CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Maybe NASA's managers still view the shuttle as the Cadillac of space technology, but they sometimes make it sound as if it were a cranky old Ford with a few too many miles on it.
Deputy shuttle manager Wayne Hale says its recent on-again, off-again electronics problem "reminds me of an old truck I own."
Delays for safety improvements have repeatedly thwarted the shuttle's comeback from the Columbia catastrophe 2½ years ago. But aging components could eventually add their own setbacks and risks to flying as the shuttles near retirement in just five years, according to authorities on space travel.
"If I have any worries at all, it's a few years from now, down the road, when the hardware gets older," said Bob Sieck, a former shuttle launch director and NASA safety adviser.
Designed in the 1970s, the shuttle was meant to advance space travel by several giant leaps. It was to be named the Space Clipper, in a reference to the speedy American clipper ship that expanded the possibilities of sea travel in the 19th century.
The shuttle would be the first vehicle to travel back and forth to space. Its comparatively comfy quarters made the old space capsules feel like claustrophobic sardine tins.
The shuttle would make trips to space much more routine, more like commercial flying. It would potentially be the first step in putting space within the reach of ordinary business and tourism.
In the end, the shuttle took on its more prosaic name and accomplished more prosaic functions – but still is a marvel of sorts.
It has deployed satellites, maintained the Hubble Space Telescope and had a role in building the international space station. It has kept Americans in space while they tried to decide on their next destination after the moon.
But the shuttle's end has come in sight.
"The clipper ships were the peak of the sailing art, and we don't see those, either. I think there's a lesson to be learned from that," NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said last week at Kennedy Space Center.
Columbia flew the first shuttle mission in 1981. It was quickly followed by the shuttles Challenger, Discovery and Atlantis. Challenger was obliterated in its 1986 disaster, and Columbia was lost in 2003, killing 14 astronauts in the two accidents. The Endeavour, now 13, replaced the Challenger.
