Arvidland.com The online home of Arvid Nelson, writer of Rex Mundi & Zero Killer

Two Cheers for the Space Shuttle

Space Shuttle Discovery, 2006. Thanks to NASA for the photo.

The crew of STS 135 is safely back on Earth. Thankfully. Now we can finally lay the Space Shuttle program to rest, and not a moment too soon. For all the backslapping and congratulating going on at NASA, I firmly believe people will look back on the shuttles as a gigantic leap backwards for space exploration.

The Shuttle program had three primary objectives: to make space travel affordable, safe and commonplace. Sadly, it failed colossally on all three counts.

First of all, it costs about half a billion bucks to lob a shuttle into orbit. A Boeing Delta IV rocket, if Wikipedia is to be believed, can push about the same payload into low Earth orbit for one fourth the cost. One fourth!

As for safety, the shuttles would have been much less risky if they’d been configured like the Apollo missions, with a crew/payload capsule on top. Just take a look at the shuttles’ launch configuration; the idea of strapping a big ol’ rocket-powered glider to the side of what essentially amount to three massive fuel bombs is totally insane.

Why do human beings need to go into space at all? That’s the big question now. The answer “because it’s there” is totally unsatisfactory while 3,000 children die of starvation every day in Africa. They are “there”, too.

The truth is, chemical rockets will never take us into the space age. Learning the equations that determine the amount of fuel needed to escape Earth’s gravitational pull in high school physics was an eye-opener for me. More fuel adds more weight, which means more fuel, which means more weight.

Nuclear rockets aren’t the answer, either. You sure as hell can’t watch a nuclear rocket launch half a mile away in a bikini, like you can for the shuttles, not unless you want a 10,000 year suntan. And the crew for a nuclear rocket would have to be shielded from the radiation, which means a massive amount of additional weight. Which means more radiation.

Maybe some genius living in the slums of Bangalore or São Paulo will think up the magical “warp drive” of Star Trek tomorrow. Maybe he or she already has, I don’t know. But for right now, manned space flight seems like an absurd waste of money.

Arthur C. Clarke, one of my favorite authors, famously said “If we have learned one thing from the history of invention and discovery, it is that, in the long run — and often in the short one — the most daring prophecies seem laughably conservative.” How false, Mr. Clarke, how false.

I mean, 2001 was ten years ago. Weren’t we supposed to have moon bases and manned missions to Jupiter by now? That’s why I resent people calling things like Twitter and iPads “revolutionary”. The characters in Star Trek: Deep Space 9 are always holding iPad thingies. iPads should be a given, but no. “Revolutionary” now means organizing your photos online, not manned missions to Alpha Centauri.

Yes, we have iPads, but we're also making sweet, sweet love on inter-dimensional planets in the Gamma Quadrant.

It’s becoming increasingly clear the future people like Clarke and Isaac Asimov imagined is laughably naïve, not “conservative”. Never mind space travel – aeronautics, especially for the military, is becoming increasingly remotely operated and robotic. It will probably be even more true for space. Unmanned is just a hell of a lot cheaper, and safer.

So good bye, Space Shuttle! If you’ve taught us Earthlings anything, it’s that we’re not ready for manned space exploration, and probably won’t be for a very long time.

P.S. – Warlord of Mars #8 came out yesterday – check it out! Next issue is the grand finale of the first story arc.

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