According to an internal email, NASA staff have been instructed to initiate a study into extending the operational lifetime of the Shuttle to bridge the 5-year gap between planned Shuttle retirement and Constellation commencement. In an apparent U-turn in the US space agency's policy, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin has ordered a feasibility study to assess [...]

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This closing statement raises the concern in my mind of financial delays in the Constellation program.

"World events and politics..."

Hmmmm... or maybe the fact that a lot of the new DOD spy sats are so big they NEED the Shuttle to launch them....

Would world events and politics please leave these poor people alone? They have suffered enough, and really need some love for Constellation.

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"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek
"Carl Sagan sent a message to ET,
Neil Armstrong walked in the Sea of Tranquility
Steve Squyers built Spirit and Opportunity
Dan Haylen upchucked in zero gravity." -Brent Simon, The Space Camp Song

We should view recent world events as an opportunity! Send a message to the Russians by bailing out of the ISS altogether!

It would free up $30-$40 billion USD for Constellation.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge" -- Charles Darwin

Wrong. We can't pull out of the ISS. Period. Paragraph. First of all, if we "gave" it to the Russians and they decided to kick the rest of the world off of it (easy, since they'd be the only ones capable of sending people up to it), they could quite quickly, turn it into an orbiting weapons platform.

Secondly, if everyone agreed to pull out of the ISS, there's no proceedure to safely deorbit it, so we'd no doubt have to spend $30 - $40 billion or more, making sure that it comes down safely, by dismantling it. (Can't let it come down intact, unless you want to evacuate an entire ocean region.)

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We want our children to go to the planets. Burt Rutan 6/21/04
Tuckers! Science! Automotive Oddities! Boycott Trek XI! Building my hot rod with the help of the intarwebs Those who would delay scientific progress for a little temporary prosperity shall have neither.

What Tuckerfan said. Besides, bailing out would be mean.

__________________
"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek
"Carl Sagan sent a message to ET,
Neil Armstrong walked in the Sea of Tranquility
Steve Squyers built Spirit and Opportunity
Dan Haylen upchucked in zero gravity." -Brent Simon, The Space Camp Song

That wouldn't be the first time they've tried manned orbiting weapons platforms (and that's not counting the cannon on the Almaz/Salyut-3 station).

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"How many times have you gone rooting through your junk drawer, muttering to yourself, 'where'd I put that gun?'"

IIRC, they've done a number of concept studies (not that US hasn't, I'm sure, but the Soviets/Russians seem to take it a bit farther than we do) besides those. They're also the only ones to officially carry a firearm into space, as part of the standard "survival kit" for the crews. NASA may very well do so (it does, after all, make a lot of sense for a survival kit to have a gun in it), but they're officially silent/denying the matter.

__________________
We want our children to go to the planets. Burt Rutan 6/21/04
Tuckers! Science! Automotive Oddities! Boycott Trek XI! Building my hot rod with the help of the intarwebs Those who would delay scientific progress for a little temporary prosperity shall have neither.

More likely stupid, a lot of investment done in the ISS, i don't think the Europens and the Russians will get a lot of troubles operating it, and maybe with new partners like China or India, so what the NASA will do when their modules were expelled due maintenace costs, or china's astronauts are occuping their modules, launch another SS for them?...good joke

Either way these are bad news for the Constellation, this decision is political, but this doesn't mean is unbased, they don't want to have any dependence of the Soyus to go to the ISS, or maybe they think the russians could boikot them... i seriously doubt it have something to do with spy satellites

My dear Tuckerfan! They couldn't do that! It would be a violation of the Outer Space Treaty!

I wish people would think of these things before they build!

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge" -- Charles Darwin

Great investment! Better than Worldcom!

Now you're making sense! If it's good for Constellation to bail out of the space shuttle, just think how much better it would be to bail out of the space station!

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge" -- Charles Darwin

Sometimes you have to stand up to the bullies in the playground. . . .

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge" -- Charles Darwin

ISS = international collab. NASA and the US Gov have said, repeatedly, that they want to have international collab on the return to the moon.

What chance do you think NASA has of ant future international collaboration if they leave their international partners on the ISS in the lurch by pulling out before completion. They'd be the unreliable guys that no one wants to get onboard with.

Your analysis of the ISS is overly simplified and very shortsighted

If there's a lesson to be learned from the ISS, it's that international partnerships aren't all that they're cracked up to be.

For one thing, the project can only progress as fast as the slowest partner. How long did we have to wait for Russia to deliver its crucial module?

Then there's the problem international politics.

It would be nice if we could set aside such nastiness.

Yet, here it rears its ugly head again. The US would not be contemplating extending the space shuttle were it not for the Russian adventure in Georgia.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge" -- Charles Darwin

How long had NASA spent (and indeed, how much had NASA spent) on the fore-runners to the ISS ( Freedom etc ). It took that Russian module to make the ISS possible. The USA was spending money, building nothing, and getting nowhere until the project became international. Yeah - the USA had to wait for Zvezda and Zarya...but not as long as it spent waiting to sort itself out first. It's Russia that has kept the ISS alive. Were it not for Soyuz and Progress - the Columbia accident would have meant the end of the space station. No nation can realistically maintain two unique means of manned orbital access - that colaboration means there were two - and that colaboration kept the station alive when NASA was floundering in the quagmire after the Columbia accident.

Doug

I'm with djellison. It's like a team of superheroes. Together, we can do much more than we ever could apart.

__________________
"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek
"Carl Sagan sent a message to ET,
Neil Armstrong walked in the Sea of Tranquility
Steve Squyers built Spirit and Opportunity
Dan Haylen upchucked in zero gravity." -Brent Simon, The Space Camp Song

And you think that this will stop them, how?

Maybe there simply wasn't money in the budget, but had to continue with the project due to Congressional mandates.

__________________
We want our children to go to the planets. Burt Rutan 6/21/04
Tuckers! Science! Automotive Oddities! Boycott Trek XI! Building my hot rod with the help of the intarwebs Those who would delay scientific progress for a little temporary prosperity shall have neither.