With the space shuttle facing retirement next year after eight more flights - and with the program basking in the success of its fifth and final mission to overhaul the Hubble Space Telescope - one of the observatory's senior scientists Tuesday lamented the loss of the winged orbiters in favor of new, less capable rockets.

Credit: NASA TV

David Leckrone, answering questions at a space shuttle mission status briefing following the release of the Hubble Space Telescope from shuttle Atlantis, criticized the agency's post-shuttle Constellation program and what he said was a lack of leadership and innovation.

Asked about lessons learned from the Hubble-shuttle partnership and the value of being able to service payloads in orbit, Leckrone said "I'm not going to be around all that much longer, I've had a very long career at NASA so I think I can speak fairly bluntly."

"I think the ability of space-suited human beings, seven of them, flying in a spaceship carrying a very, very heavy cargo, 20,000, 30,000 pounds, to low-Earth orbit, to then be able to go out in spacesuits and perform extraordinarily intricate operations ... and do it successfully, I think that is one of the most remarkable achievements that NASA has ever done," he said.

"And it just makes me want to cry to think that this is the end of it. There is no person out there, no leadership out there, there's no vision out there to pick up the baton that we're about to hand off and carry it forward. And I think that's just a shame, to abandon one of the most impressive, refined, sophisticated capabilities that this agency as a whole, human side and robotics side, has achieved."

Leckrone, senior Hubble project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, said giving up the space shuttle represents a "long-term loss of hard-won capability and costly capability."

"If there's a future for this agency, it's got to be in an innovative direction like that," he said. "We can't just keep doing the same old thing year after year. It's just not as productive as it could be otherwise. So, that's my piece. And I'm sticking with it."

NASA is in the process of completing the International Space Station before retiring the shuttle next year. The agency's Constellation program calls for building new Ares 1 rockets and Orion crew capsules to boost astronauts to low-Earth orbit starting in 2015. A new heavy lift unmanned rocket called Ares 5 is intended to boost Orion capsules and lunar landers to the moon starting around 2020.

Earlier this month, the Obama administration set up an independent panel to review NASA's manned space flight options, including Constellation and alternative architectures.

Leckrone said he worried that the Constellation program, facing tight budgets and demanding technical challenges, is "just plowing ahead, producing what they're able to produce within all the constraints."

"And my question is, OK, once you've produced it what do you do with it?" Leckrone said. "This is the way to keep human spaceflight alive, but what are the people going to be doing, except going back and forth to the space station? Which is a wonderful thing to do, and I hope the space station becomes extraordinarily, scientifically productive, but it is not today."

He said if the Constellation program "doesn't begin talking to their potential customer base, they're going to end up with something that no one is interested in using."

Leckrone said Constellation managers have not sought input from the science community in the design of the new rockets like the shuttle program enjoyed during its initial development.

"I don't see any similar activity going on in the Constellation program, where they're actively engaging their potential user base to get requirements that should go into their basic design," Leckrone said. "End of story."

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