The issue: All discovery is a matter of trial and error, so we should keep on trying

Weather permitting, the Atlantis will blast off Friday, embarking on America’s 135th and last space shuttle flight, ending an experiment that began with such promise 40 years ago.

Was the experiment a failure? Given the original parameters of the program, very much so.

THE PROGRAM’S original goal was to build a reusable space rocket that could ferry enough material into orbit to build a space station that would serve as launching platform for a manned flight to Mars.

Clearly, that goal was never realized — not because of any failings on NASA’s part but because of President Richard Nixon’s budget-cutters. Nixon also pulled the plug on the successful Apollo moon vehicle.

NASA was left with a truly astonishing creation, a masterpiece of design, engineering and construction with no clear mission. The first shuttle flew in April 1981, a durable lifespan of 30 years, and there are NASA engineers who say the three remaining shuttles could still fly.

But the shuttle program failed to meet its original criteria.

The original price tag was $90 billion; the final cost was $196 billion. The timetable called for 50 relatively inexpensive launches a year; the program never achieved more than nine.

THE SHUTTLE did make possible the construction of the International Space Station, which we must now rely on the Russians to service. It orbited, repaired and upgraded the Hubble telescope, the source of so many dazzling images of deep space. It ferried numerous satellites into orbit; and it broadened other nations’ reach into space, carrying astronauts from 16 countries.

In a kind of forward-thinking pride that America needs to recapture, we set out to build a space vehicle many thought impossible — and we succeeded. Tragically, 14 astronauts died in the Challenger explosion in 1986 and the Columbia’s re-entry breakup in 2003. Early planners of the space program braced themselves for casualties. If they had known that in its 50 years there would be only 17 fatalities — including the three crewmen who died in a 1967 flash fire aboard Apollo 1 — they would have been privately relieved.

Unfortunately, the shuttle program’s end finds the nation’s space program in disarray and a skilled workforce being dispersed. The Obama administration said no to the Bush administration’s plans to return to the moon and build the heavy-lift rocket to get there. NASA is said to be working on a new heavy-lift rocket, but where would it go? To a near-Earth asteroid? The Martian moon Phobos?

ULTIMATELY, the shuttle program was a failure only if one believes scientific and technological progress is a straight line, one success building on another success. One day, manned flights will explore our solar system, the more accessible parts of our galaxy and perhaps even one of those Earth-like planets astronomers are ever closer to discovering. The shuttles, now all destined to be museum pieces, will be seen as an essential step in getting there.

Former senior NASA official Hans Mark told the AP the shuttle’s epitaph should be “we tried.” All discovery is a matter of trial and error. We should keep on trying. The shuttle program was not in vain.

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