A lot has been happening with NASA and the debate surrounding the Space Shuttle.
Within the last two days, NASA Administrators have announced plans to launch Discovery again in May of 2006, and then admitted that it simply does not have enough money to carry out the schedule of 19 more shuttle flights between now and the retirement of the Space Shuttle in 2010.
Despite calls from the Congress and Senate to fully realize the original goals of the ISS, the reality of funding the full Shuttle launch program in light of Iraq and hurricane rebuilding expenses adding up to hundreds of billions of dollars, there might not be enough money to go around.
As reported by Keith Cowing of NASA Watch:
As it has been preparing its FY2007 budget NASA identified $5.6 billion in so-called "over-guideline" costs needed to support these missions - at the rate it wanted to fly the missions.
Two alternate approaches are currently under serious consideration - in real time - at NASA. One, the so-called "Serial Processing" option would reduce the shuttle flight rate to 2 missions per year, cut the workforce, stop building the ISS, and live with the consequences.
The other approach would fuse current Space Shuttle, ISS, and Exploration development closely together such that existing capabilities could support emerging ones - all this serving to allow ISS assembly to continue further.
NASA is still deliberating internally on what approach to take with regard to the formulation of the FY2007 budget.
Mr. Cowing has put together a comprehensive article on the choices faced by NASA, the options it has in light of the funding shortfalls, and the obligations it has to the international partners in the ISS. If you want to know what's going on with the shuttle, read this article!
However, in a press release from the US Department Of State dated October 16th, everything is looking good for a return to space late Spring of next year.
Washington – Although not yet to set a firm launch date for the next space shuttle flight, NASA managers said October 14 that they have made progress in determining why insulating foam is lost during shuttle launches, and are considering a May 3-23 launch window.
An engineering team has been working since July at NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans to understand and fix the problems that contribute to the loss of insulating foam from the space shuttle external tank.
"We have not set an official launch date," said Space Shuttle Program Manager Wayne Hale during a briefing on the status of the space shuttle program at the Johnson Space Center in Texas. "We are, however, working toward technical solutions to the problems," Hale added, "and are at the point where we believe we have an understanding of the parameters of those problems well enough in hand" to set internal working schedules.
It's beginning to look like we'll get the shuttle ready to fly just as NASA decides to eliminate the missions needed to complete construction of the ISS. Unfortunately, this dilemma is a classic problem with NASA.
Keith Cowing - "Of course, to anyone who has worked in human spaceflight over the past decades, this should sound familiar. This approach follows a long-standing NASA propensity to stick things together when they are apart (to save money or make things more efficient) and then pull them apart when that solution does not work (because of dissimilarities in approaches) - only to try and put them back together years down the road. Trying to force operations and development together is proposed with the hope that it will save money. Such a forced marriage, when tried, usually results in a splitting of the two different efforts with a few years.
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