Fnorkin Daily Rant

It's official: the United States can no longer build a decent spacecraft. I won't even pretend to understand how the losers at NASA think they can get away with calling what they do a space program. The majority of our recent space adventures have been highly embarrassing, especially in light of our former prowess. Our shuttles don't work, our probes don't work, our landers don't work, not even our parachutes work. Our manned space program is the least reliable in the world. And we waste millions of dollars on flashy high-tech robotic spacecraft that don't even work. It’s pitiful.

Looks like we lost the space race after all. We may have beaten the Russians to the moon in 1969, but things have changed a little since then. Now we’re using their rockets because ours don’t work. Eisenhower would be proud.

Out of the four manned space vehicle programs currently in existence (STS, Soyuz, Shenzhou, SpaceShip One) ours is the most dangerous by far. Fourteen of our astronauts have died in the last twenty years, while no one from any of the other programs was killed during that period. Soyuz, the only other program comparable to NASA's in terms of scale, has not had a fatal accident since 1971, and only three Soyuz cosmonauts have died in the program's 38 years of existence. Anyone familiar with Russian quality control will appreciate just how sad it is that their spacecraft are consistently so much safer than ours.

The latest Discovery mission makes it clear that the shuttle is no longer viable technology. After Columbia was destroyed because it collided with a piece of foam that had fallen off the fuel tank, NASA spent two and a half years trying to make sure no more foam would fall off. They finally get the damn thing ready and launch it and what happens? Foam still falls off. How hard is it to make the foam stay on? I don't know what the hell they were doing for two and a half years, but they can't have been trying very hard.

It's true that the space shuttles are aging, but so what? By typical aircraft standards they're practically brand-new. One of our newest and highest-tech military aircraft, the F-117, is exactly the same age as the space shuttle. So is the Boeing 767. A typical airliner makes far more flights and is subjected to much more wear and tear over its lifetime than a shuttle, yet still lasts about twice as long. Why is it that 70-year-old DC3s and 40-year-old 747s still work but 20-year-old space shuttles don't?

Despite all this, manned spaceflight is the least of NASA's problems. Back in the '70s and '80s we used to be able to build robotic space probes that worked, but sadly it appears that those days are long gone. Let's take a look at some of NASA's recent attempts at interplanetary craft.

Proof that NASA sucks: A Timeline of Shame

1992- Contact is lost with Mars Observer before it enters orbit. Cost: $813 million.

1994- Clementine mission ends early after a computer malfunction leaves the moon probe spinning uselessly at 80rpm. Cost: $150 million.

1998- Mars Climate Orbiter crashes into Mars instead of orbiting it due to confusion over metric vs. Imperial units. Cost for Climate Orbiter and Polar Lander together: $193.1 million.

1999- Mars Polar Lander crashes on Mars for unknown reasons. Cost for Climate Orbiter and Polar Lander together: $193.1 million.

1999- Contact lost with both Deep Space 2 probes as they near Mars. Cost: $29.2 million.

2001- Genesis capsule, intended to return samples of solar wind particles to earth, crashes in Utah after the parachute fails to open. Cost: $164 million.

2003- Contact with CONTOUR probe lost shortly after launch, presumably due to catastrophic structural failure. Cost: $159 million.

It's alarming how many spacecraft NASA has managed to lose without venturing any further than Mars. It's also alarming that they managed to blow 1.5 billion dollars doing it. In the 1970s NASA managed to land seven of eight Apollo missions on the moon but, in this age of advanced technology, almost every other spacecraft we launch is destined to crash or disappear. Apollo 13 may have been a failure, but at least the parachutes worked. Clearly space exploration has some scientific value, but if a 50% success rate is the best NASA can do, they don't deserve any more funding.

# posted by Ben @ 6:15 PM