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Congressional plan to extend shuttle flights deemed dangerous |
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Written by Derek Kessler on
Tuesday, 15 April 2008
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 US Representatives Dave Weldon and Tom Feeney, both Republicans from Florida, have proposed a plan to provide NASA with enough money to continue flying the space shuttle fleet until the replacement Constellation Program is ready. The proposal would permit NASA to fly personnel and cargo to the International Space Station without having to rely on Russia, as well as preventing many of the 6400 job cuts projected to coincide with the cessation of shuttle flights.
Both independent safety experts and some inside NASA believe that it would be dangerous to continue flying the shuttles after the 2010 retirement deadline. Weldon, Feeney, and others fear that the job losses and international reliance will be detrimental towards NASA, national security, and the economy. The Congressmen have proposed an additional $2 billion in yearly funding to pay for two additional shuttle flights a year and to accelerate the development of the Constellation Program.
Problem is, with the remaining three shuttles due to become museum pieces in the next few years, the support system for the shuttle fleet is already beginning to shut down. Production lines and parts suppliers have already stopped making some critical replacement parts and vendors have already moved on to other businesses and NASA programs. Many parts, including landing gear tires and fuel valves are manufactured by private companies.
Additionally, the shuttle program right now costs NASA approximately $5 billion annually. After the retirement, those funds will be directed towards the development of the Ares rockets and Orion CEV systems for Constellation. Continuing to fly the shuttles would prevent the funneling of those funds and likely would push back the projected 2015 online date for Constellation.
That’s not to mention the safety aspects of it all. While it won’t become any more dangerous to fly the shuttle after 2010 (apart from the current projected lack of spare parts), it is still intrinsically hazardous to fly the shuttles, due to the risk of debris damaging the shuttle’s heat shield. Such debris, which falls off the external fuel tank during launch, punctured the heat shield of the space shuttle Columbia in 2003, resulting in the loss of the craft and its seven-member crew. The loss of Columbia prompted US President George W. Bush to order the shuttle fleet retired by 2010.
This is not the first time that Rep. Weldon has tried to keep the shuttles flying. In December of last year, he proposed an additional $1 billion annually to the same goal. The extra funding was struck from the 2009 US Federal Budget.
Chairman of the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, retired Navy Adm. Joe Dyer, compared the desire to continue flying the shuttle to the decision of whether to keep repairing an old car or to buy a new one. He, and the rest of the independent panel agree that NASA needs new spacecraft. The space shuttle fleet first entered orbital service in 1981, 27 years ago.
NASA has eleven more space shuttle flights on its schedule through the end of 2010. Ten of those will be construction and supply missions to the ISS, the other will be a final servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. The shuttles have visited the ISS twenty five times and Hubble four times, not including the April 1990 mission where the orbital telescope was launched.
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