Why shuttle program is ending

This forever dispelled the notion that spaceflight was routine. The shuttle was revealed to be a high-risk, experimental vehicle — something most astronauts had known all along. Still, the space agency took its lashings and made the changes required to get the shuttle flying again. Yet again, the entire crew — this time featuring the highly publicized first Israeli astronaut, Ilan Ramon — was killed. Although the technical cause of the Columbia disaster was very different than what led to the loss of Challenger , the investigation again found deep cultural problems at NASA.

The crew of STS, seen here, had their flight aboard Space Shuttle Columbia delayed 18 times before launching in While reentering Earth's atmosphere, Columbia broke apart, killing the entire crew. All of these factors — high costs, slow turnaround, few customers, and a vehicle and agency that had major safety problems — combined to make the Bush administration realize it was time for the Space Shuttle Program to retire.

In , President Bush gave a speech that outlined the end of the shuttle era, without clearly identifying what would come next or how much it would cost. This decision left NASA in limbo, as they were suddenly dependent on the Russians for access to space. The remaining three space shuttles, Discovery , Endeavour , and Atlantis , are now museum pieces, as is the test orbiter Enterprise.

Having seen some of these vessels in person, I can attest that they still are breathtaking sights to behold. With SpaceX already launching humans into space, and with other commercial space ventures making rapid progress, the future of manned spaceflight under NASA seems unclear. Receive news, sky-event information, observing tips, and more from Astronomy's weekly email newsletter.

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Login or Register Customer Service. RISE —. PHASE —. Tonight's Sky — Change location. US state, Canadian province, or country. Tonight's Sky — Select location. Tonight's Sky — Enter coordinates. UTC Offset:. Picture of the Day Image Galleries. Watch : Mining the Moon for rocket fuel. When the program was retired, the three remaining shuttles were only about a third of the way through their flight lifetimes. It has been made abundantly clear that NASA's budget will remain flat for the foreseeable future.

Therefore to do anything beyond shuttle and station, at least one of them had to go. Station was just beginning to live up to its promise for research, so it was the older shuttle system that went," Adler said.

According to Barry, the decision to end the space shuttle program was made easier in the geopolitical context of when the United States and Russia were "good allies" and the cost of using the Soyuz spacecraft was essentially negligible. It wasn't until several years later Russia complained that, in fact, they were getting an unfair deal because they were being forced into providing vehicles that they hadn't budgeted for," Barry said. So now, it is important that the United States has an independent capability of being able to launch people to space.

There is also a level of innate hazard when it comes to space travel; however, with every disappointment, there has been a considerable improvement in terms of reliability for subsequent flights.

This was one of the factors that made people question the decision to end the project. The main concern was that the program was excessively costly. Apart from building another multi-reason crew vehicle MPCV that is intended to take teams outward into the solar system, the agency is also looking to solicit dispatch services from four commercially-designed shuttles which will be used to take space travellers to and from the International Space Station.

Michael Coats, executive and transport administrator of Johnson Space Center, has stated that with the conclusion of the NASA Space Shuttle Program, they bring to a close a striking chapter in the country's history in space and usher in the following unprecedented moment in America's account of exploration.