Re: AW&ST Reporting NASA Proposing Early Shut Down of Shuttle Flights

On Sep 16, 1:55 pm, "hall...@xxxxxxx" <hall...@xxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sep 14, 8:54?pm, "Jorge R. Frank" <jrfr...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:





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

These are the key paragraphs. The objective here is not to end the
program early - any savings through early termination is gravy - but to
increase the margin in the schedule to ensure the full manifest can be
completed by the deadline.

theres no way the program will end on any schedule till we have
another accident.

theres no enough time to launch the remaining flights so you make it
worse? compressing it futher?

just one tech trouble that causes a safety stand down will get the
schedule tossed in the garbage.

flights will end in 2014 unless theres another accident

There will likely be another accident or perhaps via some other R&D
ABL or SBL hit that'll cause the demise of a given shuttle. With so
much that could go wrong, such as impacting so much as an empty beer
can of space debris, is why those manned shuttle missions are going to
become a thing of the past, at least until a robust version of a
mostly titanium and composite bssalt craft can replace our extremely
old and frail shuttle craft.
- Brad Guth -

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