Senate Bill Adds Shuttle Flight, New Shuttle-Derived Vehicle

simonbp writes "The Senate Commerce Committee this morning marked up a compromise NASA Authorization Act that rolls back some of Obama's plans for NASA, while keeping others. The bill adds at least one more shuttle flight, keeps Obama's technology demonstrators and commercial access to ISS (albeit at reduced funding), restores the Orion crew capsule, and replaces the Ares rockets with a Shuttle-Derived 'Space Launch System' for going to the ISS and Beyond, which could be ready as soon as 2015."

Comments

Re:Wrong Direction

[Bruce Perens]

Uh-huh. I had a nice grant from ARPA at Pixar to work on movie-making software. Why, because they wanted to make 3D technology in the states economically viable. That way, they'd have it if they needed it for war. Unfortunately, not even I could keep SGI afloat with my one little grant.

So, that was my military mission. I don't really mind more like that happening.

Re:Proven delivery system

[moosesocks]

Personally, I would be in favor of keeping it going as a servicer for the ISS until the next generation of craft is actually up and running.

Soyuz is cheaper and safer. There's no scientific or engineering reason not to use it.

They've had a few close calls, but unlike the shuttle, the Soyuz capsule has modes of failure in which the cosmo/astronauts aboard do not die. Hell, a Soyuz rocket once exploded on the pad, and the astronauts aboard walked away from the incident with nothing more than minor injuries.