Putting the Future on Hold

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

The first reaction was shock, horror, grief. The second, and almost reflexive, response by public officials to the Challenger catastrophe was determination to push on with an ambitious program of manned space flights. Thus President Reagan, speaking to the nation within hours of the tragedy, pledged, "We'll continue our quest in space. There will be more shuttle flights and more shuttle crews and, yes, more volunteers, more civilians, more teachers in space." Next day William Graham, NASA's acting administrator, asserted that "the space shuttle is our principal space transportation system; it will remain our principal space transportation system for the foreseeable future."

But when might the three remaining shuttles (Columbia, Discovery and Atlantis) go into orbit again? How many flights will--or indeed can--be scheduled, and what cargoes will take priority? Until the shuttle's fatal flaw can be identified and corrected, those questions will remain unanswered. But a few things seem clear. One is that even the temporary grounding of the shuttles, decreed by NASA immediately after the Challenger disaster, is a stunning setback to the entire U.S. space program. It will at best delay, and at worst force cancellation of, a wide variety of missions that were to have been carried out by shuttle-riding astronauts: launchings of scientific space probes and commercial and military satellites, as well as testing of equipment designed for use in President Reagan's Star Wars program. Says Marcia Smith, staff director of the President's National Space Commission: "We are going to see massive disruption in the short term."

Once shuttle flights do resume, it will take years--whether two, five, six or more is anyone's guess--for NASA to catch up to the flight schedule it had mapped out before Challenger exploded. Three shuttles simply cannot carry out all the missions that had been assigned to a fleet of four. Meanwhile, there is sure to be a renewed, sharp debate about the goals of the U.S. space program, the role of the shuttle and even the perennial issue of manned vs. unmanned space flight.

While no one at NASA will even speculate on when shuttle flights might resume, other knowledgeable officials cite the sole precedent: after a fire destroyed an Apollo spacecraft on the launching pad and killed three astronauts in January 1967, it took 21 months before manned space flights resumed. "We've got to reckon in about those terms," says New Jersey Republican Jim Courter, a member of the House Armed Services Committee who follows the space program closely. The moratorium could be shortened if the flaw turns out to be something that can be fixed fairly quickly. But it could stretch out for years if major modifications to the shuttles themselves or to the rockets that carry them aloft turn out to be necessary.

Even if the search and the solution go smoothly, many people will be surprised if any more shuttle flights blast off this year. With 15 shuttle missions scheduled, 1986 was to have been NASA's biggest year since the heady days of the Apollo moon-landing program. Whether that crowded schedule could have been met had there been no tragedy is open to question. In the past, NASA has consistently had to scale back its shuttle plans. Challenger's fatal mission was the 25th in the shuttle program; about twice as many missions were supposed to be flown by now, according to plans that the agency announced in 1980. Nonetheless, NASA was confident that it had finally got the bugs out and that its much criticized policy of phasing out "expendable" unmanned rockets in favor of launching all manner of space vehicles from shuttles was correct.

The next flight will certainly have to be scrubbed, and its major mission cannot be rescheduled. On March 6, Columbia was to lift off and observe Halley's comet from afar, coordinating its findings with those of the probes from the European Space Agency, the Soviet Union and Japan scheduled to rendezvous with the comet in March. By the time U.S. shuttles are flying again, Halley's will be long gone, not to return for 76 years.

Three more flights of great scientific importance seem likely to suffer long delays. During two different missions in May, shuttles were to launch space vehicles toward Jupiter. Challenger was to have carried Ulysses, a spacecraft that would fly past Jupiter and use that planet's powerful gravitational force as a kind of slingshot to flip into polar orbit around the sun. Ulysses would provide a first-time view of the solar north and south poles. (Since earth orbits in the plane of the solar equator, humans have never got a head-on look at the sun's polar regions.) Galileo, the other . spacecraft, was to be carried aloft by the shuttle Atlantis, and then soar into orbit around Jupiter after sending a probe into the atmosphere of the planet. If these missions do not go up by early June, they will have to be postponed for at least 13 months. Not until then will Jupiter and earth again be in the proper alignment.

In October, Atlantis was scheduled to place in orbit the $1.2 billion Hubble space telescope. Above the distorting effects of the earth's atmosphere, the telescope is designed to see figuratively to the edge of the universe and, in a sense, back nearly to creation. (The light the telescope will detect from the most distant galaxies was emitted from those galaxies not long after the big bang that created the universe some 15 billion years ago.) Delay in this case would be more disappointing than crucial; the space telescope can go up at any time. Still, the long-awaited telescope is a prime example of the dependence of "unmanned" scientific exploration on manned flight. Even after it is launched, the telescope can be maintained and, if necessary, repaired only by astronauts lofted to it aboard shuttles.

Also totally dependent on the shuttle is the space station, which is to be assembled in orbit by astronauts with parts brought from earth by the shuttle. (It was originally scheduled to be placed in operation by 1992, but the target date has already slipped to 1994.) The station is designed to establish a permanent human presence in space. Men and women ferried to the station by shuttle and working aboard it for three months at a stretch are to carry out scientific and medical experiments and dabble in the space manufacture of drugs, crystals and alloys that might be best produced under conditions of weightlessness. The station is also supposed to serve as a base and staging area for future space missions, including a proposed manned flight to Mars. Any substantial delay in shuttle flights will almost certainly push back the day when a U.S. space station is orbiting the earth.

Delay could cause the most grief to the shuttle's biggest customer: the Pentagon. Though only two of the first 24 shuttle flights were fully dedicated to military purposes, the Pentagon was counting heavily on shuttles to carry out experiments for the Strategic Defense Initiative, as the Star Wars program is formally named, and to launch the satellites vital to modern warfare. Four of this year's shuttle missions were to be devoted to military uses, and the / Air Force had signed up to take a third of all shuttle flights beginning in 1988. Although some of the military satellites can be launched by expendable rockets, others--designed specifically to be handled by the shuttle--cannot. "We were on a tight schedule already," says an Air Force general. "Any delay cannot help being profoundly disruptive."

The backlog of flights that will build up before the shuttle flies again is certain to intensify competition among the military, commercial interests and scientists for space aboard the remaining three shuttles. The winner is likely to be the military, which has authority under an agreement with NASA to commandeer any shuttles that blast off. For example, the Pentagon deems it absolutely vital to lift into orbit a heavy KH-12 intelligence satellite, if not on its scheduled date of Sept. 29, then on the next available shuttle mission. A senior Pentagon official asserts that "when push comes to shove, national security interests will simply dictate that we flex our muscles and pre-empt shuttle space" on other flights too. Military priority on post- Challenger missions, in turn, will make the rivalry among would-be scientific and commercial users of the remaining flights all the more bruising.

The crunch could be softened by the building of another shuttle. Rockwell International's shuttle assembly line is still intact, and many existing shuttle spare parts could be used in building a new orbiter. But according to testimony last fall by Associate NASA Administrator Jesse Moore, another shuttle might not fly until 1991 or 1992; possibly that timetable could be shortened, but by how much is hard to calculate. Moreover, a new shuttle would cost around $2 billion.

Would Congress put up the money in an era when the Gramm-Rudman Act dictates severe slashes in many federal spending programs, including the NASA budget? Any request that Congress do so would intensify a debate about the future of the space program. That debate was about to begin anyway in a few weeks, when the National Space Commission is to outline a proposed agenda of space activities for the next 50 years. At week's end White House officials were considering setting up an independent group that would also examine the U.S. role in space. The discussions are bound to become more heated once congressional committees question NASA about its investigation into the cause of the Challenger disaster.

Although the shuttle is generally regarded as a dazzling technological achievement, critics have long complained that NASA let it become an obsession that swallowed too large a share of the scarce space dollars. They also fear that the space agency has made all of its projects too dependent on the shuttle. "NASA has put all our eggs into one basket," complains Ellis Miner, a scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Without the shuttle, those (space exploration) machines are dead." The Pentagon has been so worried about this dependency that it persuaded Congress to put up $2.1 billion to build an expendable, unmanned rocket capable of launching the satellites that the military needs in orbit. These rockets, however, will not be available until 1988.

Finally, the Challenger tragedy revives the whole question of manned vs. unmanned space flight. Scientists like James Van Allen, discoverer of the Van Allen radiation belts that surround the earth, have long contended that there are few scientific or commercial purposes that cannot be served by unmanned, automated spacecraft; these can be launched and operated at a fraction of the cost of putting humans into space. Cornell Astronomer Thomas Gold is more blunt. Manned flight, he says, "is enormously expensive, unmanageable, risky and dangerous." His conclusion: "The shuttle program should be scrapped."

Proponents of manned space flight have cogent rebuttals. Without humans, and given the current state of technology, they ask, how could the space telescope be maintained or repaired in orbit? How could machines build the space station, from which both manned and unmanned probes could be launched at lower cost than from earth? The case for manned space flight also has a political component: right or wrong, it is widely believed that only the drama of humans in space can arouse citizens to support the expenditures necessary for a major space program. Proponents even point to a philosophical justification: no remotely controlled sensor can fulfill the human urge for adventure, the human need to personally explore the new frontiers.

Even so, urgent questions of balance and priorities remain--between manned and unmanned flights, between military, scientific and commercial goals in space. A searching debate on those questions is long overdue. If that debate has finally been precipitated, it is one accomplishment the Challenger Seven purchased with their lives.

With reporting by Jay Branegan/Washington, with other bureaus