NASA would get an extra shuttle flight in 2011, under a key House panel vote Thursday.
The vote matched action that Senate panels already took, making the extra flight more likely. Funding for extending the program is budgeted at $1.6 billion.
The shuttle program is scheduled to retire after two final flights. But the House science committee approved an extra flight while voting on NASA policy legislation.
Rep. Suzanne Kosmas, D-New Smyrna Beach, proposed the shuttle flight as important to supply the International Space Station and to preserve the Kennedy Space Center.
The amendment was adopted by voice vote.
Reported by Bart Jansen of Gannett News Service in Washington, D.C.
Space news and analysis from Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral 
11 comments:
One additional space shuttle flight is not going to preserve KSC. The shuttle program needs to be extended until we have an alternative ready. Two missions a year...that would be good for the ISS and KSC.
One is just the beginning. Then another one. Next thing, it's 2012......New president, new NASA Administrator, New Space Vision, Constellation back ON. This will prevail because the people have spoken.
Don't know if you have tongue-in-cheek about what you said, but it would appear that if there are to be more flights past STS-135, it would have to be decided upon before the end Discovery's November mission...when I assume she's scheduled to begin the mothballing process.
Those shuttles are poorly designed, old, and fraught with danger, so why not retire them before they kill more people.
We should never have built such a piece of crap.... Why not start over, and design something a lot more sturdy, and more reliable. The Russian space shuttle (they copied part of our design, but improved upon it...) could be launched in a howling blizzard, while OUR space shuttle can't be launched on a cloudy day, because NASA is afraid of the wings getting MOISTURE on them !!
FANTASTIC NEWS.. its about time people listen to common sense.. one step at a time.. let the people that know the hardware and others between KSC and JSC build this and develope the missions.. been doing it for year now.. If fact I think it's time for NASA to downsise a bit.. alot of fat in their ranks...
Shuttle Derived Heavy Lift vehicles will do it all and go anywhere... We have been operating on the equivelent of 2001 funding for many years where other departments have been getting substantial buget increases, if we had been getting that type of budget, we would have alreasy had constellation flying today. lets not make the same mistakes this time.. fund the programs properly..
One more mission and refurbing a ET, plus continued SRB testing. Read between the lines, shuttle is being kept on life support till the political support get's all it's ducks in a row to defeat 0bamaSpace.
This extra flight would only be possible as there will be one external tank available and a Shuttle prepped for a possible rescue mission. So relatively cheap.
Further flights would need Michoud to resume tank production,
We all appreciate the efforts getting us the additional flight and a more speedy HLV development schedule, but the sentiment around KSC hasn't changed because even with those efforts, 1000 people get laid off 10/1 of this year, and 3500 more after the last flight. I remain steadfast -- the only way to avoid these layoffs, and more importantly the loss of American manned spaceflight on American rockets for the better part of a decade, is to extend Shuttle. The President called Shuttle termination a Bush decision. This is weakness at the very top. There is only one way to keep America #1 in space, and being able to inspire the youth of today to pursue technical education and careers, and that is to extend Shuttle until the replacement system is up and flying reliably.
One thing you learn in this business is that redundancy is mandatory. We'll have no redundant manned access to ISS after Shuttle. It's crazy to rely on one system, regardless of the sponsoring agency or country.
2 flights a year until we have a new actual launch date for a new manned carrier will be good for the ISS, the USA and the international manned space program.
Constellation was doomed, either now or later. If you add up the numbers in the Augustine Committee report, it would take at least $6 billion more to save ISS, get Constellation to the Moon anytime sooner than the 2030s, and revive all the technology development and scientific research that Constellation had already eaten. Since this was not going to happen, Constellation was never going to get us to the Moon. Even if it did, there was no money in the budget to do anything once we got there. The new plan opens up a new world of research, development, and commercial enterprise, and increases NASA’s budget by $1 billion per year. That’s at least 5,000 new jobs somewhere. We aerospace workers should be trying to land those new jobs.
NASA BUDGET CUTS WERE FINALLY A REAL EYE-OPENER TO REAPING WHAT WE SOWED.
Everyone would benefit if the shuttle was extended...except Obama and the Russians, of course. I hope this additional flight is the beginning of a true extension.
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