AN EDITORIAL Nothing Ends Here

By James W. Canan, SENIOR EDITOR

EARLY five years ago, on April 14, 1981, Space Shuttle for conclusions to some fundamental questions. Among them:, N Columbia landed like a champion at Edwards AFB, Cal- What is man's role in space? What exactly does the nation need if., after orbiting the planet thirty-six times. A winged space- to accomplish in space? How much money will it and should it craft had actually been flown back to earth in fine shape to go be willing to devote to space? Which new technologies will be into space again. crucial to the US exploitation of space? Columbia's triumphant reentry and return marked the be- Whatever the answers, one philosophical conclusion is ines- ginning of a new era for the United States in the space age. It capably clear. The US cannot pull back from space in the wake held bright promise for the Space Transportation System of the Challenger disaster. It must have assured, routine access (STS) of reusable Shuttle orbiters on which the National Aero- to space for whatever purposes that it deems necessary, con- nautics and Space Administration and the Department of De- sistent with arms-control agreements, to deter war and, if need fense had pinned their hopes. It meant that the US, as Astro- be, to wage war. naut Robert Crippen put it on emerging from Columbia at President Reagan had it exactly right. "Nothing ends here," Edwards, was "back in the space business to stay." he told the nation in the aftermath of the Challenger tragedy. Shuttle flights became commonplace. With relatively few The President was at Edwards AFB on the Fourth of July setbacks, military and commercial satellites were routinely 1982 to watch Columbia come back with flying colors for the deposited in space. Shuttle crews conducted scientific experi- fourth straight time. He took the occasion to enunciate his new ments, repaired a satellite, and came up with some observa- National Space Policy, in which he ordered up a comprehen- tions of terrestrial features that space sensors had missed. sive civil and military program to establish and maintain US The Shuttle fleet was expanded to four orbiters. The Air preeminence in space. Force built a Shuttle launch facility at Vandenberg AFB, Calif., Less than a year later, President Reagan broached his Strate- and was preparing for its first launch of a military payload there gic Defense Initiative (SDI) program that would determine the this year. feasibility of defending against enemy ICBMs with nonnuclear USAF had become, in fact, overly dependent on the Shut- weapons, using space, if necessary, to "save lives rather than tles. As a precaution, it moved to build ten big, new booster avenge them" should those ICBMs ever mount the skies. rockets as a complementary means of launching top-priority The President also ordered NASA and DoD to identify the military payloads (see p.25). Even so, "In the future, the Space space-launch capabilities and technologies that the US will Shuttle will be our primary launch vehicle, and fully eighty need in order to transcend the payload and orbital maneuver- percent of our launches will be on the Shuttle," USAF Maj. ing limitations of the Shuttles well before the turn of the cen- Gen. Donald J. Kutyna told an Air Force Association/Aero- tury. He also set up the National Space Commission as the first space Education Foundation Roundtable audience last Janu- move in his Administration's formulation of a national strategy ary 21. for space. One week later, Challenger blew up. The US space program, So the stage is set for the nation, if it has the will and can pegged to a Shuttle fleet suddenly reduced to three orbiters come up with the money, to gain the military and civilian and with a fatal frailty shockingly exposed, was in trouble. supremacy in space that is President Reagan's goal. If it It is impossible to imagine how the human tragedy of the doesn't, the Soviets will. Challenger accident could ever be redeemed. For the space Following the Apollo program and prior to the advent of the program, however, that accident may well have been a positive Space Shuttle, the US let its manned space program languish turning point. and concentrated instead on unmanned exploration of the solar There is every chance that the space program will rebound system. The Soviets did it the other way around, learning well from it to become, in the long run, stronger and clearer of how to live and work in space. They also came up with an purpose than before. operational antisatellite (ASAT) system, worked hard on other For example, plans to go beyond the Shuttle in developing a kinds of space weaponry, and got going on a Shuttle of their new generation of reusable spacecraft—manned, unmanned, own. or both—have been crystallized by the Challenger catastrophe Shortly before the first US Space Shuttle flew, the late Gen. and are much more obviously justified. It is now conceivable Jerome E O'Malley, then USAF's three-star Deputy Chief of that some such spacecraft will be capable of taking off from Staff for Operations, Plans, and Readiness, declared: "I fer- runways, vaulting into orbit, and circling the globe in no time vently hope that the advent of the Shuttle will regain the flat. Their military and commercial applications are alluring, initiative for the US in deploying man in space." and it is time to hurry them along. It did. Let us now fervently hope that the Challenger disas- More broadly, space policymakers, scientists, and technolo- ter does not sap that initiative and cause the US to forfeit its gists are now called upon to bear down harder in their search place in space. • 4 AIR FORCE Magazine March 1986