Rocky Road to Jupiter
In a case study of the strengths and weaknesses of the United States space program, NOVA chronicles the ambitious and long-delayed Galileo mission to Jupiter—still on the ground long after its planned May 1986 launch.
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00:00This is the story of the most sophisticated interplanetary spacecraft ever built and why
00:10for now it's still down here on Earth. It's a billion dollar saga of science, engineering
00:17and politics, of individual effort and national policy, of technological innovation and managerial
00:25indecision. It's a case study of the Galileo mission and its travels on the rocky road to Jupiter.
00:39Major funding for NOVA is provided by this station and other public television stations nationwide.
00:46Additional funding was provided by the Johnson & Johnson family of companies
00:50supplying health care products worldwide.
00:55And by Allied Signal, a technology leader in aerospace, electronics,
00:59automotive products and engineered materials.
01:25Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system, large enough to hold a thousand Earths.
01:31The purpose of the mission was to study it as never before, to sample its turbulent atmosphere
01:36and to survey its four most intriguing moons, including Io, the most volcanic body in the
01:41solar system, and Europa with its icy crust. They were first seen by the astronomer Galileo
01:48for whom the mission was named.
01:50Originally to be launched in 1982, Galileo was repeatedly postponed. Finally, launch
01:55was set for May 1986. It was to be the first planetary mission to ride the shuttle.
02:01But now the spacecraft sits in the clean room here on Earth where it was built,
02:04with no chance of launch before November 1989.
02:08And the head of NASA has floated the possibility of cancellation.
02:12Galileo had problems even before the sad morning of January 28, 1986,
02:17when Challenger exploded in the cold skies above Cape Canaveral.
02:27Seven brave astronauts died that morning.
02:31And America's space program, manned and unmanned,
02:34committed to the mission.
02:36The Galileo mission to Jupiter was one of the projects most seriously affected by the tragedy.
02:41Over the years, Galileo had become part of many lives.
02:46Of the men and women who worked to pull it all together,
02:50laboring at the usually unseen tasks of building spacecraft,
02:54working round the clock on harbors,
02:56and working together on the most difficult tasks of the mission.
03:00Laboring at the usually unseen tasks of building spacecraft,
03:04working round the clock on hardware problems, in meeting after technical meeting.
03:09It's a twisted tale of politics, technology, and science.
03:13A case study of what America can do best.
03:17And how national space policy has faltered in the past 20 years.
03:24It's a story best told by the people who have shaped the mission.
03:28Gentry Lee, project engineer and computer expert.
03:32He was instrumental in the Viking mission to Mars,
03:34and hoped the Jovian odyssey of Galileo would rival the success of 1976.
03:43James Van Allen, physicist and discoverer of Earth's radiation belts in 1958,
03:48the first achievement of space science.
03:50After the trailblazing pioneer mission to Jupiter,
03:53he headed the science working group that created the first satellite.
03:57He created Galileo.
04:01Torrance Johnson, project scientist.
04:03His job, to coordinate the 17 on-board experiments.
04:07As a member of the Voyager team,
04:08he relished being among the first to view pictures
04:11coming back across millions of miles to Earth.
04:15John Cassani, project manager,
04:17seen here in 1959 at work on Pioneer 4,
04:20with Van Allen and Wernher von Braun.
04:23A veteran of Mariner and Voyager,
04:25his job on Galileo was to cope with Congress,
04:27complex machinery, and almost constant changes to the mission.
04:31Jupiter is a fascinating planet.
04:33And current NASA administrator, James Fletcher,
04:36who first sold President Nixon on the space shuttle,
04:39headed NASA when Galileo began,
04:41and returned to the agency after the Challenger explosion.
04:45Well, one of the, I think, more unique aspects of the Galileo
04:51has been its very rocky history.
04:54The project was originally started in October of 77.
04:59And at that time, we were planning a launch in January of 82.
05:03We would have been the 27th launch off the shuttle,
05:07according to the schedule that was laid back in those days.
05:10I've characterized the history of Galileo projects
05:13as the perils of Pauline.
05:15It's been, I think, formally canceled at least four times during its history.
05:19I mean, it's just sort of hanging by its fingernails
05:22as did Pauline at one time,
05:23and when somebody comes along and rescues it.
05:26So this has gone through that kind of peril at least four times now.
05:30And we're not launched yet.
05:33I don't want to cancel Galileo.
05:34It's one of the programs that started when I was here.
05:37But you have to raise the question,
05:40gee, has time gone by so far
05:43that there isn't a better mission that you can do
05:46by the time Galileo will arrive?
05:49And we had to ask ourselves that question,
05:51and the answer came back,
05:52no, Galileo is still the best thing we can do at this time.
05:58To appreciate what's been lost in the delays to Galileo,
06:01you have to go behind the scenes.
06:03Everything seemed on the home stretch
06:05when at 3 a.m. on December 19, 1985,
06:08Galileo began the first 3,000-mile leg of its half-billion-mile journey.
06:14At the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California,
06:17the spacecraft is readied for a four-day,
06:19high-speed truck convoy across America.
06:22The goal is to get to the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida,
06:25where many tests await, before Christmas.
06:31The convoy rolls out of Pasadena by night,
06:33accompanied by government escorts.
06:35Its drivers have not been told the exact route they'll be taking.
06:39Galileo is to be powered by plutonium units.
06:42There's worry about anti-nuclear protesters
06:45and a fear of terrorist attack.
06:47It was in 1610 that Galileo first observed Jupiter's four large moons,
06:53now to be surveyed, close up, by the spacecraft named after him.
06:59The first glimmerings of the project were in the mid-60s,
07:02though Congress did not fund it till 1977.
07:05As the first planetary mission to be launched from the shuttle,
07:08routine emergencies were expected,
07:10so the JPL engineers would stay in Florida until the launch.
07:14They'd been rolling all night and all day,
07:18stopping only for gas and food.
07:21For most major missions, NASA has launched two identical spacecraft,
07:24but it could only afford one Galileo,
07:27making the trip more nerve-wracking for electrical engineer Tom Shing.
07:31To me, it's somewhat scary.
07:32It's a big responsibility.
07:34You tend to worry about it.
07:36You're thinking of the repercussions,
07:37so we get sideswiped driving along here or something like that.
07:41But there's an awful lot of people working an awful lot of long hours on this thing
07:45for something like that to happen.
07:48That's in the back of your mind.
07:49It is mine as I'm driving.
07:50Maybe that's one of the reasons I'm having a hard time sleeping.
07:54This was how Galileo's trip began.
07:57Arrival at Jupiter was supposed to be like this.
08:01After a two-year flight,
08:02it would reveal its unique character as three spacecraft in one,
08:06an orbiter with both remote sensors and advanced cameras.
08:10As well as fields and particles detectors.
08:13And an entry probe that, for the first time,
08:15would sample the atmosphere of one of the solar system's giant gas planets.
08:20After release, the probe is on its own,
08:22with no course correction and just one-way radio contact with the orbiter.
08:28Scientists think Jupiter's atmosphere will tell us much
08:30about the material that formed our entire solar system.
08:34And this is our first chance to actually go there
08:36and measure that stuff directly.
08:37The things that we can't tell just from our telescopes
08:40and we can never be able to tell from our telescopes down below the clouds.
08:43And measuring the types of things that one does in the laboratory
08:46when you have samples in your hand,
08:47whether it be your gas or a rock.
08:50As the probe sinks into the clouds,
08:51it will relay data back to the orbiter,
08:53then onto Earth for about an hour,
08:56until its destruction by heat and pressure.
08:59The Galileo orbiter will next begin a prolonged series of loops
09:02around Jupiter and its moons.
09:05We will have a residency period there of almost two years.
09:08And we will be able to make repeated close-up observations of the satellites.
09:13Galileo will bring home for all the members of this planet
09:18an entire mini solar system, up close and personal.
09:22By studying Jupiter and its moons over a long period of time,
09:27we will suddenly begin to understand the fundamental questions
09:30of the evolution of the solar system,
09:32how bodies like planets and moons form.
09:35After a journey of half a billion miles,
09:37Galileo will swoop less than 125 miles above Europa.
09:42You know, frozen cracked surfaces that we saw very poorly with Voyager.
09:47And it could be a wildly fascinating place
09:49when we get high-resolution Landsat quality photos of it.
09:52This is a Voyager picture of Europa.
09:55And this is a simulation showing the expected improvement to come from Galileo.
10:00Galileo will be passing 20 to 100 times closer to Jupiter's moons.
10:04And its cameras are technically superior.
10:08Galileo will fly 725 miles above Io,
10:11which erupts a ton of sulfur every second,
10:14the most geologically active object in the solar system.
10:17And Galileo will study not just Jupiter and its moons,
10:20but will plunge continuously through its powerful magnetic field
10:24over the two years of the mission.
10:26These are huge magnetic structures in space.
10:29And Jupiter's is the most powerful one outside the sun itself
10:33that we've got available to us.
10:35A very strong magnetic field, tilted, rotating, emitting radio signals.
10:40It's an astrophysical object, effectively.
10:42It has many things in common with the physics
10:45that are involved in things like pulsars, for instance.
10:48And here we've got one of these things,
10:49not a hundred million light years away,
10:53but we've got it in our backyard, celestially speaking.
10:57In November 1985, when the scientists thought the May 86 launch was certain,
11:02they got together for the first time
11:03to hash out what the spacecraft should be doing
11:05in each minute of its two years of orbits.
11:10Seventeen principal investigators from six nations
11:12will fly experiments on board Galileo.
11:15More than a hundred scientists work with them.
11:18Some of them have been planning since the 1960s.
11:21With so few planetary missions to generate new research,
11:24the allocation of precious spacecraft time
11:26provokes some courteous but real disputes
11:29about how to carve up the orbits.
11:30In this case, between Andy Ingersoll,
11:33whose interest is Jupiter's atmosphere,
11:35and Hal Mazursky, more concerned with the surfaces of the moons.
11:40In fact, I think one scenario is to,
11:43for the atmospheres to go home for a meeting or two,
11:46and for the satellite people to plan out the whole mission,
11:49and then we'll come on and see what you've got,
11:52and we'll say, look, you haven't given us enough,
11:54we want to squeeze you a little,
11:55but then we'll basically fill in the holes.
11:58We'd like that, Andy.
11:59Of course you like it, and if we trusted you,
12:01it might be the way to go.
12:06We're having one of our first meetings to put together
12:10the tools we're going to need to decide
12:11what we actually do with the mission we've selected.
12:14We have a rather clear group idea, I think,
12:16about what our overall objectives at Jupiter are,
12:18and how they relate to one another.
12:19This is not a bunch of individual investigators
12:22each pursuing his own thing
12:24with no thought about the context that he's doing it in.
12:27To make things even more exciting
12:28around the Europa encounter,
12:30the Io closest approach is just a few hours
12:33after Europa closest approach.
12:35It's obviously going to be an easy observation.
12:37Io is almost directly behind Europa.
12:41How many hours do you want between, on the two days?
12:45Until we get more trajectory data, we can't say,
12:46but it's probably evenly spread out
12:48over about a two-day period.
12:50Any change in launch vehicle and launch date
12:53means all these scientific and technical decisions
12:56have to be reconsidered.
12:58The Challenger disaster caused the most serious slip
13:01in the history of the project.
13:03But the design of the mission
13:05and the reasons for its earlier delays
13:07are rooted in America's space policies
13:09of the past 25 years.
13:151962, the first interplanetary mission from Earth,
13:19Mariner 2, blasts off to fly by Venus,
13:21returning scientific data from a vast distance.
13:261965, Mariner 4 sends back the first photograph
13:29from another planet, Mars.
13:31And the idea of gravity assist is thought up.
13:35This ingenious technique of using the pull of one planet
13:38to slingshot a spacecraft onto its next destination
13:41was to help Galileo on many occasions.
13:451969, man walks on the moon.
13:481973, Pioneer 10 arrives at Jupiter
13:51and everything previously known about the planet
13:54is up for revision.
13:56Early 1976, Van Allen Science Working Group
14:00proposes an ambitious future mission
14:02to visit Jupiter with an orbiter and a probe.
14:08It's known as J-O-P, the Jupiter Orbiter Probe.
14:13That same year, as the Viking landers touch down on Mars,
14:16an invitation to experiment on J-O-P goes out
14:20and nearly 500 scientists say, yes, please.
14:261977, the twin Voyager spacecraft are launched.
14:29Two years later, they send back spectacular photographs
14:32as they fly all too speedily past Jupiter.
14:37In 1978, the last American interplanetary mission to date
14:41is launched to Venus.
14:46The golden age of American space science
14:48was based upon the proven strategy
14:50of using expendable unmanned rockets.
14:52But that was changing as NASA studied
14:55how to fit future planetary missions
14:56aboard the Space Shuttle, approved in 1972
14:59as the nation's next major space activity after Apollo.
15:061977, NASA asks Congress to approve funds for J-O-P.
15:11Launch is to be by shuttle in 1982,
15:14arriving at Jupiter in 1985.
15:16The cost, $455 million.
15:19The cost, $455 million.
15:22But the House Appropriations Subcommittee says no.
15:26They'd been pressured by deep space astronomers
15:29to support the ambitious and expensive Space Telescope
15:32and thought NASA could not afford
15:34two such large projects at the same time
15:36while still developing the shuttle.
15:39J-O-P supporters lobby hard,
15:41saying lack of approval would undermine
15:42the nation's capacity for planetary science.
15:45Convinced, the Senate okays the mission.
15:48The full House reconsiders and restores funds.
15:52J-O-P gets its new start in October 1977.
15:57But it's one step forward and one step back.
16:00For by this time, the shuttle system
16:02is missing an essential piece.
16:04Budget cuts have killed all plans
16:06for a custom-built space tug
16:08to boost spacecraft up and away from low Earth orbit,
16:12which is as high as the shuttle can go.
16:15So NASA improvised by modifying the upper stage
16:18of a rocket the Air Force was developing
16:20for use on the shuttle.
16:22It was called the IUS.
16:24We call it an interim upper stage
16:26because we always knew we wanted to go for the tug,
16:29but somewhere along the line
16:31that got changed to inertial upper stage.
16:34Because it ceased to be interim,
16:35it was the only upper stage for a while.
16:38In February 1978, the mission is given the name Galileo.
16:43But it still waits for a launcher and an upper stage.
16:47The innovative shuttle was months behind schedule,
16:50millions over budget,
16:51and suffering technical problems.
16:53Its reusable main rocket engines kept on failing.
16:56Its heat shield tiles kept coming loose.
16:59And the clock was ticking.
17:00Planetary missions have launch windows,
17:03times when the positions of the planets
17:05make for easier voyages.
17:07The gravity of Mars could help the spacecraft
17:09get to Jupiter if Galileo could be launched in 1982.
17:13We had gone from the 28th launch on the shuttle
17:15to the 22nd launch, to the 18th launch,
17:18to the 15th launch.
17:19And finally, now we were going to be
17:22the seventh mission launched off the shuttle.
17:25Our date was January 2 was holding fixed,
17:27but the shuttle dates were slipping.
17:31It became clear that we weren't just going to get there.
17:34The Air Force complained that Galileo had turned out
17:36to be too heavy for its new upper stage.
17:39NASA countered that the IUS was delivering
17:41less power than expected.
17:43First thing that happened is that the IUS on the shuttle
17:47couldn't quite make it.
17:49And so they said, all right, we'll send it in two parts,
17:52the probe on one part,
17:53and the satellite on another part.
17:55So right away, what happens to the mission?
17:57First of all, the cost of launching it doubles
17:59because we need two launch vehicles.
18:02The launch is delayed two years.
18:05That increases costs to the mission.
18:09We have to develop a new vehicle to carry the probe,
18:11something called a probe carrier.
18:13Launch becomes February and March 1984.
18:17Arrival at Jupiter, July 1986.
18:20The cost jumps to $650 million.
18:23So now when the Congress had approved something
18:25two years earlier,
18:28suddenly the cost of doing that now has gone up
18:32with no real increase in value to the mission.
18:35Now Congress suggests replacing the solid fuel IUS
18:39with a new version of the Centaur upper stage,
18:41which had been used successfully
18:42atop the Atlas and Titan expendable rockets.
18:46But NASA said it would be difficult and dangerous
18:48and cost $100 million to fit
18:50the volatile liquid-fueled Centaur into the shuttle.
18:551981, the Reagan administration is new to Washington
18:59and OMB, the Office of Management and Budget,
19:01is out to cut every budget except defense.
19:05Letting the Air Force develop the IUS
19:08for planetary missions,
19:09that just wasn't a good idea in retrospect.
19:12They thought they could do it for $100 million.
19:15That was their quote,
19:16and it turned out to be $900 million.
19:19And they put a whole lot of bells and whistles on it
19:22that increased the cost.
19:25With rising costs and continuing poor performance,
19:28NASA's IUS is canceled.
19:30And that left us with no launch vehicle.
19:33Well, NASA took up the development of the Centaur,
19:36but that couldn't be implemented for another year,
19:38so we were pushed off to 1985.
19:41The Centaur upper stage helped launch Viking and Voyager,
19:44but for the shuttle,
19:45it requires careful and expensive adaptation.
19:48Launch becomes 1985, arrival at Jupiter, 1987,
19:53and the cost rises to $695 million.
19:57Now Budget Director David Stockman
19:59looks to chop $600 plus million.
20:01The entire Galileo project is threatened with cancellation.
20:05Through 1981, there's technical progress,
20:08but budget pressures continue.
20:10The president's science advisor
20:11recommends halting all planetary missions for a decade.
20:15Next year, the Pentagon spends more on space than NASA.
20:19December 1981, NASA decides there are too few missions
20:22to justify Centaur's costs and cancels it.
20:26Back to the IUS.
20:29Launch slips just one month,
20:30but Galileo will take two and a quarter years longer
20:33to get to Jupiter,
20:34since the weaker IUS requires a less direct route
20:37using Earth for a gravity assist.
20:40Costs jump to $864 million.
20:44But Congress objects to paying more
20:46for extending the mission,
20:48delaying the scientific return,
20:50and leaving the shuttle without an adequate upper stage.
20:53It directs NASA to build Centaur.
20:56This made us, allowed us to put the whole mission
20:58back together the way we wanted to,
21:00but in the meantime, the Centaur development
21:03had been stopped for eight or nine months,
21:05so by the time the guys could get back
21:07up to gear on that, we lost another year.
21:09And so we went from an 85 mission to an 86 mission.
21:14That's really a torturous history.
21:17Launch is set for May 86,
21:20arrival at Jupiter August 88,
21:22and the cost stabilizes at $874 million.
21:26But the strange tale of IUS and Centaur was not yet over.
21:33The spaceship that emerged from this untidy process
21:35and came to life at JPL
21:38was paradoxically the most advanced unmanned craft
21:41ever built to fly to the planets.
21:43Down here on Earth, it must be bathed in filtered air,
21:47its skin stitched with a surgeon's care,
21:50its delicate parts handled with respect.
21:53It's all designed for weightlessness,
21:55literally out of its element on Earth.
21:58On this planet, it lingers in intensive care.
22:01It's built for space.
22:06An advanced craft like Galileo
22:07shares some characteristics with living organisms.
22:11Its eyes are television cameras,
22:13the most sensitive ever flown.
22:16Its brains are computers known as the CDS.
22:19The Command and Data System and the AACS,
22:22the Attitude and Articulation Control System.
22:26Instead of arms and legs,
22:27it moves by blasts of gas
22:29from the nozzles of its maneuvering engines.
22:32Its energy will come from RTGs,
22:34Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators,
22:37which produce power by the radioactive decay of plutonium.
22:41But the two most difficult pieces to fit together
22:44are the upper and lower sections.
22:46Their complex engineering allows the Galileo orbiter
22:49to be two ships in one.
22:51The upper section, like the Pioneer spacecraft,
22:54will spin to sample phenomena
22:56such as Jupiter's magnetic field.
22:59The lower section is despun
23:00to be a stable platform
23:02for instruments like Voyager's cameras,
23:04which had returned spectacular images
23:06from the outer planets.
23:09This dual-spun design is unique for a planetary probe
23:12and unlike anything in everyday life.
23:14It's as if your head had to spin endlessly
23:17round and round atop your neck.
23:19In the last three months of 1985,
23:23putting the pieces together
23:24became a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle
23:26with millions of parts.
23:28It was a race against the approaching deadline
23:30of the May 1986 launch window.
23:33If the project missed that date,
23:35they would have to wait 13 months
23:36for another opportunity.
23:41But it was a low-tech problem
23:43that threatened the schedule in December 1985
23:45when the memory chips of the CDS computer were damaged.
23:49There'd been some unexplained failures
23:51and these technicians had to strip off
23:53a protective coating from the chips to test them.
23:57They had used an alcohol cleaner
23:59but the alcohol damaged connections
24:00which previously had been satisfactory.
24:03Now every chip had to be checked,
24:05many removed and re-soldered
24:08and they were way overdue
24:09in getting the CDS integrated with the spacecraft.
24:16By early January,
24:17they had fixed enough chips and connections
24:19so that whole trays could be checked.
24:21Now another crew worked round the clock
24:23testing the trays.
24:26If the memory boards weren't functioning correctly,
24:28it could jeopardize the entire mission.
24:31With its components assembled,
24:33the entire spacecraft has to be tested
24:35to ensure it can survive
24:36the rigors of launch and life in space.
24:39And not just hardware.
24:40Galileo's complex software needs testing also
24:43and that tests human ingenuity as well.
24:46In the old days, in the good old days,
24:48if I can say that,
24:49test engineering before you launched
24:51was simply a case of putting the spacecraft
24:53through everything it could possibly do
24:56and you check them off one by one.
24:59Now you could not do it.
25:01One of my young engineers computed
25:03that it would take 55 years
25:07to test Galileo
25:09at every one of its possible logical functions
25:12and all the reasonable logical combinations.
25:14The mechanism then becomes
25:16who knows what area.
25:18It's more like a doctor in a sense
25:20is diagnosing a patient,
25:22sees a few things that don't look right
25:23in a given area and says,
25:24hmm, maybe there's some trouble there.
25:26I better get all the people
25:27who know that particular area to look at it.
25:30This meeting brings together computer programmers
25:33and the engineers
25:34who have been test flying the spacecraft.
25:37All right, now,
25:38last time Arden walked in here
25:40with this problem about the two CDSs
25:43fighting with each other.
25:44The engineers have given the spacecraft
25:47the intelligence
25:47to do some of its own diagnosis.
25:50Essentially meters its own performance
25:52and when it detects a lack of health
25:54in a given region,
25:55responds accordingly
25:56and sends a message to the ground
25:58and says, I'm not all right.
26:00The problem is the spacecraft
26:02is so intelligent
26:03that some of its onboard systems
26:05can get into an argument with others
26:07about exactly who's in charge.
26:09The string is still down.
26:13The aim is to find a way
26:14to help the spacecraft recover
26:16and once again find its barriers.
26:18It must make its two main computers
26:20work together, not fight.
26:23The question in my mind, I think,
26:24is that what kind of schizophrenic behavior
26:26is attitude control going to be?
26:28If we're getting two separate time messages,
26:31we'll believe one of them.
26:32That solves your problem,
26:33but doesn't solve
26:34the rest of the spacecraft's problems.
26:36By your looking at that,
26:37at those time messages,
26:39you can take over.
26:41So the ACS can say,
26:42the CDS is screwed up,
26:43therefore I'm going to do
26:44sun acquisition and sit and wait
26:45for the ground,
26:46which is really what you should do.
26:47In addition to internal brainstorming,
26:49Galileo has an outside review board,
26:51which meets regularly at JPL
26:53to consider problems and progress.
26:57The board is made up of space veterans,
27:00people like James Martin,
27:01project manager
27:02for the highly successful
27:03Viking mission to Mars,
27:04where he was Gentry's boss.
27:07It is sometimes tough
27:08convincing wise old hands like these
27:10that everything is under control.
27:12So what will happen in that situation,
27:13if you're the other perfectly
27:14good backup CDS,
27:16you read the main signal,
27:17says I'm OK.
27:18Then you read the other signal,
27:20says I'm OK.
27:21Then you check your time code
27:22and it's different from that guy.
27:23You say, I'm sick.
27:24Down you go.
27:24They're both down.
27:26That's bad.
27:27Does it have to be fixed pre-launch?
27:30I'll be very blunt.
27:31My recommendation is don't fix it at all,
27:33or fix it now.
27:34When you get into the middle
27:35of engineering a major system,
27:37it's like the trees in the forest.
27:38You sometimes get so buried
27:39in the detailed problems,
27:40you can't see the overview.
27:41What a review board does
27:43is makes you sit down first of all,
27:44think about what it is you're doing,
27:46how you're going to explain it
27:47to other people,
27:47and then allows them to hear it
27:49as new listeners.
27:50And suddenly, you know,
27:51it's like a prism in front of your eyes
27:53being turned.
27:53They see different colors.
27:54And when they see different colors,
27:56suddenly say, hey,
27:57I hadn't thought about that myself.
27:58The impression I have
27:59is that you have designed
28:00such a smart machine
28:03that it is beyond human knowledge
28:05to figure out if it's working right
28:07or can work right.
28:09And can never work wrong.
28:11I do not believe
28:12there is a long list of items
28:15not on the foil
28:16that will manifest itself later.
28:19So no way of knowing
28:20how long the list is.
28:21I have no way of knowing.
28:22But Jim, we had no,
28:24we had problems like this on Viking
28:26that we didn't find out about
28:27until we landed on the surface of Mars.
28:29OK, and we never knew
28:31how long that list was either.
28:33So it's a question
28:34of engineering judgment and prudence.
28:39There'd been software problems
28:41on previous missions.
28:42But this was to be the first time
28:43human astronauts
28:44would be directly involved
28:46in the launch
28:46of an interplanetary spacecraft.
28:48Another way in which
28:49Galileo was to be unique.
28:53One day in November 85,
28:55the crew of the space shuttle Atlantis
28:57came to visit JPL
28:58to view progress
28:59and to get up close to the spacecraft
29:01before they might need
29:02to work on it in spacesuits.
29:10Ox Van Hoften,
29:11one of the Galileo crew,
29:12was a veteran of the shuttle.
29:14He'd grappled with a satellite in orbit,
29:16fixed it and sent it back to work.
29:18The Galileo team felt pleased
29:20to have professionals like him
29:21associated with their project.
29:27Many in NASA argued
29:29it was only the presence of humans
29:30in the loop
29:31that would generate public interest
29:32and excitement in scientific missions.
29:35Others, mostly outside NASA,
29:37argued that flying humans
29:38to launch science missions
29:39like Galileo increased costs
29:41and involved unnecessary risks.
29:44But in November,
29:45doubts about mixing manned
29:47and unmanned flight were put aside.
29:49The attitude was
29:50that everybody was on the same team
29:52and the goal
29:53merely good science at Jupiter.
29:56I had said at one point to Ox,
29:57you know, Ox,
29:58wouldn't it be great
29:59to be able to
30:01put on our spacesuits
30:02and go out and just join this thing
30:04on its trip to Jupiter?
30:07And Ox said,
30:08well, that'd be real neat
30:09for about eight hours,
30:10but what do you do
30:12when the air runs out?
30:15But the worry that somehow,
30:16somewhere,
30:17there was some unanticipated fault
30:19that could jeopardize
30:20the entire mission,
30:21a so-called single point failure,
30:23continued to nag away
30:25at Galileo's managers.
30:28A month later,
30:29on December 13th,
30:31late on a Friday afternoon,
30:32after four and a half days
30:33of intense meetings,
30:35the advisory board gathered once again
30:37for an even more important
30:38pre-ship review.
30:39John, what is the situation
30:41before the Centaur is fired?
30:44The decision today would be
30:45whether continuing problems
30:46with the CDS,
30:47the attitude control system,
30:49and a few other issues
30:50meant the spacecraft
30:51should be kept at JPL for more work
30:53or sent as scheduled to Cape Kennedy
30:55to begin its complex integration
30:57with the yet untried Centaur rocket
30:59and the shuttle.
31:00We have looked at the problem
31:02of recovering the spacecraft from orbit.
31:04It is virtually an impossibility.
31:07There are no provisions
31:08on the spacecraft
31:09for mechanical attachment
31:11or recapture,
31:13and we're going to Jupiter
31:15or we're not going anywhere.
31:17At the end of the day,
31:18to ship or not to ship,
31:20that was the question.
31:23I see no reason why not to.
31:24I certainly see no reason not to ship.
31:28Taken by itself,
31:29this is an uncomfortable risk,
31:32but I believe that's also
31:33the name of the game for Galileo.
31:37Yes, I would ship.
31:38Nothing I heard in this room
31:40would keep me from doing that.
31:43Some things are heard in the home, right?
31:50If I were project manager of this project,
31:54I would not ship that spacecraft
31:56until I had that ACS working properly.
32:01I do believe that
32:03if you're talking about a control system,
32:06you need to do that here at home.
32:09This was the lone dissenting voice,
32:11and so the vote was to ship Galileo to Florida.
32:14The spacecraft would leave JPL six days later.
32:17We shall do everything in our power
32:19to make you as proud of us
32:21the 20th of May
32:23as I know you want to be.
32:30Though there were at least five years to go,
32:32three years to Jupiter
32:33and two more years once there,
32:35things seemed well on their way,
32:37and the project threw a Christmas party,
32:39bringing together scientists and engineers,
32:41the rocket experts
32:42in charge of the Centaur upper stage,
32:45and the technicians who were to
32:46convoy the spacecraft to Florida.
32:48We've got a great spacecraft.
32:51We've got a great team.
32:53And from here on,
32:54we have only one way to go,
32:55and that's up and we're armed.
33:03And so the cross-country convoy began.
33:07Spacecraft technicians became trunkers
33:09and devotees of CB lingo.
33:11Let's get somebody up here.
33:12Let's not argue.
33:12For three and a half days,
33:13they rolled, escorted by police,
33:15state troopers,
33:16and their shadowy government companions,
33:19without incident and without mishap.
33:26On December 23rd, tired and hungry,
33:28the convoy rolled into Kennedy Space Center,
33:31Spaceport USA,
33:33and the staff clocked out for Christmas.
33:37In late January came one of the activities
33:39that could only be done at Kennedy.
33:42They evacuated the area around the clean room
33:44for a distance of some 200 yards,
33:46and amid great safety precautions,
33:48the spacecraft was tanked up
33:50for the first time.
33:52Galileo uses so-called hypergolic propellant,
33:55two different substances
33:56that ignite upon contact with each other
33:58to power the course correction jets.
34:01Loading the propulsion module
34:02was potentially a dangerous job.
34:05The crews worked one full day
34:06on each of the four tanks
34:08in carefully monitored 80-minute shifts,
34:10encased in scapesuits,
34:12self-contained air-breathing personnel ensembles.
34:17For once, the technicians from JPL
34:19looked like astronauts.
34:24That same evening,
34:25there was a party to introduce the JPL staff
34:27to their new partners,
34:28the specialists from Kennedy,
34:30who would help integrate the spacecraft
34:31into the shuttle Atlantis
34:33and prepare it for launch
34:34four months from then.
34:38Beyond the warmth of the barbecue,
34:39it was getting chilly.
34:41A cold front was rolling in.
34:43The date was January 24th.
34:47Four days later, Challenger exploded.
34:54John Cassani had been at the cape,
34:56watching the liftoff.
35:01Everyone in that room knew what happened,
35:03the incident happened,
35:04but there wasn't a sound,
35:05not a word uttered
35:07for at least 15 or 20 seconds,
35:09and then someone said,
35:10oh, my God.
35:13I didn't, I can remember in my own mind,
35:16you know, thoughts were,
35:17we were shocked,
35:18and everyone was shocked, of course, by it,
35:20but in my own mind,
35:21I was jumping from one subject to another,
35:24from the people that were affected by it
35:27to the shuttle itself,
35:29to the shuttle program,
35:30to my own program,
35:31to our own people working on our program,
35:34how are we going to,
35:36you know, what was going to happen next?
35:38The people that were killed are our colleagues.
35:41They're also engaged in the same endeavor,
35:45and it was, you know, it's a tremendous loss
35:47when something like that happens,
35:49but I think, you know,
35:49as with the rest of the NASA community,
35:53it's kind of part of the family.
35:54What you want to do is you go on
35:56and you try to get on with the business
35:58and do the things that those people
36:00were interested in doing,
36:01which is exploring.
36:03On February 12th,
36:04two weeks after the accident,
36:06Cassani held an all-hands meeting
36:08to bring the people working on the project up to date.
36:11The emotional shock of losing colleagues was over
36:14as we began to tote up the likely impact
36:17on the Galileo spacecraft,
36:19and we began to think in terms of our careers.
36:22We just spent, in several cases, a decade
36:25getting this thing ready,
36:27and then suddenly,
36:28not only were we not on our way,
36:30we didn't even know when we would be on our way.
36:34When would it be launched?
36:35The 86 launches for the planetary missions
36:37were being postponed or delayed,
36:41but that did not necessarily rule out
36:43the option to launch
36:47or resume launching the shuttles again
36:48by the May-June time period.
36:50In these early days after Challenger,
36:52there was still hope that this had been
36:54just a freak accident,
36:55that the cause would be quickly found
36:57and that shuttle flights would rapidly resume.
37:01At the very worst,
37:01it seemed to mean a delay until the next year,
37:04but as the Rogers Commission went about its work,
37:06it became increasingly obvious
37:08that the delays would be far longer than anticipated.
37:11In fact, the single-point failure
37:13that NASA always feared had already happened,
37:16not just to one mission,
37:17but to U.S. space policy.
37:19The National Space Transportation System
37:21was totally inoperative.
37:23Why?
37:23Collectively, the country put all of its eggs in one basket.
37:27I think we all realized that that was a mistake.
37:29Now, it seemed to be, for whatever reason,
37:30a good thing to do at the time.
37:32In 1972, the United States
37:35made a fundamental policy mistake,
37:37said not only that the shuttle
37:39would be the launch vehicle
37:41for all U.S. payloads,
37:43but that we would, on purpose,
37:47lose the capability to use other launch systems.
37:50Now, everyone who works in technology
37:51knows that you do not go to the next generation
37:54computer, automobile, whatever it is,
37:57until it is absolutely proven out.
38:00But the expendable launch vehicles
38:01were all mothballed before the shuttle
38:03was even fully designed,
38:05much less operational.
38:08How did it happen that all of America's space eggs
38:11were in one and only one technological basket?
38:16The United States had wished for the moon
38:18and gotten it,
38:19but in the late 60s,
38:20at a time of increasing budget pressures,
38:22NASA had to come up with something new.
38:24We were coming down off the Apollo program,
38:27and there were some people
38:28that wanted us to go down to zero,
38:30and I think we managed to hold the place together
38:33pretty well during that period,
38:36but a lot of unfortunate consequences resulted.
38:41Among the options were manned missions to Mars,
38:43a space station, a shuttle, and a space tug.
38:47All would cost money,
38:48but the argument was the shuttle
38:49and the tug could save money too.
38:53NASA designers had come up
38:54with many elaborate concepts,
38:56some with huge manned boosters
38:57to take an orbiter up to space,
38:59with both craft able to land
39:00at commercial airports.
39:02The orbiters would have jet engines
39:04to fly to safety in an emergency
39:06and abort systems to protect the astronauts.
39:09But by January 1972,
39:11when President Nixon okayed the shuttle,
39:13the plans had changed.
39:15Every cost cutter someone joked
39:16had become a shuttle designer.
39:18Though Nixon said the shuttle was worth building
39:20just for national prestige,
39:22his budget office kept up the pressure.
39:25We were just given a budget
39:27and said figure out a way to meet that budget,
39:30whatever it takes,
39:31and so we had to balance off a lot of things
39:35to meet those,
39:36and it was a year-by-year thing.
39:38The overriding criteria
39:40that drove the final design of the shuttle
39:43was getting the one-time costs down.
39:47It was mortgaging the future
39:49in order to keep the current costs low.
39:53The innovative manned boosters were long gone,
39:55as were many of the safety systems.
39:58Soon, solid rocket boosters
39:59were chosen in preference
40:01to the liquid-fueled ones
40:02that had been on the model shown to Nixon.
40:05Liquids were more expensive to develop,
40:07though cheaper to operate.
40:09Solid rockets were cheaper up front,
40:11though more expensive to operate,
40:13and never used before in American manned flight.
40:17And by the late 70s,
40:20it was obvious a real space tug was out.
40:22The Centaur-IUS debacle resulted.
40:26But something you have to keep in mind
40:28in the political framework
40:31of the Washington scene,
40:33you hardly ever spend money up front
40:35to save money in the future.
40:37It just doesn't work that way,
40:39and we're all faced with that problem,
40:42not just NASA,
40:42but the whole government.
40:44I think a lot of people have come to the conclusion
40:47that it was probably not a wise thing
40:49to try to develop that system
40:51on a shoestring budget, basically.
40:52And in addition to hurting
40:54the shuttle program itself,
40:56it certainly created a tremendous constraint
40:59on any other programs,
41:00in particular science and space science programs
41:02within NASA.
41:04And as shuttle cost mounted,
41:06space scientists found
41:07that expendable rockets
41:09were no longer being maintained,
41:10even as alternatives or supplements to the shuttle.
41:14The ones we used for Voyager, for example,
41:16and the ones we used for Pioneer,
41:19all of these worked beautifully.
41:21They did a great job.
41:22They were still potentially available,
41:24but the things that worked
41:26were being terminated,
41:28and the things that weren't worked
41:29were being exalted.
41:31That was the simple situation.
41:33In the summer of 1985,
41:34months before Challenger,
41:36Van Allen wrote an article
41:37detailing the negative impact
41:39of the shuttle's rising costs
41:40and continuing delays on space science.
41:43He listed missions canceled,
41:45an American probe to Halley's Comet,
41:47a U.S. spacecraft to fly over the sun's poles,
41:49and delays to projects like Galileo,
41:52which had time-critical launch windows.
41:54He described the situation as
41:56the slaughter of the innocents.
41:59The initial justification for the shuttle
42:01was that it could be launched routinely
42:03and cheaply and reliably,
42:06and it has not met any of those criteria.
42:10It is a technically complex system,
42:13sensitive to launch delays,
42:16difficult to use.
42:17It has been much more expensive
42:19on a use basis, a recurrent basis,
42:22than anybody anticipated
42:23when it was approved.
42:25And clearly, we've now been made aware
42:28by the accident,
42:29it is a risky system.
42:31So Galileo, the Hubble Space Telescope,
42:33and the other great scientific missions
42:35of this decade are sitting on the ground
42:37because the programmatic problems
42:39of the shuttle caused us to be there.
42:42The Challenger accident
42:43had a continuing impact
42:44on every aspect of U.S. space policy
42:46and on Galileo.
42:48Concerned about any increased risks
42:50for future missions,
42:51managers representing the astronauts
42:53restated their long-standing objections
42:56to carrying the liquid-fueled Centaur rocket
42:58in the cargo bay.
43:00In November 85,
43:01the Atlantis crew accepted Centaur's risks.
43:04In spring 86,
43:05they were still willing to fly it.
43:07But in April came an estimate
43:09of up to $180 million
43:10to fix safety problems
43:12and pay for additional delays.
43:15Now, some members of Congress
43:17put Fletcher in the hot seat,
43:18asking him to guarantee in writing
43:20that Centaur would fly
43:21if they spent more money on it.
43:23In June, Fletcher canceled Centaur,
43:26and it was back to I.U.S.
43:29One estimate pegs Centaur development
43:31at a billion dollars.
43:32But it's certain that the Centaur I.U.S.
43:34back and forth had cost
43:36several years for Galileo.
43:38Again, the change in launch vehicle
43:40meant it was back to the drawing board.
43:43I.U.S. has less power,
43:45so Galileo would have to pick up energy
43:47by flying once past Venus
43:48and then back twice past Earth.
43:52It was an ingenious solution
43:53based on the principle of gravity assist.
43:56The engineers had learned
43:57to design trajectories like this
43:59from their earlier studies
44:00of how to navigate around Jupiter
44:02and its moons.
44:03But it would increase flight time to Jupiter
44:05by six years, arriving in 1995.
44:10Now, a spacecraft designed to operate
44:12in the cold, dim reaches
44:13of the outer solar system
44:15had to be given parasols
44:16to shield it from the heat of the sun.
44:19The designers tried two different styles
44:21of golden umbrellas
44:22before the best design was found,
44:24one that would strike a balance
44:25between heat and cold.
44:30In the aftermath of Challenger,
44:32there were other issues.
44:33Even before Centaur was canceled,
44:35an increased concern for safety
44:37brought questions about Galileo's use
44:39of plutonium fuel in its RTGs,
44:42radioisotope thermoelectric generators.
44:45For over 25 years,
44:46in missions such as Voyager and Biking,
44:49Apollo and Pioneer,
44:50U.S. spacecraft have used RTGs
44:52as relatively lightweight, dependable,
44:54and efficient energy sources.
44:56RTGs are especially useful
44:58in the cold and dark
44:59of the outer solar system.
45:01They use the radioactive decay
45:03of plutonium to produce electricity.
45:05No atomic fission or fusion is involved.
45:08The radioactive fuel pellets
45:10are heavily encased
45:11in blocks of iridium,
45:12then mounted in graphite,
45:14a material so strong
45:15it's used in the nose cones
45:16of ballistic missiles.
45:18The RTGs are designed
45:19to withstand re-entry.
45:21Galileo has two RTGs,
45:23each containing about
45:2424 pounds of plutonium.
45:27In March 1986,
45:28there were congressional hearings
45:29on the issue.
45:30The immediate question was,
45:32could a Challenger-type accident
45:33release plutonium?
45:36At the range of a few hundred,
45:38up to a few hundred PSI,
45:39the generator would not have
45:41released material,
45:43and it would have
45:44fallen into the ocean.
45:46Cassani and other witnesses
45:47testified the Challenger fireball
45:49was 10 to 20 times too weak
45:51to breach the RTGs,
45:53an opinion since backed up
45:54by further studies.
45:56Many other RTG problems
45:57were reduced when the highly
45:58explosive Centaur was replaced
46:00by the generally safer IUS.
46:03But the new trajectory,
46:04as we've seen,
46:05brings Galileo back
46:06only 190 miles above Earth.
46:10If Galileo went off course,
46:12it would be traveling so fast,
46:13the RTGs might burn up
46:15in the atmosphere,
46:16releasing plutonium
46:17instead of remaining intact.
46:22But JPL's navigational skills
46:24were seen in the flawless
46:25Voyager flyby of Uranus,
46:27and Galileo's onboard intelligence
46:29is being programmed
46:31to ensure it avoids Earth,
46:33even if communications fail.
46:35Still, plutonium fuel
46:37could be political dynamite.
46:38We've got to sort through
46:39all of this.
46:40Sometimes it's like
46:41pulling teeth to get you
46:43all to get some answers.
46:44In the aftermath,
46:45not just of Challenger,
46:46but also of the Soviet
46:48nuclear disaster at Chernobyl,
46:49a national failure to resolve
46:51this question might jeopardize
46:53or delay launch of this
46:54and future missions.
46:56Even critics of NASA policy
46:57in other areas support RTGs.
47:00From the standpoint of
47:01pure technical assessment,
47:02it's a very trivial risk
47:04and one that I'd be happy to,
47:06you know, sign off,
47:08so to speak,
47:09if I were a responsible
47:10public official.
47:11We've been launching them
47:12for 25 or 30 years.
47:15I mean, you can't do
47:16planetary exploration
47:18without them.
47:19You can't have lunar bases
47:20or Mars bases
47:21or rover vehicles
47:23without these devices.
47:27Until the shuttles fly again,
47:29no one can specify
47:30launch date,
47:31arrival at Jupiter,
47:32or even cost.
47:34But the new baseline
47:35is for a launch in late 89,
47:37arrival at Jupiter in 1995.
47:41The total cost of the mission
47:42could now be $1,363,000,000.
47:48A half billion dollars over budget,
47:50more than a decade late,
47:52it will arrive nearly 30 years
47:54after such a mission
47:55was first seriously discussed.
47:56See, now a good part
47:57of that expense,
47:58I might say,
47:59has been vacillation,
48:00which has been produced
48:02by vacillation
48:03in the launch system
48:04and by many failures
48:06of the shuttle
48:06to meet its schedule,
48:07to meet its performance capabilities,
48:10indecision on the part of Congress,
48:12vacillation on the part
48:13of the agency.
48:14I think it's fair to say
48:16that all of these
48:17non-technical considerations,
48:19if you might call them that,
48:20political,
48:22programmatic considerations
48:23have perhaps doubled the cost.
48:26So what about the future?
48:28Obviously, one of NASA's
48:29major priorities
48:30is to get the shuttle safe
48:31and flying again.
48:33But beyond that expensive
48:34and complex task, what?
48:37A space station has been
48:38one of NASA's goals
48:39since the 60s.
48:40And most people seem convinced
48:42that some kind of orbiting facility
48:44could be useful at some time,
48:46at some cost.
48:47But what design?
48:48At what cost?
48:50And when?
48:51There have been constantly
48:53evolving plans
48:53for an orbiting complex,
48:55resupplied by the shuttle,
48:57with living space,
48:58scientific labs,
48:59and experimental factories.
49:01Like the shuttle,
49:02it's supposed to do
49:02a little bit of everything
49:03for everybody.
49:06The idea was endorsed
49:07by President Reagan
49:08in his 1984
49:09State of the Union address.
49:11Tonight, I am directing NASA
49:13to develop a permanently
49:14manned space station
49:16and to do it within a decade.
49:18It was supposed to cost
49:19$8 billion
49:21and be operational by 1994.
49:24In February 1987,
49:26NASA revised its estimates
49:28up to at least $13 billion.
49:30And Administrator Fletcher said
49:31the program would be stretched out
49:33so that 1995 would be
49:35the earliest it could operate.
49:38Many of the pieces of rationale
49:41for the space station development
49:42sounded an awful lot
49:43like the debates
49:45about the shuttle system
49:46back in the 70s.
49:47And I honestly have to say,
49:51I'm concerned when I hear
49:52some of those things
49:53going on now
49:54that we're not getting ourselves
49:55into the same type of situation
49:56as we did with the shuttle.
49:58Despite Reagan's support,
50:00in January 1987,
50:01the President's Office
50:03of Management and Budget
50:04chopped $288 million
50:06from the space station budget.
50:08One of the things that continues
50:09to be worrisome to me
50:11in the decision to proceed
50:12with the space station
50:13is that the central continuing
50:16element of the presidency,
50:17that is OMB,
50:19remained opposed to the project,
50:21just as they were opposed
50:22to the shuttle
50:23and squeezed the shuttle budget
50:25throughout its history
50:26in a very non-productive way.
50:28I guess I have learned,
50:30I hope all of NASA has learned,
50:31is that you don't cut corners.
50:33When they start chopping back
50:35on the overall budget,
50:38you've got to say, stop.
50:40We aren't going to build it
50:41if we're going to be cut anymore.
50:43I think if we do continue
50:44on the present course of development
50:46of the space station,
50:47we will, first of all,
50:49find gross cost overruns.
50:51We'll find much more
50:52massive technical difficulties
50:54than are now anticipated.
50:56We will undoubtedly encounter
50:58much, a grave variety
51:00of safety problems.
51:02And finally, we'll find
51:03that it's not very much useful
51:05for anything.
51:06Will the space station
51:07enhance or erode
51:09our nation's scientific objectives?
51:11Many scientists are concerned
51:12that last year,
51:13when NASA's overall budget
51:15rose by 12 percent,
51:16funding for space science decreased.
51:19They have got to pay attention
51:21to the balance in their programs
51:22and not allow concentration
51:25on getting the shuttle flying again
51:27and getting space station underway
51:29to completely devastate programs
51:32that are already, in many cases,
51:33hanging by a thread.
51:35One hopes that there is
51:37some learning in the system
51:38that you can't do big,
51:41ambitious things on the cheap.
51:43Ultimately, it comes back
51:44to haunt you.
51:46Space exploration has generated
51:48an array of practical benefits,
51:50medicine and computers,
51:53communication satellites
51:54and earth resources mapping.
51:57And the new worlds
51:58explored by our spacecraft
51:59allow us all to live
52:00in an age of discovery
52:02as exciting as any
52:03in the human past.
52:05Why is it important
52:05for the United States to do that?
52:09Perhaps in the long-range
52:10history of mankind, it isn't.
52:12The science will get done,
52:15it may be done
52:16by Japanese scientists,
52:17European scientists,
52:18Soviet scientists,
52:19as a citizen and as somebody
52:22who would like to see
52:23the investment we have
52:24in our technical
52:25and scientific capability
52:28come to fruition and be realized.
52:30I'd like to see America
52:31be a participant in that.
52:33We are now paying for a decade
52:35of benign neglect
52:37of our space policy.
52:39For the last 10 years,
52:40the amount of money being spent
52:42on civilian space
52:43as a percentage
52:43of our gross national product
52:45has gone gradually downward.
52:47So if we are to become
52:50leaders in space again,
52:52it will require a budgetary infusion
52:55of some significant amount.
52:57To build a spacecraft,
52:58you need not just hardware,
53:00but also people to make
53:01the machines come to life
53:02with their dreams and hard work.
53:05For the scientists and engineers
53:07who fly the missions,
53:08it takes years of training
53:09in graduate school
53:10and later in experimental boot camp
53:13for a payoff of perhaps
53:14three decades of productive work.
53:17In that time,
53:18there might be at most
53:19three or four missions.
53:21But if Galileo is the norm,
53:22then the nation's best
53:24and the brightest
53:24might choose another career
53:26and the human curiosity
53:28that must drive
53:28even robot spacecraft
53:30will be lost.
53:34On February 21st, 1987,
53:37about 14 months
53:38after it left JPL for the Cape,
53:40Galileo returned
53:41to be reconfigured.
53:43It will go back for launch
53:45in May 1989.
53:47When we began Galileo,
53:49we thought we were going to launch
53:50in January 82.
53:53You know, we just had to
53:55to swing with the punches.
54:00We've been hit a couple of times,
54:01but by circumstances
54:03that were outside of our control,
54:05we've responded.
54:05And I think that's
54:09the way it has to be.
54:13So what can we learn
54:14from the strange
54:15and rocky road of Galileo?
54:19That it's possible
54:19to build a spacecraft
54:21with parts that spin
54:22in different ways,
54:24but not to build a space program
54:26with policy and technical reversals
54:28every few years.
54:32That you can figure out
54:33how to stop computers
54:34from arguing with each other,
54:37but not to advance
54:38if Congress, NASA,
54:40and the science community
54:41cannot agree.
54:43That it's possible
54:44to spin around distant planets
54:46to save fuel,
54:47but not to substitute
54:49wishful thinking for missing funds.
54:52In human, scientific,
54:53and financial terms,
54:55these have been expensive lessons,
54:56as almost everyone involved
54:58now agrees.
54:59In the case of Galileo,
55:01nearly $1.4 billion
55:03for a superb spacecraft
55:04that still sits on the ground,
55:06with another 10 years at least
55:07before it finally
55:09completes its journey.
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