Space Forum / Shuttle / September 2007

"Early Shuttle Termination Eyed
Sep 11, 2007
By Craig Covault/Aviation Week & Space Technology

NASA is proposing to the White House Office of Management and Budget
(OMB) that the space shuttle program be terminated six months early,
in March 2010 instead of by Sept. 31, 2010, Shuttle Launch Director
Mike Leinbach says.

The Web site NASASpaceFlight.com first revealed the plan last week.
NASA's Office of Public Affairs labeled the report as incorrect.

But NASA Associate Administrator for Space Flight Bill Gerstenmaier
made a presentation to OMB about the early termination last week,
Leinbach tells Aviation Week. "We have been studying it for six
weeks," Leinbach says.

Rita Wilcoxon, director of launch vehicle processing at the Kennedy
Space Center, said that OMB reacted positively to the idea.

The plan would be part of the next NASA fiscal budget. If adopted, it
would call for a planning target of March 31, 2010 for termination of
the shuttle program, and would include the launch of the STS-131 and
STA-133 logistics missions to the International Space Station. Those
flights had earlier not been funded.

Under the plan, the March 2010 date would be NASA's termination target
for shuttle operations, providing margin against weather and technical
delays to ensure that NASA could make the Sept. 31 national target
date set out earlier by President Bush, Wilcoxon says.

NASA is not asking for any additional shuttle funding in the plan,
according to Wilcoxon. And extra funding left over in the budget from
an early shuttle termination would first go to pay for termination
costs and employee retirement plans, then into the Constellation
program.

An early termination would be achieved by beginning to bias the launch
dates of the remaining flights toward that target date. It also adds
use of the orbiter Atlantis two more times than planned and would add
margin to ensure NASA achieves unmanned Ares booster flight-tests as
early as possible.

The plan is to announce the new target by early October, Leinbach
believes."