From: Terry W. Colvin (fortean1@mindspring.com)
Date: Tue Feb 04 2003 - 16:35:44 MST
Was the space shuttle useful? Not really.
By David Owen
Posted Tuesday, February 4, 2003, at 9:47 AM PT
< http://www.salon.com >
In the days since the explosion of the space shuttle Columbia, NASA officials
have repeatedly reminded us that space travel is inherently dangerous. They
clearly are right. If passenger aircraft blew up as often as space shuttles have
(twice in 113 missions), there would be 20 catastrophic accidents every day at
La Guardia alone.
The crashes of Challenger and Columbia killed 14 crew members and destroyed half
of America's original shuttle fleet. President Bush, the Wall Street Journal,
and others have assured us that enduring such extraordinary losses is both
necessary and worthwhile. In truth, though, the shuttle program has never been
either of those things. NASA's original plan was to create a vehicle that would
make quick round trips between the Earth and an orbiting space stationbut then
Congress, in 1969, refused to pay for both programs, and space officials, forced
to choose, elected to build the bus without the destination. They rationalized
their toy by claiming that it would make ordinary rockets obsolete. But the
shuttle has proved instead to be so expensive and undependable that virtually
all satellites nowadays are propelled into orbit on old-fashioned disposable
launchers. On the rare occasions when the shuttle is still used to launch a
satellite, the payload is typically one that originated with NASA itselfsuch as
Starshine, an inert, hollow, mirror-covered sphere 19 inches in diameter that
the crew of the shuttle Discovery carried into low orbit in the spring of 1999
and essentially threw overboard so that high-school astronomers (who had pitched
in to polish the mirrors) could track it with telescopes and predict when it
would plummet back to Earth, as it did a few months later.
NASA officials and their supporters have often claimed that the shuttle program
has produced a "six-fold return" on our staggering investment in it. For that
number to be accurate, though, each shuttle mission would have to have generated
something like $4 billion in economic benefitsan impossibility. In fact, it's
tough to identify any significant benefits at all. NASA annually produces a
publication called <http://www.sti.nasa.gov/tto/spinoff2002/index1.html>Spinoff,
which claims to document "successfully commercialized NASA technology" from the
preceding year, but almost all the shuttle-related claims are strained in the
extreme: A sports bra made from a material also used in shuttle spacesuits helps
to reduce "mammary bounce"; a type of synthetic netting used in shuttles has
also been used in the decks of racing catamarans; a composite material developed
by Babcock & Wilcox for use in certain kinds of tubing on the space shuttle was
later also used for "improving golf clubs" by providing "maximum distance."
It is almost impossible to find a shuttle spinoff that is the product of an
actual shuttle-based experiment or project rather than a result of the design,
construction, operation, or maintenance of the shuttle itself. For example, NASA
boasts that leftover fuel from shuttle missions is used "to save livesby
destroying land mines." But any incendiary substance could be used to blow up
land mines; employing excess shuttle fuel for that purpose does not make
land-mine destruction a "benefit" of the space program. Almost all alleged
shuttle spinoffs are of this type.
When a commercial product or application truly is developed on a shuttle
mission, the shuttle's real contribution usually has to do only with marketing.
For example, in 1998, International Flavors & Fragrances Inc. sponsored a
shuttle experiment in which buds of a certain variety of rose were allowed,
under the supervision of John Glenn, to blossom during a shuttle flight.
According to IFF, exposure to microgravity during blooming led to an unspecified
"shift in the scent" of the blossoms. "Essential oils" supposedly similar to
those produced by the shuttle roses were later included, among roughly two dozen
other ingredients, in a perfume (called Zen) made by Japan's largest cosmetics
company. The IFF press release announcing the breakthrough said: "This heavenly
scent has come down to Earth in a product designed to enhance mood as well as to
delight those who smell it. It also serves to remind us that reaching for the
stars can result in down-to-Earth delights." Last year, Unilever became the
second company to use the fragrance in a product by adding it to a deodorant
called Impulse, which "caters to the energetic and vibrant girls who believe in
living life to the fullest!" but isn't sold in the United States.
On that same shuttle mission in 1998, Glenn took part in a series of experiments
that NASA said had been inspired by apparent similarities between space travel
and old ageboth of which cause "bone and muscle loss, balance disorders and
sleep disturbances." The investigation consisted of monitoring Glenn's
temperature at night, collecting samples of his blood and urine, and asking him
questions about the quality of his sleep, among other things. NASA hoped that
these data might lead to the creation of "a model system to help scientists
interested in understanding aging"although no such model resulted from the
mission, and no earthbound scientist not connected with the program ever asked
NASA to produce one. (Besides, if the apparent similarities between aging and
space travel really are meaningful, wouldn't it have made more sense to conduct
the experiment in reverse, by observing Earth's plentiful supply of old people
and then applying any lessons learned to the comparatively small population of
shuttle passengers? After all, we earthlings have been generating data about the
effects of aging for several million years, and we know exactly how the
experiment ends.)
The scientific investigations undertaken during Columbia's final voyage were
similar to those conducted during Glenn's mission five years earlier; indeed,
they were similar to the experiments conducted on nearly every manned American
space voyage that has ever taken place. For example, eight Australian spiders
aboard Columbia added to our understanding of weightless web-weaving, a subject
NASA first studied aboard Skylab in
1973. (According to an Australian wire-service report filed three days before
the accident, the spider experiment "could result in scientists mimicking the
structure of spider silk for use in aerospace structures and space
stations"proving that NASA isn't the only hyperbolic self-promoter in the
world.) And International Flavors & Fragrances was back on board, in partnership
with the Wisconsin Center for Space Automation and Robotics, to grow a few more
fragrant plants in one of the shuttle's standard glove-compartment-sized
experiment drawers.
There were more serious experiments on Columbia as well, of course. But all of
those experiments could have been performed more easily, economically, and
safely aboard an unmanned spacecraft (as in the case of the dust-storm
observation experiment); or addressed questions that NASA had already answered
years, if not decades, before (as in the case of all the experiments designed to
measure the effects of microgravity on living things); or had no chance
whatsoeverassuming that NASA's long history in this area provides an accurate
guideof leading to any truly useful discovery or breakthrough (as in the case of
all the experiments aimed at creating new drugs, growing proteins, curing
cancer, and the like). In the end, Columbia's main contribution to human
knowledge will likely be yet another candidate for Spinoff magazine, though it
will be a big one: By the end of this year, we will know more than we ever did
before about how to collect, catalog, and analyze the debris of a space-flight
disaster.
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-- Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA) < fortean1@mindspring.com > Alternate: < fortean1@msn.com > Home Page: < http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Stargate/8958/index.html > Sites: * Fortean Times * Mystic's Haven * TLCB * U.S. Message Text Formatting (USMTF) Program ------------ Member: Thailand-Laos-Cambodia Brotherhood (TLCB) Mailing List TLCB Web Site: < http://www.tlc-brotherhood.org >[Vietnam veterans, Allies, CIA/NSA, and "steenkeen" contractors are welcome.]
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