Space shuttle's end in sight

2005-07-17 16:56

Cape Canaveral, Florida - Maybe Nasa's managers still view the shuttle as the latest in space technology, but they sometimes make it sound as if it were a cranky old car with a few too many kilometres on it.

Deputy shuttle manager Wayne Hale says its recent on-again, off-again electronics problem "reminds me of an old truck I own".

Delays for safety improvements have repeatedly thwarted the shuttle's comeback from the Columbia catastrophe two and a half years ago.

But ageing components could eventually add their own setbacks and risks to flying as the shuttles near retirement in just five years, according to space travel experts.

Hardware

"If I have any worries at all, it's a few years from now, down the road, when the hardware gets older," said Bob Sieck, a former shuttle launch director and NASA safety adviser.

Designed in the 1970s, the shuttle was meant to advance space travel by several giant leaps. It was to be named the Space Clipper, in a reference to the speedy American clipper ship that expanded the possibilities of sea travel in the 19th century.

The shuttle would make trips to space much more routine, more like commercial flying. It would potentially be the first step in putting space within the reach of ordinary business and tourism.

Prosaic

In the end, the shuttle took on its more prosaic name and accomplished more prosaic functions - but still is a marvel of sorts.

It has deployed satellites, maintained the Hubble Space Telescope, and helped to build the international space station. It has kept Americans in space while they tried to decide on their next destination after the moon.

But the shuttle's end has come in sight. "The clipper ships were the peak of the sailing art, and we don't see those either. I think there's a lesson to be learned from that," says Nasa Administrator Michael Griffin.

Columbia flew the first shuttle mission in 1981. It was quickly followed in the next several years by the shuttles Challenger, Discovery and Atlantis.

Challenger was obliterated in its 1986 disaster, and Columbia was lost in 2003, killing a total of 14 astronauts in the two accidents. NASA is left with Discovery and Atlantis, ages 20 and 21, as well as the 13-year-old Endeavour that replaced Challenger.

Electronics

People are young at 20, but electronics are well into maturity by then - if not beyond. "I wonder whether I could find a single electronics box in my house that's 25 years old and still works. I don't think I can. It's the same thing with the orbiter," the Nasa administrator said of a recent shuttle part breakdown.

It is ostensibly a similar problem in a fuel sensor that ruined the shuttle's long-awaited return to flight last week. A manager said - and not in jest - that they would first try to wiggle the wires.

However, Nasa did enlist a cross-country team of hundreds of engineers to figure out what went wrong - but the agency has indefinitely delayed the launch.

- AP