The impending retirement of NASA's shuttle fleet presents one of the most significant logistical challenges the nation's space agency ever has faced, according to a new report by the NASA Office of Inspector General."The shuttle program is spread across hundreds of locations, occupies over 654 facilities and involves more than 1.2 million line items of personal property with a total equipment acquisition value exceeding $12 billion," NASA Inspector General Paul Martin wrote in a Nov. 14 letter to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. "The OIG is currently examining NASA's transition and retirement efforts for the shuttle program given the significance and magnitude of this effort."
The report to Bolden is required by the Reports Consolidation Act of 2000 and covers the top management and performance challenges currently facing the agency. Check out the report HERE.
Among the top challenges: the transition to commercial cargo and crew transportation to the International Space Station. Check out our Florida Today report on the transition HERE.
3 comments:
Forget it. It's not going to happen. When we come to realize this commercial avenue is crap, we're going to enter into some kind of strangling partnership with Russia that they will haul our people and cargo to space. They know this and are drooling waiting for the shuttle to be terminated. Then they pounce. How soon after STS-135 will they raise the price of each seat to send our people up? Very soon. Does NASA think we're that stupid, or are THEY they ones that are stupid?
Don't listen to the nay sayers, NASA. Your mission IS possible.
Can you say, "no vision for the future" ? Our new president sees NASA as a social experiment and their budget as a source of revenue for party loyalists. The government doesn't do many things right, but the enormous challenge of a space program is one item that requires their full support. So what do we get instead ? A bunch of rookies living off the government dole and occasionally getting around to launching an empty matchbox.
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