The space shuttle missions from 1981 to 2011 made many contributions to space science, but were also costly and caused loss of life.
When it first began, NASA’s space shuttle program promised to usher in a new era of exploration, helping astronauts fly into space with reusable and relatively cheap spacecraft. The program forever changed the field of space travel with its triumphs and tragic failures.
New space vehicle is groundbreaking
The space shuttle project was built on the optimistic signals of the Apollo program, which brought 12 astronauts to the surface of the Moon. However, Apollo was extremely expensive: NASA spent $25.8 billion (more than $200 billion if adjusted for inflation) – according to a cost analysis from space policy expert Casey Dreier at the Planetary Society. Apollo used towering rockets and small, disposable spacecraft to return from space and land in the sea by parachute.
With immediate financial constraints, in the mid-1970s, NASA engineers built the space shuttle – a completely new space transportation vehicle. This is a reusable, winged orbiter that takes off with attached rockets and lands on a runway like an airplane. There, the ship can be refurbished and fly again. This, in theory, should help reduce costs per flight.
Considered an “engineering marvel,” the first of the program’s five spacecraft – the space shuttle Columbia – made its maiden flight in 1981. Over the course of three decades, NASA’s space shuttle fleet performed 135 missions – launching and repairing satellites, participating in the construction of the International Space Station (ISS), launching the famous Hubble Space Telescope.
The space shuttle and its tragedies
In January 1986, the space shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after launch, killing the crew of seven, including Christa McAuliffe, a New Hampshire teacher who boarded the shuttle under NASA’s Teachers in Space Project. The accident was caused by unusually cold temperatures at Cape Canaveral, causing some of the materials used to seal the rocket to lose flexibility.
“Hot gas leaked out, causing the propellant tank to burn and causing a large explosion,” said Jim Hermanson, professor of aeronautics and astronautics at the University of Washington. He added that the management team was also partly at fault for proceeding with the launch despite warnings from some NASA engineers.
Another deadly incident occurred in February 2003, when the space shuttle Columbia broke apart on its return journey to Earth, killing seven crew members. Before this disaster, the reentry, descent and landing phases were considered “gentle”, especially when compared to the extremely violent launch phase.
NASA engineers knew that a piece of foam – used to insulate the space shuttle’s large orange fuel tank – came off during the launch on January 16, 2003, hitting Columbia. NASA then said that this lightweight insulation material may not cause significant damage. However, this is a wrong assessment. The subsequent investigation revealed that the foam hit Columbia’s left wing during launch, damaging the ship’s thermal protection system.
This incident did not affect the crew during the more than two weeks they worked in space. But thermal protection is crucial for the return journey to Earth. The ship must plunge through thick atmosphere while moving at a speed of more than 27,000 km/h. Pressure and friction can heat the ship’s exterior to more than 1,600 degrees Celsius. As a result, the damaged ship cannot overcome this challenge and explodes above East Texas.
Debris from the space shuttle Columbia is scattered on the floor of the RLV hangar at Kennedy Space Center, Florida, May 2003. Image: NASA
The end of the space shuttle program
The space shuttle program never met NASA’s initial expectations. According to a 2018 study by an expert at NASA’s Ames Research Center, each space shuttle launch costs an average of about 1.5 billion USD. This number is hundreds of millions of dollars more than NASA’s expectations, even when accounting for inflation. Long delays and technical obstacles have made the program’s missions difficult. In addition, two disasters with the Challenger in 1986 and the Columbia in 2003 took the lives of 14 astronauts, raising big questions about safety.
NASA entered the space shuttle era confidently, predicting that the odds of a space shuttle being destroyed in flight were about 1/100,000. After the Challenger incident, NASA reassessed the risk, estimating that the space shuttle had a 1 in 100 chance of disaster.
The final mission of the space shuttle program took place on July 21, 2011. After the space shuttle program ended, no American astronaut flew into space on a US-made rocket for nearly a decade.