Possibility of Extending Shuttle Missions to 2015?
“We want to focus on helping bridge the gap of US vehicles traveling to the ISS (International Space Station) as efficiently as possible,” wrote John Coggeshall, manager of manifest and schedules at Johnson Space Center in Houston, in the e-mail sent Wednesday.
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With the “on-and-off” relationship between Russia and the United States a continuous rocky path, Russia’s Vladimir Putin last fall accused Western countries of “poking their snotty noses” in the parliamentary elections campaigns, with this political team becoming even more strained as the Georgia issue comes into play. Earlier, Putin had basically compared the United States to Nazi Germany “before saying American actions during the Vietnam War were worse than the repressions of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin”.
Of course, Russsia’s new President Dmitry Medvedeve is accused as being a Prime Minister Putin “political puppet” by Americans, while Russians applauding him as a worthy successor. This all comes out in the wash with Georgia’s attack on South Ossetia, with Medvedev (with a 80% approval rating from his own people) playing the dominant role in the scenerio instead of the usual Putinish’ methods. And many have forgotten that prior to the situation with Georgia, Russia gave the United States the most help in fighting global terrorism as any other country. Yet now Russia is moving—Russian is on a role—and Russian knows it—without us.
But most people in politics realize that the ’sweetened’ relationship between the United States and Russia ended in 1999—the year when NATO bombed Yugoslavia, over the province of Kosovo. Of course, when George W. Bush expelled 50 Russian diplomats from Washington for “spying” and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld refused to meet the Russian defense minister on the sidelines of a NATO conference…I would have to ask…what do they owe us?
In the middle of all of these shadowy politics, steps right in—the shuttle launching program–this is ending in 2010. NASA, meanwhile, is thinking out of “their other mind” that NASA and Russia’s Space Agency should be able to work out some kind of peaceful settlement for five years where they can transport our astronauts to the International Space Station. Yeah, right.
What is making it all worse is the NASA announcement regarding delay of the Orion spacecraft’s next-generation launching, due to inadequate funding and technical issues. This leaves MORE than the original five-year gap between the retirement of the shuttles in 2010 and the Orion debut in 2015. I would say we may be in a “pickle”. So it comes to NO surprise to anyone that the United States and NASA may need to appraise a few things—Russia—Russia– and our own financial situation regarding the NASA shuttle fleet. Other than Nebraska’s Ben Nelson, who has questioned the thinking of our government for using Russia all along.
This entry was posted on Friday, August 29th, 2008 at 12:57 pm and is filed under Space Agency News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
