NASA administrator Mike Griffin has stated his confidence in returning the Shuttle to flight next year, despite concerns over the financial status of the agency\u2019s budget over the coming years. <\/p>\n
The NASA head was in Washington DC yesterday to testify in front of the House Science Committee.\n<\/p>\n
At the hearing, Griffin spoke about the higher than expected costs involved with the final stage of the Shuttle program \u2013 and the drive to the opening of NASA\u2019s next phase of operations with the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV).<\/p>\n Around $5 billion extra is required to conduct and conclude operations with the Shuttle on a 19 flight manifest \u2013 18 to the ISS (International Space Station) and one mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope. NASA will have to cut projects and costs to meet the shortfall with runs through to 2010.<\/font><\/p>\n The victims of the shortfall are expected to come from all reaches of the NASA empire, with a large cull of ISS staff at the Kennedy Space Center already in process. The 19 flight manifest may also be reduced, as well as a potential delay in the timeline for the CEV to be constructed, tested and made operational. However, no decisions on \u2018what and when\u2019 have been made public at this time. <\/font><\/p>\n A note of encouragement was given on the status of the May, 2006 target launch date of Shuttle Discovery, as NASA aims to return the fleet back to full operations.<\/font><\/p>\n STS-121 is classed as a test flight, with the hope that lingering concerns over the External Tank (ET) foam shedding problems have finally been solved. The only problem being the status of the factory where work is carried out on the ETs \u2013 the Michoud Assembly Facility (MAF) in Hurricane Katrina-hit New Orleans.<\/font><\/p>\n \u2018I\u2019m confident of our technical ability to get the Shuttle to return to flight next year,\u2019 said Griffin. \u2018(But) I\u2019m concerned of longer term consequences due to the hurricane over the next several years.\u2019<\/font><\/p>\n Griffin was referring to MAF\u2019s workforce, which was hit the hardest during Katrina\u2019s rampage through the Gulf region of the US, by ways of housing, transportation links and personal logistics. <\/font><\/p>\n Technology News (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});<\/p>\n MAF isn\u2019t expected to be back at full staffing until Christmas time \u2013 with two ETs (namely ET-119 and ET-120) required back at the Kennedy Space Center in good time to support STS-121. Griffin was also thinking ahead to the full flight manifest, which MAF will have to support by way of supplying enough ETs to support the launch dates NASA wishes to aim for.<\/font><\/p>\n \u2018There is a lot of uncertainty about whether or not we will have an adequate workforce to return to Michoud,\u2019 he added. \u2018NASA\u2019s external tank production capability depends on that workforce as we still need several of those tanks to achieve NASA\u2019s desired 19 flights, between now and the end of September 2010.\u2019<\/font><\/p>\n However, a MAF source noted that Griffin\u2019s comments appeared \u2018cautious\u2019 \u2013 especially in light of this week\u2019s positive news on the state of operations at MAF.<\/font><\/p>\n \u2018We have multiple (over 10) ETs are various stages of production,\u2019 he said. \u2018Even with the reduced workforce we have not lost critical hardware or critical staff in areas that would compromise supporting 19 flights on the timeline currently presented.\u2019<\/font><\/p>\n While the committee chairing the hearing acknowledged Griffin was making hard direction calls on behalf of the agency, he\u2019ll need to continue in that vain by way of painful decisions. 19 flights of the Shuttle may now appear optimistic at best. <\/font><\/p>\n He added: \u2018We are not focusing solely on the exact number of shuttle flights to achieve the goal of assembling the station and providing adequate logistics before commercial ISS cargo capabilities or the CEV come on line.\u2019<\/font><\/p>\n To view links and chat about Griffin\u2019s answers during the hearing, visit the specific thread allocated to this story: NASA administrator Mike Griffin has stated his confidence in returning the Shuttle to flight next year, despite concerns over the financial status of the agency\u2019s budget over the coming years. The NASA head was in Washington DC yesterday to testify in front of the House Science Committee. At the hearing, Griffin spoke about the higher […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42242"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42242\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
<\/em><\/font>http:\/\/forum.nasaspaceflight.com\/forums\/thread-view.asp?tid=718&start=1<\/em><\/font><\/font><\/u><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"