Next Stop: Orbit!

Yes, that's right. In an example of the wonders of renaming existing projects, NASA has decided that the craft formerly known as the CRV, or Crew Return Vehicle, is now going to be the OSP. As in orbital spaceplane, not orbital service provider (although that isn't half bad, either). The idea is that the space shuttle--which is now expected to be in service through 2020 or so--will operate with the minimal crew that is more appropriate to its role as a billion dollar Mack truck, and the OSP will ferry crews to the international space station, remaining there to serve as an emergency escape system in the interim between arrival and return to Earth. Of course, when the time comes to return to terra firma, the OSP will be making the trip again anyway, so what we're really talking about here is a sort of astronaut's station wagon (or "family truckster" in the words of Clark W. Griswold, Jr.) that accompanies the family for the duration of the stay at the summer home. The space shuttle, obviously, ceases to be a sort of rail service to the orbital boonies--bringing mail, candy, and new folks to town--and instead becomes like the mailman with the boat in On Golden Pond.

Actually, now that I think of it the summer home analogy is dead on. Up to now, the space station has been like summer camp, and the space shuttle was the bus that took you there, along with all of your stuff. What we're now gunning for, is a bona fide orbital summer home, with an orbital station wagon to take us there and a periodic shipment of necessities to the local store via the space shuttle. In itself, this seems like progress. Not dramatic progress, and while it's true that every little bit helps, I do have some questions.

First off, why is the space shuttle going to be in service for another two decades? Aren't the two decades already on the books enough? The B-52H's that are forty and fifty years old and still in use by the Air Force are only viable because most of their service life up to now was spent sitting on the tarmac, waiting for the order to end human civilization in a nuclear conflagration. Okay, so that's a little hyperbolic and not 100% accurate, but the point still stands. Those aging workhorses have actually had it pretty easy, and that's why they're still going strong. Notice that the United States Air Force is retiring the thirty or so oldest B-1B's even though they are vastly newer aircraft; they're supersonic, low-altitude bombers designed to go screaming in over their targets, below the radar, and in their relatively short lives compared to the B-52H's, they have definitely been through their paces.

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