Quoth Wes Carr: > Congress is pushing NASA to keep the shuttle flying till 2015, five > years past it's retirement date. Those idiots are going to get more > people killed, and if it happens the blame will fall on NASA and > not the politicians. Every shuttle launch takes funds away from the > Constellation Program, which is our only chance of going back to > the moon or Mars. We lost our momentum 35 years ago, and it's past > time to get it back.
Actually, wasn't the shuttle program _originally_ supposed to be retired some time in the 1990s? They orbiter airframes were originally certified as useable up to 100 flights each, but I'm pretty sure a lot of the other components had a shorter projected lifespan and that retirement was intended as several systems reached the point where rebuild/recertification would be an expensive proposition at a time when we should long since have passed into new craft. I'm skeptical of Constellation. So far, it seems to be mainly a pulpit for more expensive versions of existing capabilities (not all of them originated in the "public sector"). It's far from "the only chance," and I suspect that all things considered it's way down the list of "good chances."
