Shuttle program extension?

Thankfully both McCain and Obama have sent a letter to the
administration and Dr. Griffin to put the decision on hold to retire
the shuttle for 1 year... why... because everyone
can see the "coolness" developing. Its just silly to think that if
we have a direct conflict with Russia that they will continue the
space relationship with NASA beyond what is necessary. This
is especially true if sanctions occur. Which is unlikely, unless the
Russians invade the rest of Georgia, which is possible. Depending
on how much Putin is feeling his cheerios.

So Shuttle should continue to be made available to the USA and our
European and Japanese partners so we don't have a repeat Skylab
experience and watch the ISS drop out of the sky and burn into
a million pieces while the press destroys NASA for the failure of ISS.
NASA can't and won't let this happen, if Orion is put on hold for 5
years oh well, welcome to the real world of geopolitics, the space
programs very familiar and old hunting ground.

This will definitely probably stop Atlantis from being mothballed.

As a bonus this will give time to work out Orion and Ares 5 problems
that may not have been able to occur before the current time table.
As for the facilities if necessary Launch Pad C could always be built.
Why not, all the blueprints are in the vault aren't they? Don't
answer that last question. Its just something that's possible as all
things are like just retooling the existing Apollo base design and
redoing the electronics. Welcome back... to ideas that are proven.

Jonathan

On Sun, 31 Aug 2008 08:46:57 GMT, "Brian Gaff"
wrote:

Hang on a moment, I seem to recall that Mike Griffin did in fact say a long
time ago that there was no fundamental reason why it could not fly, except
that at some point the tooling for tanks etc, and the modification to the
pads for the next craft may mean that some decision were to be made on this,
it would have to be fairly fast.

In my view, its the apparent disagreement with Russia over policies on the
ground etc, which may have made this a higher priority. After all, you can
hardly fly Americans on Soyuz, if you are daggers drawn over policies in
Eastern Europe.

From over here, I cannot see why the US seems to be going out of its way to
annoy Russia, if the boot, so to speak was on the other foot regarding
missile bases and for that matter, a neighbouring country threatening
etchic Americans (OK no such thing) I'm sure the response would have been
very similar.

Anyway, I think I said back in the start, that they may wish to fly longer.
The bottom line really is the bottom line though, and that is will it be
funded as well as Orion, or is the return to the moon etc, going to be
quietly forgotten?

The are old and someone needs to make a long term decision not overturn by
any administration coming up in a few years.

Brian