CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- NASA's oldest shuttle orbiter might be mothballed as part of an agency bid to deal with a projected budget shortfall of about $800 million over the next six years, officials said Thursday.
Exactly three months after NASA celebrated the 20th anniversary of Columbia's maiden voyage, officials said the expectation of rising costs within the shuttle program might prompt managers to put the ship in storage after two scheduled missions next year.
The $2 billion orbiter would be kept in ready-to-be-reactivated form, a move that would enable the agency to press the ship back into service if need be for future voyages.
"It's on the table. It's an option," said Dwayne Brown, a spokesman for the agency's headquarters office in Washington, D.C. "And we'll see what happens."
A recent NASA analysis showed that the shuttle program will face increased labor and energy costs between the years 2002 and 2007. Costs for periodic shuttle overhauls are expected to rise during that time frame, and so are the costs of retaining critically skilled workers.
Placing Columbia in storage is one option being considered as a countermeasure to the anticipated cost growth, officials said.
Others include scaling back, delaying or canceling planned shuttle upgrades, such as the development of advanced auxiliary power units for the agency's $8 billion shuttle fleet, which also includes shuttles Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour.The closure of NASA shuttle test facilities is yet another option. But officials said any cuts will be aimed at avoiding layoffs in a shuttle work force that was halved during the 1990s - a move that since has been derided by independent safety panels.
Columbia, meanwhile, has a long and storied history. First launched in 1981 on the agency's inaugural shuttle flight, the ship now has 26 missions to its credit and has spent 274 days in space. Total miles traveled: 115,066,632 miles (184,106,611 kilometers).
The veteran orbiter, however, is the only NASA shuttle that is not equipped to dock with the International Space Station. In fact, the 90-ton shuttle is too hefty to carry heavy cargoes up to the station as part of the ongoing $60 billion outpost construction project.
At the same time, only two firm flights are now booked on Columbia: a Hubble Space Telescope repair mission early next year and a science research sortie next May.
A planned orbital test flight of a prototype crew rescue vehicle for the international station recently was dropped from NASA plans, and efforts to secure other flights for Columbia so far have been unsuccessful.
NASA and Pentagon officials have discussed the possibility of flying military payloads aboard Columbia, but those negotiations have yet to yield firm bookings.
A 1986 presidential directive effectively bars Columbia -- or any other shuttle -- from carrying commercial payloads as primary cargoes.
Brown and other NASA and shuttle contractor officials, meanwhile, say no firm decision on Columbia's future is expected in the near-term. And they also note that the idea of retiring Columbia has come up in the past only to be rejected.
"It's only an option," Brown said. "It's not a done deal by any means."
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