The Shuttle: An Appreciation

It seems that there are plenty of detractors out there who desire to deride the U.S. and our efforts whatever they may be. Might it be agreed, for example, that the Space Shuttle a mistake?

Despite what NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said recently, the Shuttle is a uniquely impressive vehicle. It was and remains the only manned ascent and descent vehicle capable of acting in a multimission capacity as a crew vehicle, a cargo carrier, and a space laboratory all at once. Other vehicles can do only one of these missions at at time.

During its storied career, the Shuttle carried tons of supplies to the ISS, but even more importantly, it was the only ship dedicated to both carrying the structures for, and assembling, the ISS. None of the other ships (Soyuz, Progress, etc.) could approach these capabilities.

Without the Shuttle, the ISS would never have been assembled. And no ship could bring the numbers of passenger and supplies that the Shuttle could on a routine mission. And with the addition of Europe's Spacelab, which took up a sizeable portion of the Shuttle's vast payload bay, the Shuttle itself became a space station during certain missions.

Further, no other craft allowed either the lofting or the repair of the Hubble Space Telescope, whose scientific contributions are immeasurable. The Shuttle was capable, still further, of launching satellites into high orbit far beyond its own from its payload bay. Various pallets allowed the Shuttle to, among other things, image the Earth using shallow-penetrating radar, yielding treasures beneath the ground long hidden from view. Hundreds or thousands of important science experiments were conducted through the Shuttle.

The Shuttle has its shortcomings, but let it never be said that any other nation was capable of both building and sustaining such a wondrous vehicle. By the same token, let it not be said that any other space power can boast of the accomplishments of the United States, either in regard to the Shuttle, or in regard to recent interplanetary exploration.

Will the PRC soon overtake the U.S. in space? Will the EU? Will even Russia, with its vast experience in near-Earth orbital habitation? Extremely doubtful, indeed.