I’ve been surprised at how little commentary there is in the blogosphere about today’s anniversary, with the only note of it I’ve seen so far at NASA Watch.

Here’s what I wrote at the time (off the top of my head, having just been woken up by a phone call from the east coast telling me that Columbia was missing in action over Texas). And here are some links to other things I wrote on the subject over the next few days. I’d change little of what I wrote then. Unfortunately, NASA (and Congress) don’t seem to have learned the lesson from that event or, worse, they’ve learned the wrong lessons.

From that day three years ago, here’s the lesson they should have learned:

The entire NASA budget is now in a cocked hat, because we don’t know what the implications are until we know what happened. But it could mean an acceleration of the Orbital Space Plane program (I sincerely hope not, because I believe that this is entirely the wrong direction for the nation, and in fact a step backwards). What I hope that it means is an opportunity for some new and innovative ideas–not techically, but programmatically.

Once again, it demonstrates the fragility of our space transportation infrastructure, and the continuing folly of relying on a single means of getting people into space, and doing it so seldom. Until we increase our activity levels by orders of magnitude, we will continue to operate every flight as an experiment, and we will continue to spend hundreds of millions per flight, and we will continue to find it difficult to justify what we’re doing. We need to open up our thinking to radically new ways, both technically and institutionally, of approaching this new frontier.

Anyway, it’s a good opportunity to sit back and take stock of why the hell we have a manned space program, what we’re trying to accomplish, and what’s the best way to accomplish it, something that we haven’t done in forty years. For that reason, while the loss of the crew and their scientific results is indeed a tragedy, some good may ultimately come out of it.

Unfortunately, while there was a minimal debate within the government, it wasn’t really a public one, and the real issues never got properly thrashed out–we still, as a nation, don’t really know why we’re doing this. And we still have the mentality that the way to get the nation into space and keep it there is for the space agency to develop a launch system to its own specifications, with a low flight rate and high costs, with no resiliency or diversity of approaches. The CEV program looks more and more like the OSP every day. OSP was a capsule designed to go to ISS that might have evolved into a lunar transportation vehicle. CEV is a capsule originally conceived to go to the moon with an early capability to deliver crew to ISS, but the latter goal seems to have come to the forefront, with the dropping of the methane requirement and potential acceleration of the program to close the Shuttle “gap.”

If CEV is successful, it will be just as expensive to operate as Shuttle, probably even if one ignores the high development costs of both it and its all-new (and yes, despite the marketing hype from NASA and ATK, the SRM-based “stick” will essentially be a new vehicle development) launcher. It will have the theoretical capability to get to the Moon (assuming that NASA can find the money to fund the ridiculously expensive Shuttle-derived heavy lifter on which they needlessly insist, and the lunar lander and departure stages), and it will probably be safer, but that in itself won’t make it worth the money that it will cost, particularly when one contemplates the opportunity cost of how that hundred billion could be better spent.

The other lesson that NASA seems to have mislearned is one of basic economics. We have not been rational in the decision to return to flight. Jeff Foust notes some recent foolish congressional commentary:

“One of the arguments that NASA uses is that we have a contractual obligation to 15 other countries with the ISS,” said Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL). “There is no sympathy for that argument with the Congress.” Feeney said that if there is another foam-shedding incident with the shuttle (or presumably another problem of similar seriousness) “it’s going to be really hard to save at that point, really hard to save” the shuttle program.

As someone who considers international cooperation in space to be (in general, though there have been exceptions, one of which is certainly not the space station) a bug, rather than a feature, I agree that Congress shouldn’t let this drive the decision. But the notion that the Shuttle program’s fate should be a function of whether or not we shed more foam is nonsensical.

The last Shuttle flight we had, last summer, which was the first one since that fateful day three years ago, probably cost (just guessing here–no time or reason to try to do a more precise estimate from the budgets) on the order of ten billion dollars (the amount of money we spent on the Shuttle program from February 2003 through July 2005). If they fly this spring, that flight will have cost probably another two or three billion. Every day that we keep this Shuttle program alive probably costs us about ten million dollars or so, whether we fly it or not (a number that makes one weep when one thinks of it as an X-Prize per day). And retiring one of the Orbiters, as some have suggested, will save very little money. In fact, as loved as Hubble is by the public, it doesn’t make financial sense to use a Shuttle to repair it unless it is done quickly, because we could probably afford several new telescopes for the cost of maintaining the Shuttle program long enough to get the mission off.

There are only two reasons to be concerned about whether or not the foam shedding continues. The first is the risk of another vehicle loss, and the second is the risk of losing another crew.

It would make sense to worry about losing another orbiter, if the probability of loss was high, and we had to conserve the fleet for many flights. But the program is already planned to be terminated within another couple dozen flights anyway, and even if more foam is shed, the chances that it will result in another vehicle loss are pretty small–it flew many successful flights prior to all of the renewed attention to the foam issue since 2003. Yes, it’s Russian roulette, but sometimes, if the odds are right (one is playing with a hundred-chamber gun, instead of a six-chamber gun, and there is a significant payoff to playing), playing Russian roulette can be a rational decision.

The reality, of course, is that every action we take is an act of Russian roulette, every decision we make a gamble–all that differs is the odds. If, against the odds, we lose another Orbiter in the next few flights, we could still finish the station with a fleet of two. We could, in fact, probably get to the goal with only one remaining, though the schedule would be further slowed (this all assumes, of course, that there aren’t some new reliability issues of which we’re currently unaware, which seems unlikely at this point given our experience base). So given that we plan to retire the fleet anyway, it makes sense to fly them out, to accomplish their intended purpose and get some value for the money we’re spending to keep the program alive.

The other reason to avoid a loss is to avoid another loss of crew, but that makes no sense, either. Everyone in the astronaut office is as well informed on the risks as anyone can be. If there are some who aren’t willing to fly in that knowledge, then there are plenty who will be happy to take their slots. If they (and the nation) don’t think that it’s worth a one in a hundred shot of dying to complete the space station, then the nation must not attach much importance to completing the space station, either out of some (misplaced, in my opinion) sense that doing so advances us in our goals in space (whatever they are), or in terms of keeping international agreements.

As Congressman Weldon pointed out in Jeff’s post, NASA has a serious budget problem. They probably aren’t going to get the money to both complete ISS and to keep CEV on schedule. They, and Congress and the White House, have to make some hard choices. The current policy, of keeping the Shuttle program going, without flying, is the worst possible one. Either retire the system now, and put the money toward our future (preferably in some other direction than ESAS, but even ESAS is better than paying for a Shuttle that doesn’t fly) or start flying it now. But three years after the last tragedy (a longer period of time than when we were down after the Challenger loss) don’t just keep sitting on the pot, as the billiondollarometer continues to tick away.

[Update in the afternoon]

Clark Lindsey has some other links to commentary on the anniversary.

Clark Lindsey:

Maybe I’ve got this all wrong, but it sure looks like the EELV program will go down as one of the biggest mistakes, if not fiascos, in Air Force management history. If you include the Boeing cheating scandal, then it’s a huge black mark upon the whole aerospace industry.

Sounds right to me.

Sometimes it seems like the DoD is in a heated competition with NASA to see who can accomplish the least in space with the most amount of money.

[Update in the afternoon]

In my pain-induced madness, I forgot the link earlier. Now you can go and, as they say, read the whole thing.

Pat Santy has a twentieth anniversary update on her ruminations from last year’s anniversary.

I’m still on vacation, though.

It’s twenty years today since Challenger was lost with all aboard. It was the first real blow to NASA’s confidence in its ability to advance us in space, or that our space policy was sound. It finally shattered illusions about twenty-four flights a year, to which the agency had been clinging up until that event, but it wasn’t severe enough to really make a major change in direction. That took the loss of Columbia, three years ago this coming Tuesday.

Unfortunately, while that resulted finally in a policy decision to retire the ill-fated Shuttle program, the agency seems to have learned the wrong lessons from it–they should have come to realize that we need more diversity in space transport, and it cannot be a purely government endeavor. Instead, harkening back to their glory days of the sixties, the conclusion seems to be that, somehow (and inexplicably) the way to affordability and sustainability is exactly the approach that was unaffordable and unsustainable the last time we did it.

But one has to grant that Apollo was safe, and probably the new system will be more so than the Shuttle was. But safety shouldn’t be the highest goal of the program. Opening frontiers has always been dangerous, and it’s childish to think that this new one should be any different. The tragedy of Challenger and Columbia wasn’t that we lost astronauts. The tragedy was that we lost them at such high cost, and for missions of such trivial value.

This is the other false lesson learned from Challenger (and Columbia)–that the American people won’t accept the loss of astronauts. But we’ve shown throughout our history that we’re willing to accept the loss of brave men and women (even in recent history) as long as it is in a worthy cause. But NASA’s goal seems to be to create yet another appallingly expensive infrastructure whose focus is on recapitulating the achievements of four decades (five decades, by the time they eventually manage it, assuming they keep to their stated schedule) ago.

Will the American people be inspired by that? I can’t say–I only know that I am not.

Would they be inspired by a more ambitious program, a riskier program that involved many more people going into space at more affordable costs, even if (or perhaps because) it is a greater hazard to the lives of the explorers? I surely would. But it seems unlikely that we’re going to get that from the current plan, or planners.