Hoagland's Take On The Shuttle Grounding

This is An Interesting Take
Today's entry on the Richard Hoagland blog is something very interesting. basically, he's wondering out loud why NASA are saying out loud that they'll ground the shuttle fleet when there is still a mission happening? Well, it so happened that I was wondering about that too.
Skim the long-winded analysis, and read this bit:

As I was pondering this (to me) MAJOR mystery about this Mission, I got a very enlightening (if somewhat disconcerting ...) phone call last evening from one of my long-time "NASA sources."

He reminded me that, about two years ago -- after the Columbia tragedy, and as the realization shockingly dawned within NASA that the Shuttle's days were numbered -- we had a key discussion regarding some in NASA's "hidden agenda," regarding both the aging Shuttle Program ... and that other unspoken "NASA albatross" -- the International Space Station (ISS).

We'd discussed his discovering "a covert plan inside NASA," to "somehow" ground the Shuttles -- permanently -- long before the President's eventually-announced retirement date "of 2010!"

This would immediately free up (according to these planners) a LOT of (currently limited) NASA money to vigorously pursue the President's new Space Vision -- "back to the Moon ... on to Mars ... and Beyond" -- by providing funds desperately necessary NOW to develop the critically-needed successor to the Shuttles: the "Crew Exploration Vehicle" (or, CEV) ... years earlier than is now possible financially!

Such a critically-needed development program would represent the first new commissioned US "manned" spaceship (when actually flown ...) in more than thirty years! Without it, the President's "New Vision" will be permanently stuck in low Earth orbit ....

Moreover, if the Shuttles were to be pronounced "permanently unfit to fly again" -- far earlier than the President's current deadline of 2010 -- this could also free NASA from another "financial blackhole" (according to my source): the continuing need to keep pouring money into the "exploration dead end" (as the Administration really views it ...) of the International Space Station itself!

If the Shuttles were declared "unfit for further service" -- because their "foam and tile problems" were deemed SO severe that they literally COULD NOT BE FIXED "within any reasonable timeframe or expenditure of funds ..." -- the current US committment to its "international partners" in the Space Station Program, and its dependence on the Russian Soyuz vehicles to carry US astronauts to and from the Station, could be legally terminated!

NASA's use of Russian Suyuz spacecraft to send US astronauts to the Station will automatically terminate anyway at the end of THIS year (2005) -- due to a Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty which the United States has signed, which specifically prohibits NASA from dealing with Russia past that date ... if Russia continues supplying forbidden nuclear technology to Iran!

With the Shuttles again grounded with much fanfare in the last few days "because of the foam and newly-revealed tile problems," and the Treaty exemption for the current US use of Soyuz vehicles literally running out ... all it would take for the United States to be able to "gracefully" back out of the entire International Space Station Program (again, according to my source), would be if the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty exemption could not be renewed (it's at the President's discretion ...), and for the entire Shuttle Program to be permanently suspended--

Because the public overwhelmingly demanded it!

And, without the Shuttles ... the ISS cannot even be completed!

And so he thinks that maybe that is why NASA is suddenly parading the list of problems with the shuttle to the press. It's a bit like trying to retire an aging slugger past his prime; you put dirt on his name in the press. No shuttle, then no ISS. Free up the money and develop the new talent for the franchise to ride upon the next winning cycle. It makes absolute sense to me.
Anyway, check it out. The link is on the right-hand sidebar.

Now, just for interest, I want to quote this bit from his previous entry:

After that first launch of STS-1 -- Columbia -- on April 12, 1981, the crew soon spotted (and sent down via on-board television, images of) several missing tiles ... on the rear "OAMS pods" of the Columbia Orbiter itself (below the vertical tail ...).

This immediately raised the spectre of additional "missing tiles" on the underside (the belly) of Columbia ... where there was no means (back then ...) of checking the extent of any losses of these essential Shuttle elements -- the only means of shielding the returning spacecraft from the searing heat of reentering the atmosphere from orbit.

This revelation, in turn, launched a veritable "feeding frenzy" in the press, regarding "the dire consequences of even one crucially-placed 'missing tile' on the fate of the returning Shuttle ... and her crew."

It was only after Columbia had returned safely from her mission, and did not burn up, that we learned that key spy satellites ("intelligence assets," as NASA termed them) had been pressed into quiet, covert service on Columbia's behalf -- to photograph the critical underside of NASA's first Space Shuttle while in orbit ... to verify that all the tiles were there ....

They were.

Now, jump ahead a quarter of a century ... to July 26, 2005. And, what is the topic of the day ...?

Why ... missing Shuttle tiles!

The fact that a new television camera on the Tank, looking at the underside of Discovery as she "rumbled toward Earth orbit" (in the words of AP's story ...) apparently has shown "a piece of heat shield tile breaking off from the underside of the shuttle ... [leaving] a one-and-a-half inch white spot near the nose landing gear doors ..." (below), once again has sent the assembled press into a flurry of stories, painting "dark possibilities" for the "Return to Flight Mission," if not the ultimate safety of the astronauts themselves.
How is this still possible ... a full quarter of a century after the first Space Shuttle Mission of Columbia ... and its continuing problem -- ultimately fatal -- with "the tiles?"

Because, as Eileen Collins was sublty reminding us last night, for that last quarter of a century -- if not for the full half century since NASA was created -- we have made essentially NO FUNDAMENTAL SCIENTIFIC OR TECHNOLOGICAL PROGRESS in getting off this planet into Space!!

We're still using the same obsolete rocket technology -- if not the same obsolete vehicles themselves (!) -- as we were using a quarter of a century ago ... to go ... nowhere.

We're stuck in "Groundhog day" ....

And are thereby doomed to relive the same fears and technological impediments which have kept us in Earth orbit since the brief glory of Apollo.

This, of course, is what the President's "new Vision" -- ennunicated just short of a year after the catastrophic demise of Columbia and all her crew ... ironically, to the same bitter fate we all worried about over twenty years before (!) -- is now supposed to change. But, not if the Space Agency continues to pursue -- as NASA, even after the President's announcement, seemed intent on doing -- the same archaic tools ....

So I think we're all on the same page now. The shuttle program is obsolete.