More Shuttle Flights? Just Send Money

I have to give Shannon credit for speaking his mind (and the truth) even though it contradicts Garver's policy.

I was never a big fan of continuing the Shuttle in the pre-February world, but that option is infinitely better than giving up US human spaceflight for the indefinite future.

The Shuttle program is being shuttered and then SURPRISE!! - If we have more money we can keep Shuttle flying? Mr. Shannon is right - Shuttle has matured - SO let's use it to move forward with new systems. Who's fault is it anyway we'll be without a US heavy lift capability for ?? years. NASA? Congress? Contractor lobbists? Stop defending shuttle program and let it pass away peacefully. Let's all move on.

I have to give Shannon credit for speaking his mind (and the truth) even though it contradicts Garver's policy.
First, calling it Garver's plan is your crackpot theory. Until you have facts to back that up, it's Obama's plan.
Second, continuing STS flights beyond 2010 only contradicts Griffin's plan -- which was phasing out STS to free up money for CxP. Remember?

I was never a big fan of continuing the Shuttle in the pre-February world, but that option is infinitely better than giving up US human spaceflight for the indefinite future.
The intent behind the Obama proposal is not indefinite postponement of HSF, but the redirection from a single large centralized government-run program to multiple competing commercial programs with the government as a customer. Characterizing that as "giving up US human spaceflight for the indefinite future" is at best premature --- a prediction, not a fact.

Has anyone in these Congressional hearing posed the question asking if the ISS can be resupplied adequately with only the Progress, ATV and HTV? Everybody is focusing on the fact that we are losing human launch capability but ignoring the fact that the U.S. station resupply as is now planned is dependent on 2 vehicles from SpaceX and Orbital which have not flown yet. Can the Russians, Europeans, and Japanese increase the number of cargo vessels they produce for U.S. transport and what will the cost be?

We already know that the cost of human spaceflight starts at $51 million per seat for a couple years and the Russians have already made noise that this is to be going up now that they have a monopoly.

If we truly intend to utilize the ISS I think that it is a MAJOR mistake to cancel the shuttle before the U.S. has functioning replacements for both cargo and crew. Especially since this was the intended use for the Space Shuttles. While I understand that the Shuttle can never be as safe as a capsule with a launch escape system I think that the new NASA attitude to Space Shuttle operations has made flying it much safer than at any time in it's history.

And what to do with contracts with SpaceX,Orbital,ATV,HTV and Soyez?Only six seats are needed a year.Give astronauts joy rides and carry no cargo.Laughable.Sorry.

"Characterizing that as "giving up US human spaceflight for the indefinite future" is at best premature --- a prediction, not a fact."

Yes, it IS a fact. "Indefinite" = "undefined". There was NO DEFINITION of when human spaceflight would resume under the Obama/OMB budget. This is it's greatest failing and lends credence to the preported desire of OMB to end human spaceflight completely.

Isn't this article completely wrong? Sure some additional money would keep the program running - but only until the available parts run out!

This article seems to imply that we can keep the shuttles flying indefinitely, only more cash is needed.

Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't NASA have only one additional external tank and one pair of SRBs left?

As far as I understand it, there is no problem here. Once the commercial vehicles are operating at an acceptable level of reliability and at an acceptable flight rate, the shuttle would retire to surrender its budget and, likely, at least some of its work-force, to the HLV and BEO projects. The commercial vehicles will have all the contracts that they need as a result.

FWIW, and somewhat OT: I wouldn't be surprised if we have mid-expedition partial crew rotation missions as well as just the contract for sending the expedition up and down. A 9-10 person expedition crew with the rotation at the 3 month mark has its own attractions on several levels, including possibly earning extra cash by flying up a Space Participant to sit looking out of the Cupola whilst the swap-over occurs.

To me, one of the more incomprehensible parts of both CxP and this new plan was the imposition of an arbritary deadline for shuttle retirement that utterly ignored the possibility of schedule slip with the replacement. Let's not retire the shuttle in favour of its replacement before there is a replacement. Run the shuttle until CRS is working, the decisions have been made on exactly how commercial crew will be run and work on the commercial crew taxis is well advanced. To do so before then is to leave the ISS project at the mercy of the whims of fate.

"This article seems to imply that we can keep the shuttles flying indefinitely, only more cash is needed.
Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't NASA have only one additional external tank and one pair of SRBs left?"

That is correct; there is one spare tank and SRB pair that were earmarked for a potential rescue mission for the last scheduled flight. (IOW, if they use that one for one more flight, there will be no rescue mission available.)

After that, it costs about $200M a month to keep the Shuttle launch workforce around, and it will take two years to get tank production restarted. (Those workers have all already been let go, and facilities conversion has already started, etc.)

IOW, it will cost $5B (24 * $200M), for which we get basically nothing, to fly shuttles after that last flight. I wonder which part of the NASA budget will be cannabilized to pay for that?

A lot has been made about John Shannon contradicting Lori Garver; Shannon addresses just this issue in a reply to a spacepolitics.com article. I can't link directly to his reply, but go to this link and search for "John Shannon":

http://www.spacepolitics.com/2010/03/10/hanging-on-to-the-shuttle/

In short, he says he didn't.

He also states that a significant Shuttle extension makes absolutely no sense unless a SD-HLV is also built; otherwise we're throwing money away. He also mentions that the $200M/month figure is not precise; his statement is that the first Shuttle flight of a year costs $3B, and all the following ones that year are free (in other words, fixed costs dominate his budget).

Only problem there is that ISS is at most a 6-person station(down from the original 12 as I recall). Also return missions every three months could ramp up costs considerably. Not to mention the question of rescue. I don't think there are sufficient docking ports for either 3-4 Soyuz craft or 2-3 Orbiters: certainly not simultaneously.

"He also mentions that the $200M/month figure is not precise; his statement is that the first Shuttle flight of a year costs $3B, and all the following ones that year are free (in other words, fixed costs dominate his budget)."

OK, so it's $250M per month, not $200M...

And I am somewhat dubious there is really zero incremental cost for each flight (if nothing else, how much does an ET cost), because otherwise NASA would likely be flying shuttles more often. Probably there is an incremental cost, just not out of his budget.

I was talking about using commercial crew vehicles or Soyuz. You would only need three at a time of Soyuz (ISS already has periods with three Soyuz & a Progress docked). With the US CCVs (all of which are designed for six-person rotation) you would need only two. One would be the lifeboat vehicle (there for the full six months) and the other would be the rotation vehicle, which might give up two crew seats (leaving you with a pilot & three crew for rotation) for more cargo up and downmass.

In terms of shuttle mid-expedition crew rotation... Well, they do that already, don't they? It would just be more of the same until shuttle retirement.

Any political issues aside, it is possible on an engineering basis so long as you move PMA3 to Tranquility Nadir. Yes, it would mean more flights but, IMHO at least, this is a good thing. It would allow the commercial providers to develop crew flight experience faster and possibly reduce costs due to economies of scale.