A Way to Avoid Costly Launches, Failed Satellites

Yet another satellite that was supposed to have been put in orbit from the space shuttle failed last week, raising questions and eyebrows about America’s super-duper launching system.

In the last two years, a disturbing number of commercial and government satellites lofted into space on the shuttle have not arrived where they were supposed to go. One was subsequently nudged into place through ingenious firing of its tiny thruster rockets; two were retrieved by astronauts and brought back to Earth; one last month was lost altogether, and the one last week never made it out of the Challenger’s cargo bay.

Question: Wouldn’t it have been better to have put all of these satellites on plain old expendable rockets, such as Deltas and Atlas-Centaurs, which are relatively uncomplicated and which have very high success rates? Why are these satellites on the shuttle, a much more complicated machine brimming with astronauts unnecessary for the job at hand?

The answer goes back to the original arguments for the shuttle, sold to Congress by the Nixon Administration in the early 1970s. The shuttle was going to be America’s sole vehicle into space, Congress was told, and it would make possible the elimination of all expendable rockets.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, always eager to keep up the highly visible manned space program, wanted a shuttle, but it also needed something to use it for. Launching satellites would be a good use, even though there was already a perfectly good way to get them into orbit.

Some people might note that the same sequence of events is now under way with the space station: First comes the technology; afterward come uses for it.

In any case, as an economic and a political matter, Congress would not have accepted the space shuttle, which has cost more than $10 billion, if it had to provide for expendable rockets as well. The solution was to scrap the expendables.

But the customers of the rockets were not nearly as sanguine about getting rid of them as the space agency was. In hindsight, they may have been right.

From the beginning, the Air Force was a reluctant partner in the space shuttle project. But under pressure from the White House, it went along. More recently the Air Force has made clear that continuing uncertainties in the shuttle’s scheduling have forced it back to using rockets to launch its satellites. For the most part, rockets launch on their scheduled dates; shuttles don’t.

As a result, expendable rockets will not be phased out, as originally envisioned.

Commercial users have been less vocal than the Air Force, though they, too, have not wholeheartedly supported the shuttle. Some senior aerospace executives have been known to refer to the shuttle as “forced busing in space.”

Shuttle defenders correctly note that in all but one of the satellite failures so far, the shuttle itself performed flawlessly. The problems arose with the various booster rockets that are supposed to take the satellite from the shuttle’s altitude (less than 200 miles) to geosynchronous orbit, 22,300 miles above the Equator, where the satellite’s rotation matches the rotation of the Earth and it appears to hover.

Furthermore, they say, the same booster rockets used on the shuttle must also be used on Delta and Atlas-Centaur rockets to provide the third stage of thrust that kicks the satellite into the proper orbit. The failures from the shuttle could just as easily have occurred from expendable rockets.

Perhaps so. But if the shuttle program had not overwhelmed the rockets for more than a decade, more powerful, more reliable rockets could have been developed to loft large, heavy satellites without the need for separate third-stage boosters.

In the meantime, the space agency’s insistence on launching satellites from a manned, moving platform opened the market for the European Space Agency to develop the unmanned, expendable Ariane rocket, which has attracted many U.S. and foreign customers. The Europeans saw a market niche that the Americans were abandoning, and they have developed it with gusto.

The shuttle is a reality, and it is here to stay. But it is never going to pay for itself, as Congress was originally promised, and it will be a very long time--if ever--before the customers even pay the full cost of their launches.

It is increasingly clear that the decision to eliminate expendable rockets was the wrong one. They have played a valuable role in the space program, and they should continue to be used to loft satellites into orbit when possible. Why use a complicated launching system when a simple one will do much better?

The only reason to use the shuttle is that without the satellites, there isn’t much for the shuttle to do. Would Congress continue to finance the shuttle at its present level if the spaceplane would only be used for scientific experiments and for occasional tasks that require astronauts, such as retrieving and repairing satellites?

An enlightened Congress would.