Fill out this form to email this article to a friend
Budget constraints delay shuttle successor
By ASSCOIATED PRESS
Published March 1, 2007
WASHINGTON - NASA will delay the first manned flight of the new spacecraft designed to take humans back to the moon because of budget constraints, the agency's boss said Wednesday. The craft, called the Orion, won't fly until early 2015, four to six months later than planned, NASA administrator Michael Griffin told the Senate Commerce Committee's space subcommittee. "We simply do not have the money available" to fly in 2014 as originally planned, he said. The delay is the result of a $545-million difference between President Bush's request for the agency this year and the money Congress included in a spending bill Bush signed this month. Lawmakers gave the space agency the same amount of money it received in 2006. That's more time the United States will go without any manned spaceflight capability - the space shuttle is slated for retirement in 2010. It will fly 13 or 14 more missions to finish the international space station and maintain the Hubble space telescope. Griffin said the gap between the shuttle's retirement and Orion's debut raises practical and strategic concerns. "When you don't fly for four or more years, people become stale ... facilities degrade. It's not a good thing," he said. "Our human spaceflight expertise will be depleted to a certain extent." Griffin also pointed out that other countries would continue to fly humans and cargo into space while Americans were grounded. "For the United States not to be among them is tragic," he said. The Orion is the ship designed to carry astronauts to the moon and later to Mars. Bush announced the new manned space program in 2004, the year after the shuttle Columbia accident that killed seven astronauts. Bush called for a return to the moon by 2020. Griffin said he wasn't looking to that deadline just yet. "I'm not worried about the moon right now. I'm worried about replacing the shuttle," he said.
[Last modified March 1, 2007, 01:12:28]
Share your thoughts on this story
|
News
Fifty years ago, they were screwed-up kids sent to the Florida School for Boys to be straightened out. But now they are screwed-up men, scarred by the whippings they endured. Read the story and see a video and portrait gallery.
Print
Email story
Comment
Email editor
