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Nasa Details Shuttle's Retirement
schliz writes "Nasa has announced that it intends to officially retire the aging space shuttle fleet by 2010, four years before it has a replacement craft ready. The space shuttle fleet will make ten more flights, mainly to add modules to the International Space Station and carry out repairs and upgrades to the Hubble orbital telescope. The retirement will leave the US without orbital capacity for at least four years, until the Ares booster programme is complete. European and Russian launchers will service the space station in the meantime."
I'm having nostalgia for when our space program was a national priority. This, despite having no memory of any time pre-Challenger.
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The money for developing Ares comes in large part from the money currently allocated for shuttle operations. Barring an increase in NASA's budget, any prolonging of shuttle ops will primarily postpone the gap, not shrink it.
Come on, folks! It's News for Nerds, you should know better!
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
(or, National Acronym Society of America) In either case, not Nasa.
Life is short: void the warranty.
That's only six years away. Call me skeptical, but I bet it's more like 2018 at this point. With all the testing that is required and work remaining, I'd be really surprised if it's done in six years.
How come they're retiring the fleet 4 years before the next craft is ready?
The reason given is that the development of the new launch system costs money. There is no added budget to develop it, so the money to design and build the new system has to come from some other part of the budget. The budget they're using is the budget to fly the shuttle. So, in short, they can't develop new system until they free up money to do so by stopping flying the old one.
Is is actually more economical to pay the Russians or us Eurotrash to send them to space rather than the cost of maintaining and flying the shuttle?
Yes... up until the point when the Russians raise prices because they have a monopoly.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
On the economics, the shuttle was never the cheapest solution. Originally the idea was to be able to turn that thing around on the pad, and send it back up after fueling.
As it turned out, the refit of the shuttle after each flight is about as costly as a Saturn V launch. Now, the Saturn V could lift 100 tons into orbit, the shuttle 30. You can do the math on cost per pound.
I'm aging rapidly, I bought a new game and had no idea if my machine was good for it.
I'm glad of this: It means that a few years down the road, I can visit the Space Museum and my sturdy young son will see with his new eyes, under the fierce and optimistic Florida sun, another step in the hopes of man to go further than their birth.
He'll be just as mad as I was, all those years ago, smelling the hot dusty grass and the tarmac and sea, looking at those mighty silver birds, purpose built by the best we hade within us, that he can't climb in the real one, and has to go inside to the mockup.
I hope what he sees was what I saw, so far away and yet so close to hand, all those years ago. I hope the shuttle means to him what the moon lander meant to me- untrammelled hope and faith in human endeavour.
Rest in peace, big old bird; even parked on the forever runway, we'll always look at you with untarnished eyes and souls full of wonder.
Behind the joke is a serious point.
At the risk of being modded flamebait, I think I can say that Americas education system has never produced the quantity and quality of talent necessary for real innovation in space. The US has always relied on immigrants. Your victory in the space race was in part due to the fact that World War 2 drove the best rocket scientists out of Europe. Once they had retired and died, there wasn't the kind of people you needed coming out of your home grown education system, and no great cataclysm in countries with good education system to scatter geniuses for you to scoop up.
Your latest administration isn't helping matters either. Pushing widespread hostility towards evolution and climate change, leaning on NASA scientists to misreport results, and generally acting like a dangerous theocracy in many ways means that you'll have a harder time attracting the talent you are unable or, more likely, unwilling to develop at home.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
The education system in the US can produce as much good talent as anywhere else in the world, but the cash flow in this particular society trumps all other things. Why make a relatively paltry living as a scientist when you can make oodles of cash as a lawyer, running a business, or even to a lesser degree, writing software?
There's no prestige in this country in being a geek in a lab coat. The prestige is all in being the guy in the suit making the deals and living large. 18 year old kids don't even bother thinking about being that geek in the lab coat with his middle class income.
Says a lot really
If you mod me down I'll go and make a cup of tea
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