressure” is driving the agency to make a decision in defiance of launch safety, as occurred with Challenger and Columbia.

I disagree, of course. The only thing wrong with Griffin’s decision is that it came almost a year too late–they should have restarted the regular schedule after last summer’s return to flight (and in fact, the return to flight should have been much sooner). I’m on record of long standing as believing that the CAIB’s recommendations were unrealistic, and if they weren’t at the time, they certainly became so when Bush came out with his new policy in early 2004 (which included retirement of the Shuttle fleet in 2010). The Shuttle is as safe as it can practically be made (and despite a lot of confusion among many, including professional “safety” engineers, “safe” is a relative, not absolute state).

I’m doing a lot of work right now with a company that specializes in this sort of risk analysis (though we fine tune it a little more, using a five by five matrix, rather than a four by three). While useful, this kind of analysis is more art than science, with an unavoidable level of subjectivity.

But what it doesn’t take into account is the schedule and cost issues. I’ve noted before that we’re in the worst of all possible worlds right now (and will remain so until we start to fly again with regularity). We’re spending billions of dollars per year to not fly the system, and the date (admittedly arbitrary) of retirement looms, leaving less and less time to complete the ISS (the only reason that the Shuttle hasn’t already been retired). We know as much as we can know about how safe the vehicle is, we don’t know how to make it any safer, absent spending many more billions and years (money that would be much better spent on new systems). The crew are ready to fly, and most of the astronaut corps would have been the day after Columbia broke up. Or if not, NASA did a lousy job in choosing them. Even a “catastrophe” (loss of another orbiter and crew) wouldn’t be the end of the world (though it might be the end of Mike Griffin’s career, since he’s decided to do his job and make this decision), because we’re planning to retire the fleet anyway. But it’s extremely unlikely (and would have been had we done nothing after Columbia, as evidenced by the fact that it happened only once in a hundred flights). The chances of losing another vehicle in the few remaining flights are small.

Mike Griffin is right. It’s time, long past time, to fly.

[Update late afternoon]

There’s a pretty lively discussion of this over at The Flame Trench, with a post by Todd Halvorson. Some of the comments contain the typical fallacies. I loved this one:

You wrote your comment on a computer that without the NASA program would only fit in a large room, you probably cook on a teflon pan. The astronauts do not take up cargo bays full of cash and shovel it out of the airlock, the money is spent to pay salaries and for goods. This money is then returned to the various communities in the form of; buying houses, buying cars, buying groceries, and also paying taxes. Government employees are the only ones that “pay their employers for working”.

Let’s see, there are two false spinoff claims, the old “we don’t send money into space” strawman, and the “multiplier effect” (containing a version of the broken windows fallacy) all in one graf.

I liked this one, too:

If you think the program is a waste of money, think about this: After the Apollo program ended, the Brevard County Area was a waste land. Homes were worth zero and business folded. The Wedgefield area in Orange county is a prime example. Do away with the space program and you will have a disaster here. The economy of this area will drop to almost zero and your local investments will be worth zero. I realize some think it is a waste of money thats becuase you want that money to go into free government handouts for you. Get a job. If you do away with the program and let China get a foot hold in space, we will be in dier straits. The space program is Brevard, no program, no Brevard.

Yes, the taxpayers are clearly obligated to maintain home values in Brevard County. Well, and to keep the Yellow Horde (whose earliest prediction in their “race” with us to the moon is several years after NASA’s plans) from becoming our space overlords.