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NASA: $2,000,000,000 would be useful |
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Written by Derek Kessler on
Sunday, 18 November 2007
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 Speaking in front of a Senate panel, NASA Administrator Mike Griffin said that the development of the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle could be accelerated. Orion is currently on track to be ready for deployment by 2014, four years after the planned retirement of the space shuttle fleet. Griffin said that an additional $2 billion for development could get Orion into service a year earlier.
After the Columbia disaster of 2003, NASA and the US government decided to retire the space shuttle by 2010, during which time the remaining three shuttles will have to complete the International Space Station and perform a servicing mission to the aging Hubble Space Telescope. The shuttle's replacement, the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle, has been in development for the past few years.
In the meantime, NASA will be contracting $500 million in private launch companies to subsidize the development of commercial cargo and crew transportation systems to the ISS. NASA also will be paying Russia to perform launches to the space station, though Griffin did remind Congress that the only reason they can do so is because NASA was granted a temporary reprieve from the Iran-Syria Non-Proliferation Act, which restricts NASA's purchase of space station-related goods and services from Russia. If Congress does not renew the relief it authorized in 2005, NASA will not be able to purchase any rides from Russia after 2011.
If the US firms NASA has been investing in are not ready to fly after 2012 and Congress does not renew the reprieve, US astronauts will be grounded until Orion is capable of manned operations. Even though NASA has many supporters in the Senate, not all were pleased with Griffin's assessment of the need for Russian assistance. Senator Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) called NASA's reliance on Russia especially "perilous" in light of the quickly chilling relationship between Washington and Moscow. "Can anybody in America predict the geopolitics of Russia in 2012 particularly given what we see are the actions of Vladimir Putin right now?"
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