Posted on 07/29/2009 11:50:32 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
NASA will likely have to continue flying its aging space shuttle fleet beyond its planned 2010 retirement date in order to complete construction of the International Space Station, a presidential panel said Tuesday.
Former astronaut Sally Ride, a member of the Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee, said that it was unlikely NASA could meet the current deadline of retiring the space shuttle by next year, as is currently planned. The first operational flights of the agency's replacement for the shuttle, the Orion spacecraft, may also be delayed a year or so beyond its 2015 target, she added.
The review panel was appointed by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to reevaluate NASA's current direction, including the goal of returning humans to the moon by 2020. It is expected to issue a report in August.
Ride and the other members of the panel's subgroup examining plans for the International Space Station and space shuttle predicted that the currently scheduled shuttle flights will take until about March 2011 to complete.
"There's little margin remaining in the current manifest," Ride said. "NASA is considering safety first" when deciding when to launch shuttle missions, but "the closer you get to a hard and fast deadline, the more difficult that becomes."
NASA plans to launch seven more shuttle missions after the current flight of Endeavour, which undocked from the station Tuesday, to complete construction of the orbiting lab.
....
The panel also proposed that the International Space Station's working lifetime be extended through at least 2020, beyond the planned decommissioning in 2015, which is only five years after it is fully assembled.
"We think all of the options going forward should include an extension of ISS in some form," Ride said.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Ride Sally Ride
I did not realize the scheduled life of ISS is so short. That is not much bang for the $$$$. If it is safe till 2020 or longer, keep using it.
The President’s planned budget cuts make it impossible.
‘Re-entry’ must be tough on t’ars.
The ISS should have been done years ago.. or better yet, never built.. or so some say.
100 billion ? what ROI .. using old technology to launch and retrieve crew.. what a waste... or so some might say.
Orion now delayed another year, great!
I thought the ISS had been completed. I also believe I saw a report that the ISS would only be used until 2016. Why keep flying an obsolete and dangerous piece of equipment to support a white elephant with only 6 or 7 more years of useful (I use that word sarcastically) life?
Nah! Ya jes freewheel comin’ in. Makes ‘em spin real fast though!
Steam valve.
That is the darnedest thing,, oops..
As the shuttles get older, the chances of a third catastrophe increase with every use.
It’s a blurred vision thingy.
they had high hopes, but stuff happened along the way..
a little bit about the station and all the stuff in and on it
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/index.html
Cool, I remember when that came up earlier.. it was gonna cost millions to repair it if they removed it, would have had to remove a chunk of shuttle to get at it..
We can only hope. I wonder if their conversion of Pad 39-B will turn out to be a stumbling block. In hindsight that burnt bridge may turn out to be a really bad decision.
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