# Why was the space shuttle retired without an immediate successor? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 14, 2013, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-the-space-shuttle-retired-without-an-immediate-successor/666260 "2013-08-14T23:08:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![SHARKBITEATTACK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/91b2a8/32.png) [@SHARKBITEATTACK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SHARKBITEATTACK)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2013, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-the-space-shuttle-retired-without-an-immediate-successor/666260/1 "2013-08-14T23:08:33Z")
I don’t understand why we retired all 3 shuttles and our now relying exclusively on the Russians to get to the ISS. We were paying 62 mil and now 70+ for each seat aboard a soyuz rocket. According to Wikipedia a shuttle launch costs 450 mil and it can carry 7 passengers plus a shit ton of cargo or a sattelite. To my knowledge SpaceX Dragonrider and NASA’s Orion spacecraft won’t be in operation till 2017 -2018. I guess I just don’t see why we didn’t gradually phase out the shuttle fleet and better allocate out funds 😕 ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2013, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-the-space-shuttle-retired-without-an-immediate-successor/666260/2 "2013-08-14T23:10:17Z")
Because NASA is full of political morons. No, really. ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2013, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-the-space-shuttle-retired-without-an-immediate-successor/666260/3 "2013-08-14T23:31:58Z")
I think most of it was the lack of will to take on any further risk with the shuttle fleet. We already lost two and and I think that was enough for the public as well as NASA officials. Space travel is always going to be risky but it was always a political gamble for the decision makers to proceed with any new shuttle flights especially after the Columbia disaster. There was no good way to guarantee that the same thing wouldn’t happen on any of the subsequent flights. It was simply a gamble and numbers game due to limits in the fundamental design. If we lost another one, the whole fleet would have probably been shut down instantly and unceremoniously forever leaving forward progress in a more tentative state than a planned and semi-graceful exit. In short, they just decided to get out on their own terms while while there was still a small winning streak and leave it up to the Russians to suffer any PR damage if one of their vehicles fails. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2013, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-the-space-shuttle-retired-without-an-immediate-successor/666260/4 "2013-08-15T00:07:15Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > Because NASA is full of political morons. > > No, really. Which is also the answer for “Why did we build the shuttle?” If we could go back in time and make the X-15 project trump Mercury/Gemini… _sigh_. ---
**Author:** ![Jim\_s\_Son](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19adc/32.png) [@Jim\_s\_Son](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jim_s_Son)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2013, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-the-space-shuttle-retired-without-an-immediate-successor/666260/5 "2013-08-15T00:13:14Z")
Wasn’t the space shuttle over promised in the 1970s? I remember talk about low costs and weekly flights. Didn’t happen. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2013, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-the-space-shuttle-retired-without-an-immediate-successor/666260/6 "2013-08-15T00:24:37Z")
> [@Jim\_s\_Son](#): > > Wasn’t the space shuttle over promised in the 1970s? I remember talk about low costs and weekly flights. Didn’t happen. They made poor choices at nearly every juncture, promising a virtual DC-3 to space and badly reusing existing tech to make a patchwork version of what was already a poor design. Other than that it “got us there” there was never anything admirable about the US Space Edsel. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2013, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-the-space-shuttle-retired-without-an-immediate-successor/666260/7 "2013-08-15T00:35:38Z")
The US could continue to pay to keep the Shuttle program operational or it could devote the funds to developing an alternate launch system, but not both. ---
**Author:** ![Declan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ecae2f/32.png) [@Declan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Declan)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2013, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-the-space-shuttle-retired-without-an-immediate-successor/666260/8 "2013-08-15T03:19:35Z")
> [@SHARKBITEATTACK](#): > > I don’t understand why we retired all 3 shuttles and our now relying exclusively on the Russians to get to the ISS. We were paying 62 mil and now 70+ for each seat aboard a soyuz rocket. According to Wikipedia a shuttle launch costs 450 mil and it can carry 7 passengers plus a shit ton of cargo or a sattelite. To my knowledge SpaceX Dragonrider and NASA’s Orion spacecraft won’t be in operation till 2017 -2018. > > I guess I just don’t see why we didn’t gradually phase out the shuttle fleet and better allocate out funds 😕 The STS orbiter was based around the cargo compartment, to be able to handle one of the Keyhole spy sats. A news story came out about a year ago, that Nasa was given, two “hubble” class satellites by the department of defence. So my supposition is that the NRO is out of the big bird sat business, and has other means of information gathering. Nasa’s biggest customer, pulled out and no money was ponied up by congress for other business. Declan ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2013, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-the-space-shuttle-retired-without-an-immediate-successor/666260/9 "2013-08-15T03:39:22Z")
> [@Declan](#): > > …So my supposition is that the NRO is out of the big bird sat business, and has other means of information gathering… Wiki says otherwise; the last known NRO launch was in Sept. 2012, and there are at least 11 more planned: [List of NRO launches - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NRO_Launches) ---
**Author:** ![Francis\_Vaughan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/francis_vaughan/32/3093_2.png) [@Francis\_Vaughan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Francis_Vaughan)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2013, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-the-space-shuttle-retired-without-an-immediate-successor/666260/10 "2013-08-15T04:02:17Z")
The history is longer and more murky. The Shuttle was pitched by NASA as a way of staying relevant past Apollo. Two forces conspired to damage the final product. One, congress really wasn’t interested in funding NASA at Apollo era levels, so there wasn’t enough money to do it right, but rather than do nothing, NASA promised that they could do something. Two, NASA found a supportive friend in the defence sector, so long as the shuttle was big enough to do the work defence needed - like hoisting big spysats. This additional support helped swing the funding NASA needed to do anything at all. So it was underfunded, but had to deliver bigger than NASA really wanted to build. Not good. Eventually, after the Columbia disaster, it was apparent that the Shuttle really was doomed, with no realistic chance of ever becoming more reliable, and with an already ageing fleet, a NASA management culture that simply wasn’t progressing and showed no signs of being able to manage the shuttle in a way that would not simply keep losing one in 50 flights, the president ordered it shut down. Keeping it flying would cost about $500m per launch. Congress were not in the mood to fund both the development of a replacement and keep the platform flying, when its only job was to carry Americans to the ISS. All the other tasks were already covered, with numerous unmanned freighters either in use, or ready to roll. So congress sees either spending big money (many billions) to cover nothing but the national pride of lofting a few Americans to the ISS themselves, rather than pay to go up on a (much safer) Russian craft at a fraction of the cost for a few years. National pride has its price, but it isn’t that much. So easy call. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2013, 5:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-the-space-shuttle-retired-without-an-immediate-successor/666260/11 "2013-08-15T05:28:53Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > If we could go back in time and make the X-15 project trump Mercury/Gemini… _sigh_. Yes? Are you implying that the X-15 could have evolved into an orbital manned launch system? Because this simply isn’t true. The X-15 was designed for research in high altitude/high dynamic pressure aerodynamics. It was a spacecraft only in the sense that a few flights went above the Karman line. It didn’t come anywhere close to achieving orbital speed, and did not have anything like the thermal protection system to survive reentry at orbital speeds. The X-20 Dyna-Soar concept was designed to provide a vertical launch (on a Titan III) glide return craft but technical issues with the thermal protection system and reentry control prevented it from getting beyond a plywood mockup. In general, spaceplane concepts suffer from the conceit that an orbital launch system is somehow “like” an aircraft. The penalty for this line of thinking is having to carry wing structure and protection systems all the way to orbit, which is a 1:1 weight penalty against payload, hence why the Space Transportation System (“Shuttle”) could lift ~24 metric tons to LEO as opposed to \>70 metric tons for a Shuttle-derived vehicle without wings. The presumed advantage of reusability of structure, avionics, and engines was not so great considering the amount of refurbishment and acceptance testing required to reuse hardware, and the fundamental design flaws in the STS posed increasing risks which simply could not be mitigated. > [@Declan](#): > > The STS orbiter was based around the cargo compartment, to be able to handle one of the Keyhole spy sats. A news story came out about a year ago, that Nasa was given, two “hubble” class satellites by the department of defence. So my supposition is that the NRO is out of the big bird sat business, and has other means of information gathering. Nasa’s biggest customer, pulled out and no money was ponied up by congress for other business. The primary launch systems for NRO payloads has been the ULA vehicles (Delta II, Delta IV, Atlas V) which were developed under the USAF Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program. EELV vehicles suffer less cost creep, schedule delays, and availability issues than the STS. It is no secret that many of the requirements such as cross range and payload bay dimensions for the Shuttle were determined by requirements for deploying surveillance satellites. Also, the actual per mission cost was somewhere between $450M and $600M per launch, there were also fixed costs with maintaining the facilities and workforce that made the amortized costs in excess of $1B per launch. Although it is tempting to blame NASA for the deficiencies of the Shuttle system and the failure to either affect improvements or bring a replacement system online prior to retiring the STS, it needs to be recognized that NASA is largely at the mercy of Congressional directives with regard to major budget and system configuration decisions; hence why systems such as the STS, the cancelled Constellation system, and the Space Launch System currently under development use components which come largely from powerful Congressional districts even though they may not offer the best technical solution. One can certainly criticize NASA for its handling of contractors to the point that every major subsystem of the Constellation launch and space vehicles was years behind schedule before being cancelled, but the decision to select that particular prime contractor despite demonstrated failure of past performance, including on the immediate predecessor vehicle which was to replace the STS as a manned/heavy orbital launch vehicle, was clearly dictated above NASA technical management. **Lumpy** is essentially correct; NASA could not avoid the cost to maintain the STS and develop Constellation (and now the SLS) at the same time. The STS was maintained long enough to complete assembly of the International Space Station (ISS) and a few other missions and was then retired. There is an even bigger issue looming, though. The ISS will either require significant additional cost to extend its lifespan beyond 2020, or will have to be de-orbited, leaving the SLS without a significant immediate mission to perform. (The SLS is also intended to support lunar and asteroid exploration missions but will require additional components to do that beyond the orbital launch components which are being largely deferred for later development.) This means the SLS may only have one or two launches a year, which means that the marginal costs will not see advantage of volume production or full utilization of launch facilities and labor force. This may make it difficult to even keep second tier suppliers in business producing crucial components. So while we currently cannot get to the ISS without outside help, as soon as we get the SLS running it may not have anywhere particular to go to. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2013, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-the-space-shuttle-retired-without-an-immediate-successor/666260/12 "2013-08-15T14:55:46Z")
> [@](#): > > Quoth **silenus** : > > Because NASA is full of political morons. > > No, really. This isn’t true at all. The real answer is much more nuanced: It’s because the _administration_ of NASA is full of political morons. ---
**Author:** ![Simplicio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2013, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-the-space-shuttle-retired-without-an-immediate-successor/666260/13 "2013-08-15T15:36:29Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > This isn’t true at all. The real answer is much more nuanced: It’s because the _administration_ of NASA is full of political morons. Eh, even if NASA was staffed purely by super-genius’s, I don’t think there was any way to fix the essential problem that manned space travel didn’t have enough support to fund the development of a successor system, but at the same time had too much support to simply decide to wind-down the US’s manned space program cleanly. ---
**Author:** ![aNewLeaf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ac91a4/32.png) [@aNewLeaf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aNewLeaf)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2013, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-the-space-shuttle-retired-without-an-immediate-successor/666260/14 "2013-08-15T15:46:07Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > This isn’t true at all. The real answer is much more nuanced: It’s because the _administration_ of NASA is full of political morons. The administration of NASA has to listen to political morons. ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2013, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-the-space-shuttle-retired-without-an-immediate-successor/666260/15 "2013-08-15T16:21:26Z")
> [@Shagnasty](#): > > I think most of it was the lack of will to take on any further risk with the shuttle fleet. We already lost two and and I think that was enough for the public as well as NASA officials. Space travel is always going to be risky but it was always a political gamble for the decision makers to proceed with any new shuttle flights especially after the Columbia disaster… Old joke that crops up every time we lose a space shuttle: Q: What does NASA stand for? A: Need Another Seven Astronauts Need Another Spaceship Also ---
**Author:** ![user\_hostile](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/user_hostile/32/474_2.png) [@user\_hostile](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/user_hostile)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2013, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-the-space-shuttle-retired-without-an-immediate-successor/666260/16 "2013-08-15T17:09:32Z")
[The origins of the Space Shuttle also included a space station and a manned mission to Mars by 1986](http://www.spacepolicyonline.com/news/nixon-legacy-space-exploration-as-normal-part-of-national-life). Nixon cancelled the latter two–this left the Shuttle with no real mission early on. > [@](#): > > …when Nixon arrived at the White House, there was a “clear need for decisions” when it came to the space program: what to do in the post-Apollo era. To inform this decision, Nixon created the Space Task Group in 1969, chaired by Vice President Spiro Agnew, that recommended a variety of timelines for an aggressive effort that included development of a space shuttle, a space station, and human spaceflight missions to Mars by 1986, at the latest. > > Yet despite having “wrapped himself up” in the euphoria of the Apollo 11 mission, Nixon was not interested in spending money at the pace required to achieve such an ambitious program, Logsdon said. Instead, he assumed a policy that turned space from being something special to a part of normal life – a policy that Logsdon argues has guided the space program for the last 40 years. > > Nixon’s attitude is best captured in a statement he made in March 1970: “we must think of [space activities] as part of a continuing process…and not as a series of separate leaps…what we do in space from here on in must become a normal and regular part of our national life and must therefore be planned in conjunction with all of the other undertakings which are important to us.” > > When the time came to decide on the post-Apollo space program, this attitude had a definite influence. According to Logsdon, Nixon had been “traumatized” by the near-tragic accident of Apollo 13, which turned him away from the idea of return trips to the Moon. As the 1972 elections loomed, Nixon made the decision to approve the Space Shuttle, a decision that resulted from his belief that the United States should strive for something new in space as well as wanting to avoid the electoral risk of post-Apollo aerospace unemployment. From my perspective as a overzealous fan of the moonshots: after landing on the moon, eventually folks got bored with the program and turned their attention to more important things (memories of Vietnam, inflation, shortages, oil embargoes, etc.,). The Space Shuttle, while an interesting item on the news, would never be as compelling as a moon landing with its overtones of cold war and historic we-did-it-first implications. ---
**Author:** ![SpeedwayRyan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce7236/32.png) [@SpeedwayRyan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SpeedwayRyan)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2013, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-the-space-shuttle-retired-without-an-immediate-successor/666260/17 "2013-08-15T17:21:38Z")
> [@Simplicio](#): > > Eh, even if NASA was staffed purely by super- **genius’s** … :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2013, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-the-space-shuttle-retired-without-an-immediate-successor/666260/18 "2013-08-15T17:54:18Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > There is an even bigger issue looming, though. The ISS will either require significant additional cost to extend its lifespan beyond 2020, or will have to be de-orbited, leaving the SLS without a significant immediate mission to perform. (The SLS is also intended to support lunar and asteroid exploration missions but will require additional components to do that beyond the orbital launch components which are being largely deferred for later development.) This means the SLS may only have one or two launches a year, which means that the marginal costs will not see advantage of volume production or full utilization of launch facilities and labor force. This may make it difficult to even keep second tier suppliers in business producing crucial components. So while we currently cannot get to the ISS without outside help, as soon as we get the SLS running it may not have anywhere particular to go to. > Stranger Here’s a good idea: Cancel SLS. Offer a prize to private industry for saving the ISS, or de-orbit it. SpaceX already has plans for a heavy lifter that will be far cheaper than SLS. Other rocket companies have heavy lifters. One of the factors keeping that end of the market from expanding is the worry that SLS will eat into the market for heavy lift. Get rid of it, and let private industry take over. Use the money to develop science goals - new telescopes, deep space probes, research into new technologies like a Europa ice probe. If we’re sure ISS will be de-orbited, there would be nothing to lose from offering it for salvage to any company that can get up there and keep it in a stable orbit. Or, NASA could use some of that SLS money to sponsor a billion dollar prize to the company that can take over ISS operations and keep it stable. Call it a sublease back to the government after saving it. The government could even offer an annual contract for ISS maintenance and resupply, helping to further build a private market in space technology. Of course, that ignores the fact that SLS is really only alive because Senators in powerful states that employ a lot of space workers want it. It’s become a giant jobs program rather than an efficient space launch system. Cronyism and corporate welfare beats common sense ever time. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2013, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-the-space-shuttle-retired-without-an-immediate-successor/666260/19 "2013-08-15T18:06:24Z")
Well, don’t overlook that the Air Force has a massive, parallel and nearly black space program these days. ---
**Author:** ![Habeed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a587f6/32.png) [@Habeed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Habeed)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2013, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-the-space-shuttle-retired-without-an-immediate-successor/666260/20 "2013-08-15T18:27:36Z")
What will go wrong with the ISS in 2020? I understand that components age, but the darn thing is probably built of the highest quality parts and materials that can be found anywhere. There also must be tons of redundancies. To keep using it, they merely need to keep enough systems working for it to remain habitable, and to occasionally do burns to compensate for friction against the upper atmosphere. I understand that when they finally install a more efficient VASIMR thruster, the propellant demands to do those burns will be a fraction of what they are now. It’s hard to imagine the station getting into a state of being uninhabitable, so long as they keep sending more supplies and spare parts and rotating more crew. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-the-space-shuttle-retired-without-an-immediate-successor/666260.md?page=2)