Cost of Returning Shuttle To Flight Keeps Going Up


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	Cost of Returning Shuttle To Flight Keeps Going Up By Brian Berger Space News Staff Writer posted: 07:15 pm ET 16 July 2004

WASHINGTON -- NASA is anticipating sharply higher bills for preparing its three remaining space shuttle orbiters to fly again in 2005.

NASA estimated in February that it would spend $265 million in 2004 and $238 million in 2005 on safety improvements associated with returning its shuttle fleet to flight status next spring. NASA now estimates that it will spend $450 million on return to flight activities this year and $350 million to $650 million in 2005.

NASA Comptroller Steve Isakowitz said NASA's $3.9 billion shuttle budget can absorb the higher return to flight expenses this year, but 2005 could be a problem even if the agency gets its full $4.3 billion it has requested for the space shuttle program.

Isakowitz said the higher than expected return to flight costs make it "imperative" that Congress approve NASA's full $16.2 billion request for 2005. NASA's request represents a 5.6 percent increase over the agency's 2004 budget making it a tough sell on Capitol Hill during a year when most other federal agencies are being held to increases of 3 percent or less.

The space shuttle and international space station programs would get about 85 percent of that raise, with the rest going toward the agency's new space exploration efforts.

Michael Kostelnik, NASA's deputy associate administrator for the space shuttle and space station programs, attributed the larger than expected return to flight bills to an evolving understanding of what all NASA would have to do to satisfy the recommendations of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board and the Stafford Covey Return to Flight Task Group.

"It's not that we couldn't estimate the cost, we couldn't estimate the content," Kostelnik told reporters July 16. For example, he said, when NASA estimated its return to flight cost in February, it did not know that it would be pulling and refurbishing the rudder speed brakes on each orbiter. NASA has also since decided to make more changes to the shuttle's foam covered external tanks than previously believed necessary.