NYT: NASA Starts Planning to Retire Space Shuttle

NASA Starts Planning to Retire Space Shuttle
By WARREN E. LEARY

Published: April 2, 2005


WASHINGTON, April 1 - Even as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration prepares to resume flights of the space shuttle, the agency has begun forming detailed plans to retire the spacecraft in five years, if not before, a top NASA official said on Friday.

The official, Michael Kostelnik, the agency's deputy associate administrator for the shuttle and the International Space Station programs, said he had established a special group within his office to deal with retiring the shuttle. Agency leaders decided to create a separate entity to deal with shuttle retirement issues so there would be no conflict of interest with the flight program, Mr. Kostelnik said in a telephone briefing with reporters.

Within a year or so, Mr. Kostelnik said, NASA will have to start the shuttle retirement process in earnest, moving toward canceling contracts for shuttle-related supplies, decommissioning some sites and redirecting or eliminating some of the work force....

***

It would be premature to end shuttle activities until NASA determines how many more shuttle flights are needed to complete the space station and how many flights can be made each year before the planned end of the program in 2010, Mr. Kostelnik said.

As part of President Bush's vision for NASA that he announced last year, the shuttle is to resume flying until 2010, when it is scheduled to complete the station, then be retired. The plan also calls for the United States to stop using the station by 2017 and to redirect resources from both programs to new space vehicles for exploring the Moon and Mars....


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/02/science/02nasa.html

"All major government program funding to be diverted to the bloody, sucking money pit called the war in Iraq."

that will radically change any ideas do we

immediately above the Earth's atmosphere.

First they're going to deorbit the verdammt Hubble, THEN they're going to mothball the shuttle??!??!??

The mf'ing unbelievable bastards. :grr:

And probably drill for oil. Using Halliburton rigs. I'm not kidding, I think I read somewhere that Halliburton had already submitted plans for Martian drilling rigs.

Is a 'fossil fuel' .... derived from the decomposed carcasses of dead biological organisms .....

Unless I am seriously mistaken: no such things have ever existed on Mars ...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A21186-2004Jan15¬Found=true


Industry Hopes Soar With Space Plan
Energy and Aerospace Firms Have Long Lobbied NASA

President Bush emphasized American ingenuity, international cooperation and human destiny when he announced his new space policy this week, but the plan also reflected long-held ambitions of the U.S. aerospace and energy industries.

<snip>

As an example of private industry's hunger for a Mars mission, Steve Streich, a veteran Halliburton scientific adviser, was among the authors of an article in Oil & Gas Journal in 2000 titled "Drilling Technology for Mars Research Useful for Oil, Gas Industries." The article called a Mars exploration program "an unprecedented opportunity for both investigating the possibility of life on Mars and for improving our abilities to support oil and gas demands on Earth," because technology developed for the mission could be used on this planet.

<snip>

Halliburton's interest in Mars was first pointed out yesterday by the Progress Report, a daily publication of the liberal Center for American Progress. Administration officials scoffed at the idea that Halliburton had anything to do with the development of the space policy, which was headed by Bush's domestic policy adviser, Margaret Spellings, and Stephen Hadley, the deputy national security adviser. Another administration official said Cheney did not take a lead role in the interagency work on the space policy but gauged support on Capitol Hill and served in an advisory capacity.

An industry official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the oil and gas industry, including Halliburton, would benefit considerably from technology that was developed for drilling on Mars, including the tools, the miniaturization, the drilling mechanism, the robotic systems and the control systems.

How can you compare the Hubble with that flying lemon? The shuttle was designed to ferry equipment and personnel to the space station, which is another pointless piece of space hardware.

For the cost of the shuttle and the space station, there could have been three or four manned missions to mars, or countless exciting and groundbreaking unmanned missions to the outer planets.

Instead NASA has an untrustworthy, hyper-expensive shuttle that basically supplies a hyper-expensive, untrustworthy space station that vibrates too much for real science to be performed on it.

Bleh!

everyday this maladmin does something that just makes me :puke:

So in 5 years, no more shuttle. Are we back to putting astronauts in space with rockets? Are we outsourcing to the Russians? Maybe no more manned flights for a few years? What's the plan?

:tinfoilhat:

In exchange, they'll provide us with medicine, food, transportation, and oh yeah, they reserve the right to use us for *interesting* experiments.

Straight outta Gene Roddenberry's Earth: Final Conflict.

I need a drink.

Dither for decades about developing a successor to the Space Shuttle. Build a space station in conjunction with other nations, but plan to lose use of it because there will be no vehicle to go to it. Now, claim to plan to go sailing off into the cosmos, while losing the ability to go to a location only 150 miles away. What idiots!

They must be drawing up plans for its successor, if they haven't already picked one.

hmm...

for contractors to bid on. Supposed to be a smaller space plane. But the specifications are such that a capsule launched on something like a Delta will work. This is actually what NASA is likely to do: a simple space capsule. Back to the future. Space planes that glide to a landing are too complex to design in the fairly short time frame available before the shuttle is retired (2010). All the capsule needs to do is carry several astronauts to the space station. The shuttle will be used to complete construction of the station before it's retired. If this dismays you, welcome to the club.

x(

that they have at least managed to get the necessary military satellites in position?

Read Robert Park, Voodoo Science, concerning the shuttle, space station and NASA. Basically: The shuttle and the station are hugely expensive pork-barrel projects that produce zero science. What NASA does well are robotic probes: the Mars rovers, Cassini. These have produced tremendous amounts of science, many exciting discoveries.