WEEKLY WHINE

Missed opportunity

Could we have done better?

Undoubtedly.

Can we avoid space disasters?

Of course not.

From the start of the Space Shuttle programme, the realistically minded were well aware that some missions may not return safely. Fortunately, events such as that of yesterday are far from routine. It is just over seventeen years since the loss of Challenger, which itself was more than fourteen years since the loss of the Soyuz 11 mission.

Every space disaster to date has been accompanied by some sort of design change. After the Apollo 1 fire in 1967, the spacecraft's atmosphere was changed and its hatch redesigned. After the Soyuz 11 spacecraft lost cabin pressure at reentry, the Soyuz capsule was redesigned so that crews could reenter in their pressure suits.

But only now are the same spacecraft flying multiple times. Columbia was the first craft to carry humans into space and back more than once; this was its 28th flight in nearly 22 years. According to Space Shuttle programme manager Ron Dittemore, orbiters are to fly again - with yet unknown modifications - once the investigation into STS-107 is completed. No amount of redesigning, though, can make the orbiter fleet young again. Discovery has flown thirty times, Atlantis twenty six, Endeavour nineteen.

In 113 flights of the Space Shuttle programme, it can be argued that very little was accomplished. Never did an orbiter land on Mars, visit an asteroid, reach the Moon, or even travel much more than four hundred kilometres above Earth's surface. Two missions could have been flown simultaneously, but were not. Human crews were proven useful on the various Hubble Space Telescope repair missions, but not on most other missions. Developing a heavy lift vehicle would have been a faster, more cost effective way to launch the International Space Station.

Amongst the Space Shuttle's intended purposes were to maintain NASA's presence in space and to maintain the American public's interest in space travel. However, the programme now seems to have had the opposite effects. Although the United States remains one of two nations with the ability to launch humans into space, a third, China, will soon be ready to do so, it seems.

Shuttles have flown so many times, but accomplished so little in comparison, that the public has come to treat space travel as a routine, uninteresting occurrence. Nothing could be further from the truth. It may be routine in the same sense that climbing Mount Everest is routine: over one thousand people have reached the summit, but well over a hundred have died on the mountain.

Given that launch and landing are the most dangerous parts of any space mission, we must consider whether it would be worthwhile to add to our abilities in space. Sending a spacecraft into lunar orbit and back, for instance, probably produces a small increase in the probability of failure but leads to immense scientific return.

Or consider a lunar landing. Such a mission would approximately double the failure probability [from 2%, based upon two failures in 113 attempts, to 4%], but the public would find an attempt to land on the Moon much more than twice as interesting as an average flight in Earth orbit.

Instead of such tangible achievements, NASA had for some time focussed on human interest, such as the flag from the wreckage of the World Trade Center that flew on STS-108 and last year's reawakening of the Educator Astronaut Program, under which Christa McAuliffe's backup, Barbara Morgan, was to fly in NOV 2003.

Why find new people and things to send on old missions, when we can just as easily send the new people and things on new missions?

In 1986, humans missed an opportunity. Following the loss of the 25th Space Shuttle flight, did we redouble our efforts to make space a safe place to visit, explore, and inhabit? No. We only tried to make it a safe place to visit. For the most part, we succeeded: 87 missions lifted off and landed safely. Now, we must not forget our commitment to humanity. There is much discussion about the kind of world in which we would like our children to grow up. Who says our children must grow up on only one world?

We could have done better then; we can do better now. We must develop the technology required to establish permanent settlements on the Moon, asteroids, and Mars. This opportunity can be seized.