U.S. House
and Senate negotiators agreed Tuesday on a budget resolution that would
eliminate a hard deadline for the retirement of NASA's shuttle fleet and
provide $2.5 billion to fly in 2011.
Supporters say the
resolution - which is expected to be up for a final vote this week - could help
avert the type of schedule pressure that led to the 1986 Challenger and 2003 Columbia accidents.
It also could stave off an
estimated 3,500 job cuts at Kennedy Space Center in 2011 while minimizing a
five-year gap between the last shuttle mission and the first piloted flights of
next-generation
spacecraft.
But, ultimately, the budget
resolution is just a recommendation and not an actual funding decision.
"This budget is a
significant step towards maintaining safety, minimizing the
spaceflight gap, and preserving the highly skilled workforce at Kennedy
Space Center and throughout Florida," U.S. Rep. Suzanne Kosmas, D-New
Smyrna Beach, said in a statement.
"Kennedy Space Center
is an economic engine for our community and I will not stand idly by while
these jobs are at risk."
The Bush administration in
2004 directed NASA to complete the International Space Station and retire the
shuttle fleet by Sept. 30, 2010. The agency also was told to develop a new
piloted spaceship by 2014 and return American astronauts to the moon by 2020.
NASA's new Apollo-style
Orion spacecraft will not be ready to fly before March 2015. The U.S. plans
to rely on Russia to fly American astronauts to and from the station in the
interim. Legislators with ties to KSC - including U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson,
D-Orlando, and U.S. Rep. Bill Posey, R-Rockledge - have been lobbying to
eliminate the September 2010 deadline. It was set by the White House Office of
Management and Budget after Bush outlined a new national space policy in the
wake of the Columbia accident.
Nine more shuttle flights
are on NASA's schedule: eight to complete the station and a Hubble Space
Telescope servicing mission scheduled to launch May 11.
NASA's historical annual
shuttle flight rate is about four or five missions a year. But the agency's
post-Columbia flight rate has been about three per year. Some question whether
NASA can safely fly the nine remaining missions by the end of September 2010.
Accident investigators
cited schedule pressure as a contributing cause in both the Challenger and
Columbia catastrophes.
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