Well I'll Be...

"It is now commonly accepted that was not the right path. We are now trying to change the path while doing as little damage as we can."

So said NASA Administrator Michael Griffin on Tuesday, speaking about the space shuttle system in the International Space Station (ISS).

Oh, my. Over $100 billion down the rat hole, and finally someone in charge at NASA has the gumption to stand up straight and admit it.

As many of you know, this has been a soapbox topic for me for many years. I was skeptical of the space shuttle's design from its first public disclosure (anything that depends on 30,000+ hand-fitted and fragile ceramic tiles can't be reliable and cost effective!), and I got more skeptical as it became clear that the shuttle would miss every design target. The important misses: cost per kilogram to orbit, cost of development, and payload size: all of them were far off the mark, so far that the old Saturn V (Apollo's booster) would have outperformed the shuttle in every category.

But the shuttle program (and after it, the ISS) became political issues, with direction decided for reasons that had little or nothing to do with science, techonological development, or a national objective. The last time we saw those driving NASA was in the 60's; since then they've been more of an afterthought than a driver.

And I still don't know whether Michael Griffin will be able to change that, or even if he wants to. But his stated desire to get us off the shuttle/ISS treadmill and onto something more pragmatic (if I'm interpreting his words correctly) is a good start. I hope he can pull it off!