Honoring Columbia
By Jerry Pournelle
Column 271
Fly Columbia
Over twenty years ago I devoted part of this column to the problem of
space suits: The United States did not have suits capable of serious work
in on-orbit assembly. Space walks were unusual and had to be scheduled
well in advance. Since the suits used pure oxygen at low pressure, their
users had to spend considerable time in a low pressure oxygen
environment. Pre-breathing, it's called, and it means a pure oxygen
atmosphere for the whole Shuttle until after the EVA.
This affects the whole mission. At low pressure of pure oxygen�the Apollo
1 (Grissom/White/Chaffee) disaster demonstrated the known danger of high
pressure pure oxygen�there aren't enough molecules moving over the
equipment to provide adequate cooling. The Shuttle's computers, primitive
as they were and still are, need all the cooling; many electronics panels
have to be shut down.
The result is that we don't think a lot about astronauts going outside to
inspect potential damage, much less to try to repair it. Despite the bad
suits, Pete Conrad was able to take an unscheduled walk to fix Skylab's
broken wing and that worked splendidly; but NASA didn't really learn from
this, and to this day we don't have space suits that will allow the
Shuttle crew to just suit up and go out to inspect and repair.
When I wrote that column, some of the firms involved in suit construction
and maintenance tried to get McGraw Hill, then the owners of BYTE, to
fire me, threatening among other things withdrawal of advertising from
all McGraw Hill magazines. That didn't work. As Chairman of the Citizens'
Advisory Council on National Space Policy I made other attempts, both
public and political, to get NASA to build decent space suits and train
the Shuttle crews in going outside to inspect and if need be repair the
Shuttle tiles.
We are now told that there may have been damage to Columbia's thermal
protection system, and this was suspected while she was still in orbit.
Without proper suits it wasn't possible for Columbia's crew to go have a
look, but it would still have been possible to examine the ship through
telescopes at nearest approach to the Space Station, or to use some of
the CIA's very high powered telescopic assets to examine Columbia for
damage. The decision was made not to do it, because "nothing could
have been done" even if they'd known there was severe damage.
That may not be true, but if it is true, it wasn't inevitable. I wasn't
the only one trying to get NASA to build reasonable space suits and teach
the crews to use them. NASA full well understood the implications of
their choice to stay with low pressure pure oxygen suits. So did the
companies that built them and lobbied to keep things the way they are.
They spent a lot of time and money on that. I hope all those who were so
successful in their political battles are happy with their choices.
Space Shuttle is an aging system, used largely to support International
Space Station. ISS, in turn, can absorb all the missions Shuttle can fly.
Little room is left over for science. What is needed is new systems
developments: and these have to be based on test models of flying
hardware. The computer revolution has made us overly dependent on
computer design, but the payload of large space lifting systems depends
on factors not known to enough precision for sound predictions. In a
600,000 pound Gross Liftoff Weight ship headed for orbit, the rocket
equation dictates that the actual payload going to orbit will be in the 1
percent region: 90 percent of the GLOW is fuel, and of the 10 percent
remaining, some large fraction around 90 percent is structure (tankage,
motors, pipes, fairing, electronics). Without more flight data we can
compute forever and know no more than we do now.
We are told that a fitting memorial to Columbia is a vigorous space
program. Clearly I agree; and the proper way to do that is to stop
playing computer games. Build more test vehicles. Fly more test vehicles.
Revive the X programs.
Whether NASA is the agency to do it is another story: They recently
upgraded the Hubble telescope computer system. The transportation cost to
get there was around a billion. The upgrade was to an 80486, which is
much more modern than the Shuttle computer system. Note that Hubble isn't
"man-rated," so they can go with a cutting edge 486.
Prizes
The computer industry wasn't developed by government programs, and
had there been a National Computer Administration we would probably still
think 200 MHz was fast, a 100 megabyte disk was large, 256 colors was
wonderful, and 2 megabytes was a lot of memory. Fortunately the
developers ran ahead of the regulators, and while Shuttle is still using
some 12-bit processors, the rest of us have better.
On the other hand, there are markets for computers, and profits to be
made in developing computer technology. Space will become profitable�it
might very well have become so had it not remained a government
monopoly�but it's not profitable now. Government is not very good at
building a new industry: The history of aircraft is a good illustration.
Government can be very good at developing new technology. The X-planes
from X-1 through X-19 and beyond show that.
There is another way for government to stimulate technology development
without dictating it: prizes. Pass this legislation:
The Treasurer of the United States is directed to pay the following sums
for the following achievements:
To the first American owned company to build 3 space ships each of which
shall achieve orbit and safely return once each week for three
consecutive weeks, $3 billion dollars.
To the first American owned company to build a space station that is
continuously occupied by at least 7 Americans for a period of 3 years and
one day, the sum of $5 billion dollars.
To the first American owned company to build a Lunar Colony that is
continuously occupied by at least 31 Americans who remain alive in
continuous occupation of the facility for three years and one day, the
sum of $12 billion dollars.
We can quibble about the amounts, and whether there is anything to be
paid for second place, but the main principle is that nothing is paid
until the feat is accomplished. Thus there is no risk to the Treasury,
and the program doesn't compete with NASA or the services; and I think we
can all agree that if the tasks are accomplished, it's cheap at the
price.
Of course this won't actually be done. Why not? We can call them The
Columbia/Challenger/Apollo 1 prizes. I can't think of a better memorial.
