Again With The Valves

The launch of space shuttle Discovery was delayed again last night, this time because of a problem with the fuel valves.

NASA likes to remind us that the space shuttle is one of the most complex machines ever built by man. That's no doubt true, but complexity is a double-edged sword. It allows formidable capabilities, but it also means literally millions of things can go wrong. That weakness of complexity has been shown time and again during the thirty years NASA has flown shuttles. The fact that NASA plans to go back to a capsule for its new manned spacecraft can be seen as evidence that, at least for now, the agency sees the shuttle as a technological dead end.

Long term, however, space capsules are the dead end. We are not going to make Mars our own-- let alone go beyond that-- in capsules. Expanding into the cosmos will require huge, true spaceships, with lots of room to allow people to live active, interesting, even private lives during long voyages Those ships will never touch a planetary surface. People will come and go from them using shuttles. Those shuttles will almost certainly have more in common with Discovery and her sisters than with Mercury, Gemini, Soyuz, Apollo, and Orion.