Space Shuttle: April 2009 Archives

A much pilloried US institution the workings of Congress seem, to an outsider, to have become more popularised in recent years by the prism of television satire, than any actions by the politicians themselves but for Floridians political self-interest may have just saved thousands of locals from unemplyment

Florida Today is reporting that a budget resolution to be voted on this week might add $2.5 billion to NASA's funding to keep Shuttle going for another year

And the newspaper rightly points out that the agency's post-Columbia flight rate has been about three [Shuttle missions] per year, since the post-Columbia disaster return to flight and there are nine to go, including the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer mission added by the 2008 NASA authorisation act

Hello calendar year 2011? 

credit NASA / caption: On 16 November 1982 Columbia approaches Edwards AFB bringing to an end STS-5

This story by space.com focuses on the prospects of US astronauts flying on China's Shenzhou spacecraft but what is more important in Hyperbola's opinion is the fact that president Barack Obama's science advisor "underscored," according to space.com, the fact that it is the Obama administration's "intention" to retire Shuttle in 2010

but it gets worse...

NASA needs to increase its annual average funding by $5 billion to almost $24 billion for the next decade to achieve its 2020 Moon and International Space Station (ISS) goals and be able to fly the Space Shuttles to 2015

The $5 billion prediction is from the NASA authorisation act 2008 mandated US Congressional Budget Office's (CBO) analysis of NASA's forecasted budgets and its past programmes' cost performance. The $5 billion figure is from 50% cost overrun estimates based on a 2004 CBO analysis of 72 past NASA programmes

The CBO also found that with no changes to NASA's budget to achieve the 2020 Moon and ISS goals would mean cuts to the science and aeronautics budgets

In November 2008 a CBO analysis concluded that Orion-Ares' costs could spiral by $7 billion and its first manned flight may be two years later than planned in 2017

Thanks to Jeff Foust and his tweet for alerting me to this report

Hyperbola videos can be watched on its YouTube channel Flighthyperbola and the videos of channels Flighthyperbola subscribes too

credit JAXA / caption: Will JAXA's first H-IIB Transfer Vehicle make its September flight?

Perhaps its because the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency is planning a double first with the maiden launch of its new Mitsubishi Heavy Industries H-IIB rocket and flight of its H-IIB Transfer Vehicle (HTV) resupply spacecraft payload but NASA is already re-organising Space Shuttle payloads to ensure the new International Space Station crew of six that is stood up come May can be maintained

"A good deal of the current [Space Shuttle Endeavour STS-127] upmass manifest [is to] be replaced with food and other consumables", says NASA. This is to avoid problems that could occur for a six-person ISS crew due to of delays to JAXA's 1 September H-IIB Transfer Vehicle maiden flight and Space Shuttle Discovery's 6 August STS-128

credit: NASA / caption: Walter Cantrell is first on the left

Hyperbola has decided to throw a name into the ring for NASA administrator and that person is Walter Cantrell

For those of you saying "who!?" Cantrell was appointed as NASA's deputy chief engineer for the agency's Independent Technical Authority in 2004 by then administrator Sean O'Keefe

Hyperbola's choice is driven by a number of factors, familiarity with NASA, experience of managing large organisations, good knowledge of the Space Shuttle programme, and, as some have indicated that factions within Obama's team want a flag officer, Cantrell is a retired rear admiral, so he fits the bill