Space Forum / Shuttle / August 2008

If they do go for additional launches, they'd be silly _not_ to use the
additional payload capacity.  Pitty the Hab module's not flight ready.

"Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)" <mooregr_deleteth1s@greenms.com> wrote:

Much more likely it is a) pork to the Usual Suspects and b) election
year posturing for Floridians.  (Given the recent concerns over job
loss at KSC.)

Or until we lose another one.

D.

On Jun 26, 12:22 pm, "Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)"
<mooregr_deletet...@greenms.com> wrote:

Doesn't mean squat, since it is not an appropriation

I would say a lot less sure, maybe 10%. The Appropriations bills are
already drafted, are already working their way through committee, and
contain only $17.8 billion for NASA (as compared to $20.2 billion in the
Authorization bills, and $17.6 billion in the President's request).
That's assuming they even pass. David Obey, the Senate Appropriations
chairman, has pretty much said outright that only the DoD and DHS
appropriations bills will pass this year; the other agencies would be
funded at FY08 levels via continuing resolution.

My bet, we'll see people proposing that until Congress and the next
president figure out that the shuttle program costs $4B/year no matter
how many (or how few) times you fly it. It follows that 1-2 flights per
year makes no sense; you either terminate the shuttle completely or fly
it at the highest flight rate that can be safely sustained (with a fleet
of 3, probably 4-5/year).

The cost picture looks even worse if people start hand-wringing over
CAIB R9.2-1. In the scenario where the existing manifest is merely
stretched past the end of 2010 in order to complete ISS assembly, you
could make a reasonable case that the intent of the CAIB is still met
even without recertification since the *real* intent of the
recommendation was to force a decision on shuttle retirement, and the
relaxation of the deadline would relieve undue schedule pressure - which
was itself a CAIB recommendation. But in the scenario where ET
production is maintained and the shuttle continues to fly until the more
nebulous "when a replacement is ready", violating both the letter and
the spirit of the CAIB recommendation becomes more difficult to justify.
And recertification could potentially be quite expensive, and might
involve a grounding of its own.

Further, to fund development of a replacement, the only choices are 1)
Increase NASA's budget substantially, 2) Stretch out the development of
the replacement (thereby decreasing the annual cost but probably greatly
increasing the total cost), or 3) Terminate the shuttle on-time when ISS
is complete.

1) is not going to happen. The Authorization bill is an empty
election-year gesture. You want a cheap laugh, go compare the 2005
Authorization bill (which covered FY05-08) with the actual
Appropriations bills from those years. There's nothing that obligates a
Congress to actually appropriate all the funds it authorizes.

Worse, the mandates in the Authorization bill are still binding even if
Congress doesn't follow them up with appropriations. So if this bill
passes and mandates an AMS shuttle flight, then the FY10 (or FY11)
Appropriations bill doesn't fund it, NASA *still has to do it*. They
just have to take the funding from somewhere else within the agency not
already covered by an earmark.

The betting pool for where that funding will come from is now open.