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http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20090211/ ... ionfornasa
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H/T Tom Ligon
NASA's new budget
NASA's new budget
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
Re: NASA's new budget
"Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), who initially proposed $500 million for narrowing the gap between the shuttle and its successor, was able to convince his colleagues to retain $450 million. Nelson wants to reduce the amount of time the U.S. space agency is forced to rely on Russia to transport astronauts to and from the international space station, a situation he called "shameful" in a Feb. 3 letter to Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
"Under current plans and funding, we will soon face a gap of five or more years during which we will lack a U.S. vehicle capable of taking our astronauts to and from the International Space Station. As a result, we will have no choice but to pay Russia for seats on their spacecraft, even as we lay off thousands of U.S. aerospace workers across the country," Nelson wrote. "
The Senator is wrong, though. The US DOES have a manned program that will be able to demonstrate a manned mission by 2010 IF the COTS-D program gets continued funding. That is the SpaceX Dragon program. Dragon is going to cost a LOT less than the cost of keeping the shuttle going or accellerating Orion.