Amos Zeeberg, over at Discover, says it was a flop, and that we deluded ourselves about it for far too long. It’s actually worse than he says, though. Not sure where he gets these numbers:

The shuttle was billed as a reusable craft that could frequently, safely, and cheaply bring people and payloads to low Earth orbit. NASA originally said the shuttles could handle 65 launches per year; the most launches it actually did in a year was nine; over the life of the program, it averaged five per year. NASA predicted each shuttle launch would cost $50 million; they actually averaged $450 million. NASA administrators said the risk of catastrophic failure was around one in 100,000; NASA engineers put the number closer to one in a hundred; a more recent report from NASA said the risk on early flights was one in nine. The failure rate was two out of 135 in the tests that matter most.

It’s actually a lot worse than that. If you include development costs, we now know that it was about a billion and a half per flight (~$200B in life-cycle costs over 135 flights, in current-year dollars). Even on an annualized basis, it was probably never as low as $450M (again, current-year dollars).

This isn’t quite right, though:

Tellingly, the U.S. space program is abandoning spaceplanes and going back to Apollo-style rockets.

That depends on what you mean by “the U.S. space program.” Yes, Mike Griffin retrogressed down that road, until it became unaffordable, and Congress continues to insist on it for now (until the fiscal situation truly implodes in the coming years, if not months), but the private people aren’t all doing that. For instance, Dreamchaser isn’t an “Apollo-style rocket,” and none of the suborbital people are, so if any of them graduate to orbit in the future, they will be distinctly un-Apollo like.

There are valuable lessons to be learned from the Shuttle, but as I wrote a couple weeks ago, we have to make sure that we learn the right, and not the wrong ones.

Razib has further comments over at Discover.

[Via commenter Paul Dietz]

[Update a few minutes later]

Will McLean makes a good point in comments — the Air Force continues to support X-37B, which is hardly “Apollo like.”

[Mid-morning update]

Mike Griffin: The Shuttle program was oversold.

Nowhere near as much as Constellation was.

Here is a typical exchange in comments over at Space Politics:

We’ll need heavy-lift at some point, and it might as well be now. Then payloads can be designed around it. And Ron, just because the HLV is the only thing in the budget now, that doesn’t mean that things like hab modules, departure stage, etc. won’t show up down the road: they will, as the budget picture improves, as it surely will.

Here was my response:

We’ll need heavy-lift at some point, and it might as well be now.

Even if true, this is logically absurd. If it is very expensive, and we don’t need it now, but there are other things that we do need now, then it makes sense to wait until we need it. Do you not understand the concept of limited resources and time value of money?

just because the HLV is the only thing in the budget now, that doesn’t mean that things like hab modules, departure stage, etc. won’t show up down the road: they will, as the budget picture improves, as it surely will.

Let me elaborate. Tell me where I’m going wrong, here. We can’t get to the moon without a lander. We can’t get to the moon without a lunar insertion stage. We can get to the moon without a heavy lifter, if we’re willing to either design the stage to accept and store propellant on orbit, or put up a separate propellant depot. Given that we have finite resources, if one wanted to get to the moon as quickly as possible using those resources, and one was rational, one would want to focus on those elements that are essential to get to the moon, and put off those things that are not so. This is just basic critical path analysis.

When someone says that they want the latter now, even though it won’t be needed until “at some point,” with the hope (and hope is not a plan) that the other things will somehow magically “show up down the road,” one is demonstrating that the priority is not in fact sending people beyond earth orbit, or going to the moon, but just building cool giant rockets.

It’s fascinating to drill through the illogic of much of these arguments and try to figure out what it really motivating those making them, because it surely can’t be sending any significant numbers of people into space. It seems to be driven mostly by emotion, whether dislike of Obama, a nostalgia for Apollo, or just a big-rocket fetish.

[Update early afternoon]

Mark Whittington doubles down on the illogic (no, I’m not going to reward him with a link):

There are a couple of problems with Rand’s rant.

First, he assumes that the lander has to be developed in tandem with the heavy lifter. To be sure there are some small scale projects going on at JSC and Marshal, but a lander does not have to be ready the very second that the heavy lifter is. The SLS/Space Ship Formally Known as Orion can do flight testing to lunar orbit and the lagrange points while the lander is developed.

Second, Rand’s fixation on fuel depots as a panacea flies in the face of every study done on the subject, including the Augustine Committee, that concluded that shooting fuel tanks from the Earth’s surface does not buy one any savings but does assume a great deal more risk. Now, fuel from the Moon, deployed to one of the Lagrange points using a mass driver is another thing entirely. However, first one has to get to the Moon and for that one needs heavy lift.

Ignoring the nonsense that my post was a “rant” (or enraged, or leaping the length of my chain, or any of the other typically insane characterizations of my posts by him), no, I don’t assume that “the lander has to be developed in tandem with the heavy lifter.” No one sane reading what I wrote would infer such an assumption. I assume a fact — that no heavy lifter is needed at all. What I assume is that the sooner you have a lander, the sooner you will get to the moon. The longer you delay the lander, the longer it will take you to get to the moon, because you cannot get to the moon without a lander, whereas you can do so without heavy lift. (I note with amusement that, as in this comments thread, he still doesn’t understand the difference between “formerly” and “formally.”)

As for his comment about the Augustine panel, he obviously didn’t read the report (or as is often the case, he didn’t read it for comprehension), whose members described propellant depots as a “game changer.” Not to imply that I agree with all aspects of the report, of course, but since he chose to cite it himself, from the report summary:

Potential approaches to developing heavy-lift vehicles (Table 2-1) are based on NASA heritage (Shuttle and Apollo) and EELV (evolved expendable launch vehicle) heritage. Each has its distinct advantages and disadvantages.

In the Ares-V-plus-Ares-I system planned by the Constellation program, the Ares I launches the Orion and docks in low-Earth orbit with the Altair lander launched on the Ares V. It has the advantage of projected very high ascent crew safety, but it delays the development of the Ares V heavy lift vehicle until after the independently operated Ares I is developed.

In a different, related architecture, the Orion and Altair are launched on two separate “Lite” versions of the Ares V, providing for more robust mass margins. Building a single NASA vehicle could reduce carrying and operations costs, and accelerate heavy-lift development. Of these two Ares system alternatives, the Committee finds the Ares V Lite in the dual mode the preferred reference option.

The more directly Shuttle-derived family consists of in-line and side-mount vehicles substantially derived from the Shuttle, providing more continuity in workforce. The development cost of the more Shuttle-derived system would be lower, but it would be less capable than the Ares V family and have higher recurring costs. The lower launch capability could eventually be offset by developing on-orbit refueling.

The EELV-heritage systems have the least lift capability, so that to provide equal performance, almost twice as many launches would be required, when compared to the Ares family. If on-orbit refueling were developed and used, the number of launches could be reduced, but operational complexity would be added. However, the EELV approach would also represent a new way of doing business for NASA, which would have the benefit of potentially lowering development and operational costs. This would come at the cost of ending a substantial portion of the internal NASA capability to develop and operate launchers. It would also require that NASA and the Department of Defense jointly develop the new system.

All of the options would benefit from the development of in-space refueling, and the smaller rockets would benefit most of all. The potential government-guaranteed market for fuel in low-Earth orbit would create a stimulus to the commercial launch industry. In the design of the new launcher, in-space stages and in-space refueling, the Committee cautions against the tradition of designing for ultimate performance, at the cost of reliability, operational efficiency and life-cycle cost.

Emphasis mine. Note that the only disadvantage claimed is the “addition of operational complexity.” Whether this is a sufficiently bad thing as to result in the deliberate avoidance of it, requires deeper analysis not presented in the summary, but clearly, they are not recommending against it (and indeed, if one reads between the lines, they are hinting that it would be a damned good idea in the final paragraph). It is in fact very clear from that paragraph that, contrary to Mark’s nonsense, it does in fact buy savings, and there is no mention of risk.

In the table of recommendations, every launch system option presented, for constrained, moon first, and flexible path, other than Ares V, utilizes orbital refueling. All of these were options presented, and nowhere did they say that the Ares V was to be preferred because it avoided refueling, or that any of the other options were undesirable for that reason. In other words, there is zero basis in the report for his characterization of it as “offering no savings,” or “assuming a great deal more risk.”

Here’s a hint, Mark. We know that, given your training and experience (and other issues), you’re unable to coherently argue the technical issues on your own, but if you’re going to make arguments from authority, you should at least make sure that the authority agrees with you.

Instead, once again, he prefers to live in his own alternate reality.

[Update a while later]

Just to reemphasize — the report says pretty much the opposite of what Mark claims it does, and in fact the last paragraph quoted above implicitly assumes that in-space refueling will be “designed.” Yet the Congress has completely ignored this, and has provided zero funding for it, instead pouring billions into a new rocket that isn’t needed.

…by so-called conservatives:

Let’s look at what the Obama budget proposes. It ends our manned moon and space exploration, but it proposes a total NASA spending increase by $1 billion. So NASA won’t be totally out of business. His FY2011 budget proposed $19 billion, with emphasis on science, not on manned space flight. He wants to end NASA’s manned space flight program and rent space on Russian spacecraft. He wants to turn space transportation over to private, commercial companies, such as Space X, United Launch Alliance, Boeing, Sierra Nevada, Bigelow Aerospace and others. There is only one problem with privatization with space flight – it does not work. Space X is where NASA was in 1960 with Project Mercury. The ability to put humans into orbit exists only on paper.

Really? The Falcon 9, which has had two successful flights with no failures, and the Dragon capsule, which flew into orbit and returned safely last year, “exists only on paper”? And a capsule that can carry seven crew is “where NASA was in 1960 with Project Mercury,” which could only carry a single person? Really?

Whence comes this compulsion from many supposed anti-government and free-market types to deliberately slander private industry? Do they really hate Barack Obama that much?