Space Forum / Space Flight / October 2003

   Oh, poop!  We could gen up a shuttle launch in a month, easily, and
I doubt that anyone else could do a lot better. We are choosing *not to*
until it's "fixed" but if the need arose it would be a tradeoff between
risk and reward. STS is a more-or-less functional system with some known
vunerabilities.

 This came up after Challenger, too. There were several plans to launch
certain critical national defense payloads with minimal crews, and had
one or to dominos fallen differently, I have no doubt that they would
have been exercised.

   Brett

How long would it take for the United States to get a
shuttle up and running if necessary?

Do we know that China can put a man into space, and
bring him back, on short notice?

For strange values of "short notice", perhaps.

Russia builds Soyuz spacecraft one at a time; the next one *cannot* be made
ready much before April 2004.

Likewise, China has announced that the next Shenzhou will not be for
another year or two; it can safely be assumed that, this early in their
flight test program, they are still building spacecraft one at a time,
based on lessons learned from the previous flight.

If NASA *had to*, they could ready a shuttle for launch before either. Of
course, such a launch would have to forego all the post-Columbia safety
improvements that are now in work, but it is possible.