Shuttle Retirement In 2010 Under Review

An anonymous reader alerts us to an Orlando Sentinel report based on a leaked NASA email, indicating that NASA is looking at options to extend the Shuttle program. The fighting between Russia and Georgia has put a strain on plans to rely on Russian boosters until the Shuttle's replacement flies in 2015. Yet extending the Shuttle's life is no sure thing. According to a former NASA program manager, "We started shutting down the shuttle four years ago. That horse has left the barn." And NASA Administrator Michael Griffin has told Congress that if the Shuttle fleet were to fly two missions a year until 2015, "the risk would be about one in 12 that we would lose another crew. That's a high risk... [one] I would not choose to accept on behalf of our astronauts." And then there's the matter of finding the $4 billion a year it would take to keep the fleet operational. The Sentinel mentions that John McCain has called for additional Shuttle flights, but doesn't mention that Barack Obama has made the same point, as the BBC reports.

Comments

Maybe we could give COTS a try?

[untree]

I mean, NASA already has the program in place and already has participants. It would take a hell of a lot less than $4B/year to speed up COTS.

More info: http://www.nasa.gov/directorates/esmd/ccc/

Re:If the best we can do in "manned space flight"

[meringuoid]

ISS is a fucking joke, it's smaller than Skylab

Skylab massed 77,088kg; the ISS at present masses 277,598kg, and if ever completed it will mass 419,600kg.

Re:Nothing is 'safe'

[meringuoid]

making a sustained push to research Io, a moon that likely has liquid water?

Io is a volcanic hellhole. You're probably thinking of Europa.

What does it mean?

[Max_W]

Vladimir Putin told in the interview to CNN that the US government trained, prepared and encouraged the Georgian army for the incursion into South Ossetia.

According to Putin it was done to improve chances of one of the candidates, because when the international situation worsens, moves closer to a war, people tend to vote for a conservative candidate. Not for a change.

If it is true then it should not have been a surprise that there was the tension with Russia.

So the real reason then is not Russian politics, but the US presidential election.

One may write instead that due to the coming election it was decided to prolong the Shuttle program, because the world should have been shown to the voters with more defined scares.

Re:Nothing is 'safe'

[bonehead]

It did virtually nothing of merit in its entire lifespan.

That is entirely untrue. It functioned quite well as, shall we say, an "SUV" (Space Utility Vehicle). It carried satellites and other payloads into space, it carried astronauts to perform repair work on, perhaps most notably, the Hubble and the ISS. It hosted a variety of scientific experiments.

To say that the shuttle accomplished nothing is absurd. The problem with the shuttle is that it was too expensive for what it did. The reusable nature didn't reduce costs in the way it was hoped when it was designed.

The shuttle accomplished a great deal. The problem is that most of those things could have been accomplished for less money.

Re:If the best we can do in "manned space flight"

[RealGrouchy]

Yeah, but Skylab was made out of the much less dense aluminum, while the ISS is made out of lead to shield against cosmic radiation. So technically, the guy was right, the ISS is smaller than Skylab,

Oh, FFS.

Skylab's living volume: 10,000 sqft
ISS living volume: 15,000 sqft

(From Wikipedia. Admittedly, not as big a difference as I had expected)

I was going to make a joke in reply to GP about "oh, but it weighs virtually the same" but instead I had to reply to this silly comment. I hope you're happy.

- RG>