Well, the Russian Communist leadership might well be the last one laughing. Check out this significantly disturbing story:
Extending shuttle's life won't fill gap for space station, NASA officials say Orlando Sentinel 09/12/2008 Authors: Robert Block and Mark K. Matthews
Cape Canaveral - Even before NASA finishes its study into the possibility of flying the space shuttle beyond its scheduled retirement in 2010, top agency officials have concluded that extending the life of the orbiter fleet won't solve the problem of keeping the international space station operable for U.S. astronauts.
Instead, NASA officials have decided that they must persuade Congress to allow the agency to buy Russian Soyuz spacecraft to serve as transport vehicles and lifeboats for U.S. space-farers and their international partners.
Without the Soyuz, NASA says in a congressional briefing paper obtained by the Orlando Sentinel, it will have to abandon the station when the current contract with Russia ends in October 2011 and cede control of the $100 billion facility to Moscow.
"Continuing to fly the space shuttle past 2010 is not the answer to this situation," the paper says. "The Soyuz option is simply the only sure solution . . . or else the U.S. has no choice but to de-crew all U.S. astronauts (and de-facto the Canadian, European and Japanese astronauts) from the International Space Station in 2011."
The paper is part of a last-ditch effort by the agency to overcome congressional resistance to waiving a law banning high-tech purchases from Russia because of Moscow's nuclear dealings with Iran.
Administrator Michael Griffin has personally visited senior members of Congress this week, pleading for the waiver. NASA says it needs the waiver this year to give Russia the three-year lead time needed to build more Soyuz craft after the current U.S. supply runs out.
Despite the dramatic appeal, the waiver is far from certain. Moscow's recent invasion of Georgia has chilled U.S.-Russian relations.
Congressional aides in both parties said the key concern is time. Congress plans to recess in three weeks to hit the campaign trail, which means NASA must compete with other priorities, such as energy. And anti-Moscow sentiments run high.
"If any one senator objects, its going to be hard to get it done in the next three weeks," said U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., who said he's planning several legislative maneuvers to get the waiver passed.
"We don't like the position that we're in, but we don't have any choice if we want to access our own space station," he said.
'Jihad' against shuttle
The NASA lobbying effort also appears to undermine a newly initiated study of what it would take to keep the shuttle flying past 2010. Last week, Griffin said he expected the next president to order that the shuttle continue to fly.
Griffin privately had begun to question the wisdom of the 2010 deadline. In a confidential e-mail to his top advisers Aug. 18, he slammed the White House for what he called a "jihad" to shut down the shuttle and a desire to see the space station languish.
In that e-mail, Griffin also rejected the idea, advanced by some in the administration, that the Russians would be unable to run the space station without the United States. "We need them," he wrote. "They don't need us."
Griffin later said that the e-mail was taken out of context and that he supported the administration policy of retiring the shuttle in 2010 and relying on the Russians to keep U.S. astronauts on the space station. According to administration officials, Griffin was called to the White House this week to discuss how to press ahead with White House policy and pursue the congressional waiver.
The decision follows weeks of high-level internal NASA deliberations about the shuttle, and whether it could be flown twice a year to the space station until its successor Ares rocket is ready to fly in 2015.
Billion-dollar space janitors
According to documents and internal e-mails obtained by the Sentinel, senior officials argued that even if NASA could safely and affordably fly the shuttle for five more years, it would be a pointless exercise.
Because of the energy required to power its systems, the shuttle can't stay in space for more than two weeks at a time and can't be used as a lifeboat for the space station. Without the Soyuz, crew members couldn't remain on the station, meaning they would be little more than orbital janitors on short maintenance missions costing billions of dollars.
"At best . . . out of 365 days per year, Americans and [international partners] stay for 50 or so days," NASA Associate Administrator Shana Dale wrote in an Aug. 27 e-mail. The Soyuz, on the other hand, can stay in space for six months.
Dale's e-mail was written after Republican presidential nominee John McCain asked President Bush to order NASA to stop closing shuttle contracts in case the shuttle is needed to supply the space station.
McCain opposes relying on Russia for U.S. space travel.
But flying the shuttle, which already has had two fatal accidents, widely is seen as risky and is not popular even among some astronauts, especially because it eats up funds needed to develop NASA's next rocket, which is supposed to return humans to the moon.
In interviews this week, members of the upcoming shuttle mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope said it's possible to fly a few more shuttle missions safely but not without slowing down development of the next space vehicle.
If America wants a new vehicle, said commander Scott Altman, "you're going to have to spend the money to make that happen, which I think is going to take you out of the shuttle business sooner, or else you just never get to the other side."
COMMENT: Think about how they are positioning themselves potentially to undermine our own domestic launch infrastructure...by offering right over in Cuba...launch vehicles and launch site... at half the price of our own...
This won't be the Cubans, except in name only. And make no mistake: It will be guys who run the KGB.
