Space Shuttle Retrospective

Today's edition of Robert L Park's "What's New" column includes his latest broadside against the manned space program:

<Begin quote>

In today's issue of Science, Dan Charles takes a clear-eyed look
at "Science on the Shuttle." For 30 years the space shuttle has been the
only Highway to Space for US astronauts. Next week, space shuttle
Atlantis, STS-135, will deliver a load of groceries to the ISS. After its
return 12 days later Atlantis will remain in Florida as a museum piece. The
other surviving shuttles will likewise serve as museums in the district's
of key members of Congress. Near the end of the retrospective, I find
myself cast as the chief shuttle critic: Among some scientists, Dan says,
antipathy to the shuttle – or any human space flight – runs deep. He
quotes me, "It indulged humankind's impractical space fantasies at a cost
that retarded genuine progress." And so it did, but was there any science?
He cites only the repair of the Hubble space telescope, but it would have
been cheaper to launch a new Hubble.

...

THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND.
Opinions are the author's and not necessarily shared by the
University of Maryland, but they should be.
---
Archives of What's New can be found at http://www.bobpark.org

<end quote>

Bob Park is assuming that a new Hubble, unlike the old Hubble, would be launched by an expendable rocket. We could have had a fleet of such Hubbles for the price of a shuttle launch.

but they're pointed down, not up.

Now that we are fighting multiple wars all over the planet, presumably we need more spy satellites than ever before.

Of course, this argument presupposes that we need to be fighting all those wars.

It was intended to compete with disposable satellite launch solutions and it was able to do so but only with heavy government subsidies. Then the Challenger disaster grounded the fleet for several years. Customers who might have considered the Shuttle had moved on to the French and Air Force for their launch solutions and the Shuttle was suddenly without purpose. The solution was to have it spend twenty years assembling an space station that a Saturn V could have thrown up there in two launches. But it kept the shuttle flying until the Columbia disaster. What a waste.

The ISS currently weighs in the order of a million pounds. Saturn 5's could put about a quarter of a million pounds into low earth orbit. Youd also need to include a few command modules for moving crew around, probably invent some form of space tug to to handle what the STS does with it's arm.

I'm not saying the gist of your statement is outright wrong. I agree with you, in that I think that we made a huge error in letting all our experience and infrastructure for the Saturns just trickle away into the dust. Sure would be nice to slap one or two of those a year onto a pad to send up a busload of researchers to the ISS, plus repair parts, replacement life boats (which we never finished either), etc, at least for the next 5-10 years.

As it is, we're going to be outsourcing our space access jobs to Russia for a decade or so. Joy.