The loss of the space shuttle Columbia has affected the entire nation in a profound way. While some are calling for a total reexamination of the shuttle program—and perhaps, its termination—popular opinion seems to be on the side of continuation of the manned space program.

Despite the obvious risks, it seems equally obvious that humans are far better equipped than machines to perform tasks that require immediate decisions based on unforeseen data. For example, the painfully slow exploration of the Mars Lander—remarkable, to be sure—was limited to a tiny area that a man could traverse in a few steps. That same man could evaluate the locations of the most interesting rock formations in moments, not minutes—assuming the Lander’s camera would have been high enough and oriented correctly to see them.

In my opinion, the most deserved criticism of the shuttle program is that the vehicle is too expensive to operate and too limiting for the varieties of missions we should be focused on in the future. Jerry Pournelle, a scientist and science fiction writer whose writings I have enjoyed for many years in Byte magazine and in books has argued for decades that more specialty vehicles should be built according to the purpose they are meant to serve. Here is a sample of the debate on Jerry’s web site:

Whether the concept of a “single stage to orbit” spaceship is realistic or not, these things are true about today’s shuttle program:
1) The ship has a 50,000-pound payload capacity. Most of its missions have lifted less than half that amount. Using the shuttle to loft ant farms to orbit makes far less sense than using a Hummer H1 as a daily commute vehicle.
2) Lifting humans to the space station is expensive in the shuttle, and with no escape capabilities like the old Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo ships had, is very dangerous.
3) The shuttle was built in the era of 8086-based CPUs and decades-old knowledge of aircraft design for high temperature environments. However, the contractors who support the shuttle, and the Congressmen whose states and districts benefit from space, seem concerned only with continuing the status quo. Each shuttle flight costs about $500 million—so expensive that only four or five missions are launched each year, instead of the $5 per week that was promised at the inception of the program.
4) If we can produce a ship that cuts payload-lifting costs dramatically, more private sector companies will be interested in exploring the possibilities of space-based research and manufacturing. That would further cut costs to the taxpayer since businesses would partly defray the costs of flights, not simply feed at the public trough.
5) It is arguable that the shuttle’s famous recoverable and reusable booster rockets have not been a success, and while environmentally PC, are not economical to continue. Sadly, one report on the foam insulator that flaked away from the shuttle’s fuel tank and apparently damaged the shuttle’s left wing indicates that a CFC-free foam was substituted from a more robust foam originally used in order to comply with a NASA goal to use more environmentally safe products. Surely the levels of pollution produced are miniscule compared to the dangers to the crew and spacecraft. Here’s more on the controversy:

NASA’s budget has decreased over the past decade when expressed in constant dollars. Continuing to spend the money in the same way without reexamining the goals of the program and the risks involved invite more disasters in the future, not to mention limiting the returns from diverse approaches and missions. Fourteen of the brightest, bravest humans the world has ever produced have been lost on this spacecraft. We owe their colleagues to provide the safest purpose-built system for manned missions to space we can build. We owe ourselves, and future generations, returns for our investment in space research and exploration that pay dividends for humanity, not just for a select group of contractors.