Discovery is Home!

Discovery is home! Now What? Well for starters there will be 15 more flights until 2010 when the fleet will be retired. So we have 4 years to go and average 3 to 4 shuttle flights a year. Then the CEV will be readied by 2014. That means we will have about 3 years of non-manned flights by NASA. (2011-2014) My hope is private enterprise will take up the low-earth actives, which will let NASA to do the exploring of MOON and MARS.

I also hope the ISS will be more utilized as a stepping-stone to the Moon and Mars and beyond. Developing and using the space elevator technology will help in transporting crews and supplies without the need of a rocket to get to zero g orbit. Oh the possibilities are endless. I'll keep my fingers crossed!

From AP via PJ Media here:

Griffin noted that NASA faces 16 more shuttle flights to complete the space station and, hopefully, repair the popular Hubble Space Telescope. A decision is expected by fall on whether to send a shuttle to Hubble one final time, to extend the observatory's life.

NASA is up against a hard 2010 deadline for completing the space station. That's when the three remaining shuttles will be retired to make way for a new spaceship capable of carrying astronauts to the moon and eventually on to Mars.

"We don't have any slack. We have just enough shuttle flights left to do the job so we can't afford to mess up," Griffin said. "The team performed superbly systemwide (with Discovery) and what we have to do is exactly that same thing again from now until the end of 2010."

Complicating matters is that NASA faces a series of tremendously difficult assembly flights, beginning with Atlantis' upcoming mission to deliver and install a massive beam and set of solar wings. NASA is aiming for a liftoff as early as Aug. 27.

Shuttle program manager Wayne Hale said he wants just as much intense scrutiny _ and differing opinions among engineers _ for the next flight and all the ones after that.

A few weeks before Discovery's liftoff, NASA's chief engineer and top safety officer argued for putting off the mission until more design changes could be made to one area of the fuel tank. Hale was all for going ahead. Griffin cast the final, decisive vote.

After landing, Lindsey said he trusted that launch decision and noted it was an outgrowth of the management culture lessons learned from Columbia. The successful conclusion of the mission is more of a beginning to space station assembly and exploration, he said, than an end to the post-Columbia recovery era.

"I don't think we want to ever put Columbia behind us," Lindsey said.

I'll Blog the next launch (Atlantis) at WorldCon in Anaheim on Aug 27th.