On Friday the GAO issued a report studying requirements for shuttle upgrades. At first glance the report’s language looks a little odd: it notes in the preface that the shuttle “is planned for use well into the second decade of this century and possibly beyond.” Given that the President announced last month that the shuttle will be retired in 2010, is the GAO slow to hear the news? Not really. The study was performed from Aptil to October 2003, the report notes near the end, and was submitted to Sen. John Breaux (D-LA) on January 15: the day after the announcement, far too late to make any changes to the report. As the report notes, “NASA cannot fully define shuttle upgrade requirements until it resolves its uncertainty over the shuttle’s operational life,” and now that this uncertainty has been removed—at least for now—we’ll see how the agency moves ahead.
