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Shuttle Retirement Costs Divert Science Funding
FleaPlus writes "Although overall NASA funding is expected to increase next year, NASA has announced plans to divert money from its science program to help pay for the expected cost overruns for flying the Space Shuttle safely until its retirement in 2010. A number of science projects are being canceled or delayed indefinitely."
The US modules for the ISS are designed with the shuttle's payload bay in mind. In particular, they expect the loads during launch to be applied from fixtures mounted along the sides and bottom of the bay. For expendable launches, you need to design the modules to take their loads from their bottom end. Converting a module would be very expensive.
If you wanted to, you could launch the module in a sort of adaptor that held the modules as they would be if the shuttle was carrying them. However, that would be heavy, to the point where even a Delta-IV Heavy may have trouble launching the module+adaptor combination.
Oh, and how about the fact that SpaceShipOne can't even get in to orbit? I'm sorry.. but it always frustrates me when people go on how much cheaper SS1 is for getting to space... when they neglect the fact that it can barely carry any load, and promptly falls back out of space just after getting there. Wake me when they create an orbital vehicle...