NASA To Retire Atlantis by 2008

SirBruce writes "As reported by Space.com, Spaceflight Now, and elsewhere, NASA is now planning to retire the Space Shuttle Atlantis by 2008, after just 5 more flghts. By doing so, they would avoid a costly and time consuming scheduled overhaul, and could still fly the remaining 12 missions (17 total) with Discovery and Endeavour, which are just now completing their ODMPs (orbiter maintenance down period). Atlantis would be kept for spare parts to keep Discovery and Endeavour flying until the shuttle program is shut down in 2010."

Comments

Re:Whats next?

[Himring]

I believe they plan on replacing the Shuttle with the CEV (Crew Exploration Vehicle). Which they claim will have the best technologies from the Apollo and Space Shuttle programs. There is a moon landing targeted for 2018.

Crew Exploration Vehicle

Not staying up on news?

[WindBourne]

For the last year, we have been discussing how the shuttle will be relaced by the CEV. It is a semi-disposable capsule (based on the old apollo system). It will have 2 launchers;

1. A Crew Launch vehicle that will lift the CEV and small loads of about 20-25K lbs.
2. A Heavy lift vehicle that will lift very large loads (~200K lbs). It will send in a single launch as much payload as 6 shuttles currently can.

The rockets are disposable.

I would not be surprised to see a future admin use private rockets to get crew and small loads to the ISS. Why? Just to keep us with the capacity to have multiple crew launch systems.