El trasbordador

Bob Park, en su columna de los viernes What’s New, opina:

1. SHUTTLE: THE SPACE SHUTTLE DOESN’T WORK IT NEVER DID WORK.

Why is everyone afraid to say so? The real problem isn’t foam falling off the fuel tank. The shuttle was sold to Congress as a way to launch things into space more cheaply. On the contrary, it’s the most expensive way to reach space ever conceived. The problems we’re facing now result from the refusal to acknowledge that reality. Initially, anything that went into space, including commercial and military satellites, was required to be launched from the shuttle. With the total cost of the shuttle program at about $150B, the average cost/flight is about $1.3B. The shuttle was strangling space development before the Challenger disaster. Then it was declared to be a science laboratory, but no field of science has been affected in any way by research that has been conducted on the shuttle or space station. The last scheduled research mission was the final flight of Columbia in 2003. The shuttle’s only mission now is to supply the ISS.