Last night I wore a pair of beautiful cashmere and leather gloves that I bought ten years ago. Even thought I wear them less than 10 times a year, I love them. You might call them old and outdated, but they still look great, they keep my hands snuggly warm, they make me feel elegant, and I have yet to find a pair that I like more. They do the job that I bought them for, and probably will for the next 10 years.

Yesterday I was planning a trip to visit a friend in Sacramento at the beginning of the year. We had vacationed with them on the Riviera Maya last Spring, and got to know their son, science boy. He and cute husband talked about NASA, and this year they went to see the final night Shuttle launch. Needless to say, these are people who are fans of the Space program.

I was joking about how ugly the New Ares Rocket is, and how it looks like something that should be injecting Raquel Welch in Jan Benes. We talked about how they were most likely going to kill it--probably because it is just so not sexy, and I wistfully said that what I really hope is that they extend the shuttle program.

To which she replied: But aren't the Shuttles old and outdated?

Compared to what? In order for something to be out-dated, shouldn't there be a modern version that is better?

Here are the facts about our Shuttle Fleet. They were designed and built for 200 missions each. None of the 3 have even done 100 missions. So we still have at least 300 missions that this fleet could fly. Why are we tossing aside this fleet that hasn't even reached half of the life that they were designed to live?

My thoughts on using more up to date technology in our aerospace programs would be more along the lines of, "in addition to", such as ; In addition to using the shuttles for heavy lift missions to the space station and launching the heavier satellites, we can also use better rocket technology to push manned craft headed deeper into space.

While your gloves analogy is correct on one level, on another level there is little technology involved with a pair of gloves. Much of the design for the space shuttle was done in the 60s and early 70's when a scientific calculator nearly filled a room, and the phones at mission control were still dialed with a rotor.

Whichever vehicle(s) are selected for our next push into the final frontier, we need to be sure the rest of the planet is helping to pay for it. We cannot afford to keep borrowing money from others for these types of things and then simply give everyone else a free pass while sharing information.

was back then, do you really believe they are not constantly and updating the vehicle after every launch?

Because, damn, I don't know what the hell the cute guy has been doing the last 20 or so years....

For a while during my life I had this wonderful dream of fully restoring an old Cadillac convertible to use for all of my gallivanting. Well, I managed to find one in semi reasonable condition and its miles were still below what was once considered high.

Well, one thing led to another with this fine old beast, and it did drive like a dream, if your dream of driving was like floating on a pillow and never feeling the road, or bumps, or smaller cars, or friction in the movement of the steering wheel (I still like that stuff about old American cars) while also powering well into triple digits with a 501 cubic inch engine. (okay, i still like that too)

Anyway I did do a lot of work to this fine old car and spent a lot of money in the process. What I found however is that regardless what I did, and regardless how well I tried to maintain this vintage vehicle, the amount of money that I kept pouring into it kept climbing each year. And regardless how much I spent I still had to spend more. Of course I will admit to driving and enjoying it and not parking it at an auto show all weekend.

One day, while sitting down on a rainy Sunday afternoon with nothing to do, I was going through a parts catalog getting ready to spend some more money on my money pit project car. Anyway I had an epiphany as a nice brand spanking new Cadillac drove by the window in front of the kitchen table, I did not have a den then. "Man" I thought to myself, "I like the design of that new Fleetwood". "I surely do wish I could afford one of those". "Well, heck, like that will ever happen" I said to myself. (I didn't say heck either but you guys are trying to build a Cadillac standard board after all) Then under full the influence of the afore mentioned epiphany I grabbed the box of receipts (I used to be anal about receipts) that I had kept for all of the money I had spent on buying, repairing, and hiring repairs to bring the old car back up to standards and to keep it close to there afterwords. Plus I had updated everything that could be updated, within my limited means of course.

I added up all the receipts I had spent maintaining and using that old car, and I found, that had I put all of that money towards the purchase of a new beautiful Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham with all the modern technology and better quality materials, I could have afforded to buy a brand new Chevy Impala.

With the brand new car I would have had none of the headaches, better fuel efficiency, gobs more free time and twice the garage storage. So I did what any prudent American would do and I went out the following Monday and bought a Ford f250, and came home and parked it next to my old Cadillac.

Actually I didn't go buy anything, but the moral of the whole reply is that sometimes simply updating an older vehicle becomes pouring good money after bad. The Shuttle is useful as a big old Cadillac gallavanting around in near earth orbit and driving space station engineers back and forth, It is however very expensive and ungawdly time consuming to maintain. And it was never designed to do anything but carry men back and forth to near earth orbit with an occasional payload in its big trunk.

If we intend to go back to the moon and farther with manned vehicles we will need to have a better designed vehicle, with better materials and engineering and redesigned from the ground up using modern techniques.

is that Obama is going to kill the moon/mars mission. In other words, they are not going to *build* cadillacs any more (or mustangs, or Mercedes, or...)

Given our financial situation I don't see how he has any other choice. I hope we can continue to work on developing our program so that when we have more money we can do things again and do them the way they need to be done.

I think space exploration is important, but this country is in deep trouble.

like getting us out of these wars, that would fund the space program many times over (as well as universal health care)

So we are back to the fact that there are NO alternatives to the space shuttle. There is no update, and they have not even been used for half the missions they were built for.

If we don't extend the shuttle program, we will be without a manned space program for the first time since Kennedy spoke those words:

We do this, not because it is easy, but because it is hard.

Dollar for dollar the space program has paid greater dividends than almost all other government programs but we're too interested in quick gratification. We want our returns in years rather than decades. I'm no expert, but it's my understanding that despite constant retrofits and upgrades the Mean Time Between Failures for the shuttle fleet is becoming shockingly small. Another catastrophic failure might sap the will of the public to fund any space exploration at all. Sad to me: that the loss of a half dozen astronauts (who would willingly crawl over one another to take the risk) is somehow a greater influence on policy than the death of two orders of magnitude more young soldiers in political adventurism with murky goals.

Is that the astronauts really are our best and our brightest.

Sady, we see the soldiers as expendible. Although it is not said out loud very often, but so many believe that our all-volunteer military is filled with those who have no where else to go.

I think our will to explore has already been sapped. Not by NASA's failures, but by the last Administration's failures which has overwhelmed the public. I am kind of shocked by the lack of coverage about the Ares Rocket. How many decades since we launched a Brand New Vehicle for Manned Space Flight?

The shuttle and its components have been undergoing continuous revisions and updates. However there have been ongoing design issues which they still have not been able to overcome. The solid rocket boosters have been a problem since the beginning, the foam insulation on the fuel tank is still a risk on every launch, plus a myriad of other design challenges on components large and small.

As someone else said the MTBF stats are leaning toward the risky side.

I still think we are going to need the shuttle for a few more years, but we should also be developing better large lift boosters, and the next generation of re-usable vehicles. The shuttle was never the best choice for taking up big satellites, and supply/construction materials.

Space travel is dangerous.

The fact is that we have not funded the next generation of re-usable manned vehicles.

I'm curious to what you see as the problem with the rocket boosters, since they have worked perfectly for the last 2 decades.

NASA has been (politically) very stubborn about re-usable boosters because the whole theme of the shuttle was that the main components were re-usable. The multi-sectioned (remember the o-ring incident) re-usable boosters are actually more expensive than the single use, single section, stainless steel alternative boosters which could have been used.

The re-usability of the current boosters is also questionable since the linings, unions, o-rings, nozzles, and sometimes even entire sections are routinely replaced each time they serviced for re-use.

dropping 500 Giant Stainless steal boosters into the ocean.

Interesting that even the new Ares rocket has the same sectioned Boosters. One reason they are sectioned is because single boosters of that size would be nearly impossible to transport to the Cape.

Are you advocating that they build them on-site?

dropping 500 Giant Stainless steal boosters into the ocean.

Oops. Aerojet's design was seamless carbon fiber (not stainless steel). I must have mis-remembered the article I read 20 years ago. I'm sure the ocean floor has become littered over the years with cast-off rocket parts, but the environmental issues would be another lengthy topic of discussion.

One reason they are sectioned is because single boosters of that size would be nearly impossible to transport to the Cape. Are you advocating that they build them on-site?

Aerojet's facility was built in Florida in the 60's and I believe it had a large canal for servicing component deliveries. It would certainly be impossible to transport them from anywhere else.

Interesting that even the new Ares rocket has the same sectioned Boosters.

That is based more on track record than on ideal design. I have been involved in several industries where better products have been introduced but could not gain market share because of their lack of track record.