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NASA To Retire Atlantis by 2008

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the end-of-the-line dept.

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."

3 of 238 comments (clear)

  1. An even better idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Why not retire all of the shuttles, and abolish the NASA? Once that is done, sell everything that is associated with NASA to the highest bidders. NASA exists, like any other agency by taking money from others at gunpoint. I think it's about time we eliminate most of the government and drastically lower taxes.

    ____________________________________
    A vote against a Libertarian candidate is
    a vote to abolish the Constitution itself.

    1. Re:An even better idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

      You still need something like NASA to allow basic science research (you know, decade long space probes that don't have an immediate payoff). It doesn't matter. Russia and China (and possibly Europe) see vast military implications in space exploration. The USG would never allow itself to depend solely on commercial enterprise to cover military objectives.

      As for eliminating most of gov't and drastically lowering taxes, that cannot happen because besides pork barrel, the policy of the United States is to invade other contries over economic issues, mostly securing naturual resources. Until that stops, there will be no reduction in USG military and foreign expenditure.

      To respond to one troll with another, that is what I hate about you Libertarians. You're like the green freaks that say we should fix our energy problems by expending money to invent a new energy source. Its not going to happen because besides being beyond our current technological capability, socioeconomic forces make it impossible to move in that direction. Stop dishing crap about reducing gov't without doing something about US Gov't policy that causes the big gov't. I didn't see you Libertarians out there railing against the US invasion of Iraq, or cutting off aid to Israel. Or start shooting gov't officials like the Constitution's fathers meant the 2th amendment to be used. You're all hat and no cattle.

  2. Re:ISS in jeopardy? by tgd · · Score: 0, Troll

    Have you seen our current administrations approach to diplomacy?

    Perhaps the Bush Regime can do some real good! Kill the ISS and tell everyone to go screw or we'll bomb the crap out of them, too!

    A tiny ray of light out of this dismal, dark eight years.