DumbSwede's Journal: Shuttle Rollout -- What crack? We don't see no crack

I started to prepare this post when the rollout was in jeopardy, now: engineers determined the crack was a "minor imperfection" Hopefully not famous last words. I'm surprised the CNN.com article Shuttle Rollout Under Way hasn't been posted on Slashdot's main page yet.

These things are big, the external tank by itself if 154 feet long, so about the size of a 15-story building. Even though these things haven't been up in space for the last 2 years doesn't mean they are weathering and aging just sitting on the ground. The vertical assembly building has its own weather, so it's not like these things are sitting in an air-conditioned office 27-7.

The fleet is getting old and were expected to have been replaced by now, though after each having each done something like 50-100 missions individually -- numbers we will never see. What percentage of car owners are driving cars built in the early '80s?

Until a replacement vehicle comes along we should have been building at least one new shuttle every 5 years. Didn't get 50 missions in? Tough -- decommission at like 10 or 15 years. Sure it can cost more money to build things more slowly 1 at a time, but if you schedule for it, and budget for it, its not necessarily more expensive. Just make sure your build rate is commensurate with the mission increase. Then you get to use better materials, better technology in the newer vehicles. Granted there is something to be said for uniformity in guaranteeing safety, but the shuttles are not all identical by a long shot. Columbia couldn't dock with the ISS for instance, but could theoretically have brought the Hubble down from orbit.

There are costs in certifying old equipment, which may not equal new equipment cost, but I'll bet in the Shuttle's case they are getting close, or exceed what replacements costs would have been if we had kept a low turnout build process in place.

Now we are paralyzed and unable to do anything reasonable with our manned program.

My recommendations:

1. Build a catapult like launch assist device what can be used with a variety of to-space concepts. Even a slightly redesigned shuttle might get significant payload to orbit benefits from a maglift-assisted takeoff.
2. Quit obsessing on Going to Mars. Send robots to settle the Any-Life question once and for all. Current odds are shifting towards probably currently life. We can't afford to pollute that biosphere until we have studied it thoroughly and had automated sample return missions.
3. Find something for humans to do in Space other than going to Mars. It isn't like the New World. No big bang for the buck until launch costs are 100-1000 times cheaper. No colonization in our lifetime. Sorry. How about asteroid mining? We need an asteroid capture program that puts these things in stable Lagrange points. Working these things probably would be more efficient for humans than machines (at least for now). Lets start building stuff in space from in-situ materials.
4. Use the ISS as a way station for sample return missions and hype it that way. I'm not worried about Mars germs, but if we do detect life, I predict a huge row over possible accidental release during a direct return. This would placate the public and give the ISS a true research mission. And in the extremely unlikely event the critters are virulent to any degree to any animal specimens we expose them to then the samples never come Earthside. And should the Astronauts ever become exposed in any fashion (or suspected) they'll just have to resign themselves to living out the rest of their days in Space.
5. If you are going to keep using the Shuttle make a Heavy-Lift Cargo-Only variant. Make existing shuttles automated. Most of the time you have a crew, but in the event you don't trust coming back down, you stay at the ISS and send the Shuttle home alone. Don't trust landing with the Hubble? Send up an unmanned Shuttle, capture and return (assuming Canada-Arm can get the solar panels off or stowed). The Russians automated their shuttle the Buran in the '80s and returned from orbit unmanned. The astronauts actively petitioned to keep the Shuttles from having an automated land capability -- nothing like Job-Security I guess.
6. Quit trying to figure out how to keep our bodies from deteriorating from long-term weightlessness and start implementing artificial G solutions with rotating environments. Mars has about 1/3 Earth's gravity. How about aiming for 1/3 G prolonged exposure and see how the body handles that? It might even prove to be a health boost. Maybe in the distant, distant future Mars is for Geriatrics who can't take Earth's gravity.