Last Ditch Attempts Made to Keep Space Shuttle Flying

Space shuttle Atlantis lands on runway 33 at NASA Kennedy Space Center's Shuttle Landing Facility concluding the STS-129 mission. Photo credit: NASA Jack Pfaller

A couple of items about efforts to keep the space shuttle fleet flying beyond the four scheduled ISS missions the program has left. AFP reports that it is possible but would be very costly:

The US space shuttle fleet can continue flying beyond NASA’s September 30 deadline if the money is made available to keep it going, a US space agency official told reporters Tuesday.

“I think the real issue that the agency and the nation has to address is the expense,” said Space Shuttle Program Manager John Shannon, noting the shuttle fleet costs the National Aeronautics and Space Administration 200 million dollars per month to maintain it in working condition.

“Where that money comes from is the big question,” he added….

Taking up her colleagues’ concerns, Republican Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison last week presented a bill calling for extending the shuttle program beyond its termination deadline.

Meanwhile. Florida Today reports that NASA is studying the issue but that the preliminary results don’t look very good:

NASA is conducting an internal study to determine whether shuttle supply lines could be restarted if Congress directs the agency to keep its three-orbiter fleet flying.

The manufacturing of new external tanks would take two years, likely resulting in a gap between the last scheduled shuttle mission in September and additional flights.

Shuttle systems largely have been recertified to fly beyond 2010, so the biggest question is money, a NASA official said Tuesday.

“From a personal standpoint, I just think it’s amazing that we’re headed down a path where we’re not going to have any vehicles at all to launch from the Kennedy Space Center for an extended period of time. To give up all the lessons learned, the blood, sweat and tears that we’ve expended to get the space shuttle to the point where it is right now, where it’s performing so magnificently,” said NASA shuttle program manager John Shannon.

The Obama Administration and NASA are caught in a bind as a result of decisions made by the previous government. The cost of continuing to fly shuttles would eat into funds required to replace it.  That could become a self-perpetuating cycle where the new program will be delayed while the space agency will keeps flying an increasingly costly and aging system. There are not a lot of good options here.