Commercial crew would be flying next year if Congress had fully funded it, we wouldn't even be having this discussion.
Keeping the shuttle flying would have reduced the budget for commercial crew even further.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Crew_Development
Funding and effect on schedule
The first flight of the Commercial Crew program was planned to occur in 2015, but insufficient funding has caused delays.[10][11] NASA Administrator, Charles Bolden, has attributed the delays of the CCDev program to insufficient funding from Congress.[12] Michael López-Alegría, President of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, has also attributed the delays in the program to funding.[13]
For the 2011 budget, $500 million was requested for the CCDev program, but only $270 million was granted by Congress.[14] For the 2012 budget, $850 million was requested but Congress only approved a budget of $406 million, and as a result the first flight of Commercial Crew was delayed from 2016 to 2017.[11] For the 2013 budget, $830 million was requested but Congress approved of only $488 million.[15] For the 2014 budget, $821 million is being requested.[10]
http://www.universetoday.com/111655/boeing-cst-100-space-taxi-maiden-test-flight-to-iss-expected-early-2017-one-on-one-interview-with-chris-ferguson-last-shuttle-commander/
Boeing CST-100 Space Taxi Maiden Test Flight to ISS Expected Early 2017 – One on One Interview with Chris Ferguson, Last Shuttle Commander
by Ken Kremer on May 9, 2014
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL – Boeing expects to launch the first unmanned test flight of their commercial CST-100 manned ‘space taxi’ in “early 2017,” said Chris Ferguson, commander of NASA’s final shuttle flight in an exclusive one-on-one interview with Universe Today for an inside look at Boeing’s space efforts. Ferguson is now spearheading Boeing’s human spaceflight capsule project as director of Crew and Mission Operations.
<snip>
“The first manned test could happen by the end of summer 2017 with a two person crew,” he said.
“And we may go all the way to the space station.”
Boeing is among a trio of American aerospace firms, including SpaceX and Sierra Nevada Corp, vying to restore America’s capability to fly humans to Earth orbit and the space station by late 2017, using seed money from NASA’s Commercial Crew Program (CCP) in a public/private partnership. The next round of contracts will be awarded by NASA about late summer 2014.
<snip>
But the schedule depends entirely on NASA funding levels approved by Congress. And that vital funding has been rather short on supply. It has already caused significant delays to the start of the space taxi missions for all three companies contending for NASA’s commercial crew contracts because of the significant slashes to the agency’s CCP budget request, year after year.
<snip>
“Originally, we would have flown the unmanned orbital test in the summer of 2015.
The crewed test would have been at the end of 2015.”
“So both flights are now a full year and a half later.” Ferguson confirmed.
“For the presidents [CCP] funding requests for the past few years of roughly about $800 million, they [Congress] only approved about half. It was significantly less than the request.”
<snip>
= new reply since forum marked as read
