Re: Nasa calling it quits!!!!!
Back to the original posters statements there is a very good reason to use commercial developers in the manner they are being utilized under the COTS program. The entire COTS program, according to NASA Assistant Director Lori Garver, is less then 10% of NASA's annual budget. Under the program the developers are partially funded by NASA and are required to supply a majority of their development costs by their own initiative. The program works this way because if they do not show significant milestone achievments they are funded at a lower rate in the next round of funding. Their is a finite amount of money that the program has to offer and if you want NASA money you better show progress.
The reason the COTS program is better then the old way of doing things is simply because it is cheaper. NASA engineers came up with a basic blueprint for the shuttle designs. Essentially NASA said "this is what we want, build it." That's what the prime contractor did. Cost was not an object to the prime, results were. There wasn't any incentive to achieve faster or cheaper. That's why there was a documentary before STS-1 called "Space Shuttle, the $14 billion dollar question" which detailed the cost and deadline over runs of the STS program.
NASA's budget is a scant $18 billion this fiscal year. In my opinion it should be doubled. The problem with that? No money. We as a country have bigger fish to fry. Consider also that the un-funded wars while we were still in Iraq had a combined cost of about $10 billion a month. NASA spends 100% of it's budget allotment. That puts a lot of people to work.
With regard to the retirement of the orbiters I have mixed feelings. I saw Discovery launch for STS-133. The wait was long and agonizing. My wife and I went in November 2010. It was delay after delay after delay from one technical issue with the orbiter after another. Then a weather delay. The following day when she would have gone there was an issue with a hydrogen leak at the fill/vent attachment. The same issue that forced us to miss the launch of Endeavor STS-127. Then during the post scrub inspections there was a fault found on the EFT where foam was cracked at the intertank structure. That caused a several month delay while a plan was formulated and then executed. I saw her fly, my first and only launch despite several attempts. Regrettably I saw her alone as my wife could not get the time off of work.
The Augustine commission report (
http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/396093main_HSF_Cmte_FinalReport.pdf ) had an option (2B I believe) that would have extended the operational life of the STS program until 2015 and the ISS to 2020. I can't find the chart but I've read the report cover to cover at least twice. That strategy would have flown the STS at a minimum flight rate which would be 2 launches per year for the entire fleet. In my opinion that option should have been implemented with Discovery being retired immediately and Endeavor and Atlantis only being used. There is no other vehicle with the lift capacity of the STS and with two flights per year it would not eliminate the need for Russian, European, or Japanese participation but it would have made the recent delays in the Russian space program a lesser issue than it was.
The orbiters also were decommisioned when they were because the facility that built the EFT's in Michoud Louisiana had been closed and it would have cost a significant amount of a non-existant budget to reopen the plant and begin making new tanks. The tank that flew on the last mission, STS-135, was a spare tank that was damaged during hurricane Katrina and was repaired and kept as a spare. If not for that tank it would have ended with STS-134.
Am I passionate about this? Yes I am!
