Posted on 02/16/2006 2:54:12 PM PST by anymouse
The U.S. human spaceflight program is "strained to the limit," NASA's chief said on Thursday, warning against any long gap between the end of the shuttle era and the first flight of a planned new spaceship.
"The United States risks both a real and a perceived loss of leadership on the world stage if we are unable to launch our own astronauts into space for an extended period of time when other nations possess their own capabilities to do so," NASA Administrator Michael Griffin told a congressional committee.
Griffin acknowledged that NASA already expects a gap between the shuttle's planned retirement in 2010 and the start-up of a new crew exploration vehicle in 2013 or 2014.
But he said extending this gap would over-stress an already stretched program.
"Our human spaceflight program is not an optional program," Griffin told members of the House of Representatives Science Committee. "We are already strained to the limit."
Griffin fielded pointed but largely sympathetic questions about the Bush administration's $16.8 billion budget request for NASA for fiscal 2007.
"I am extremely uneasy about this budget," Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (news, bio, voting record), a New York Republican who chairs the committee, told Griffin. "This budget is bad for space science, worse for Earth science and possibly worse for aeronautics."
A large slice of the U.S. space agency's resources are focused on achieving President George W. Bush's ambitious plan to return U.S. astronauts to the moon by 2020 and eventually send humans to Mars.
NEW RACE TO THE MOON?
But before that can happen, NASA must satisfy its commitments to finish building the orbiting International Space Station by 2010, and that cannot occur without a working space shuttle fleet.
The shuttles have been grounded -- except for one shakedown flight last year -- since the fatal February 1, 2003, break-up of Columbia. The next shuttle flight, considered a test of safety improvements, is tentatively set for May.
The U.S. mission to send humans back to the moon for the first time since 1972 will not occur until 2018, Griffin said, barring any unforeseen program delays. He warned that any further slips in this schedule would risk a loss of critical expertise at NASA.
If there is an extended hiatus between the end of the shuttle program and the start-up of the crew exploration vehicle, Griffin said the space agency could permanently lose its key staff.
"Then when we choose to resume human spaceflight at a later date, we will have to retrain this cadre of people, create new subcontractors," he said. "We will resume our progress in a very stumbling and halting way."
He declined to give a cost estimate for NASA's human mission to Mars.
"If we were sitting here today with the capabilities that this nation had purchased as of the end of the Apollo program, we could go to Mars within a decade," Griffin said. "We have decades worth of hard work in front of us just to be able to get back to where we were. And then Mars will be the decade after that."
Space policy ping.
Go get 'em Griffin!
Scratch that, we WOULD already have been to Mars.
There's a new batch of astronauts just completed training. Maybe the program will have some continuity and they will get to go to the moon some day.
China and Russia want to have a joint mission to the moon.
So Griffin is saying "Hey, the big corps have kept us from going where we should have gone for years, I'd like to keep doing that."
Is that your analysis?
The Space Shuttle has been an interesting waste of dollars and time. IMO, the biggest part of the manned space program costs are from Boeing, Lockheed-Martin and other over-priced major NASA suppliers.
Why don't they give Dick Ruttan and his company a shot at designing the replacement space vehicle? NASA needs new blood and innovative thinking, NOT the means of throwing more money at the same old problems.
Aye, and given their changes in foreign policy *against* us of late, a partnership between them to take the lunar high ground should make no American happy.
Kill the shuttle, lick our wounds, give Rutan lots of money, let him take over the short game, and start worrying about the big rockets needed for the long game...
Let's cut the bullshit. The manned space program was sacrificed in large part so the money could be wasted on greatly expanded welfare benefits, coddling of illegal immigrants, and promoting the gay agenda in public schools.
FWIW, there was a larger gap between the last Apollo flight (1975) and the first Shuttle flight (1981) than is currently planned with the Shuttle-to-CEV transition. Plus, the CEV is conceptually a much easier design than the Shuttle. Of course, NASA paperwork requirements are insane these days, so who knows what will really happen.
It's so sad that the worthless space shuttle has driven our space program into the ground.
Ginsu knives? you guessed it; Space Shuttle.
Lawnmowers? Yup, Space Shuttle.
I'm teasing with ya...Those were actually pretty cool points..I just saw an SNL skit coming about..
Well I was in a hurry. Hubby had called from the office and is sick. I just wanted to point our a few things that we owe to the space shuttle program.
I know it's near-heresy in some circles to say this, but just what is it we're going to Mars for again?? Have the rovers turned up anything of intrinsic commercial value that warrants spending all of our resources on going there??
I can think of many different ways to spend the money that it's going to cost for a Mars mission, that might some day actually generate a profit...
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