Congress, NASA

The latest on INKSNA and extending the shuttle

Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) will meet with NASA administrator Mike Griffin on Tuesday to discuss the prospects for extending the life of the shuttle beyond 2010, Florida Today reported Saturday. Also likely to be discussed are the prospects for passing an extension to NASA’s existing waiver to the Iran, North Korea, and Syria Nonproliferation Act (INKSNA), which currently appear doubtful because of Russia’s invasion of Georgia last month.

On INKSNA, Nelson said he would continue to push for an extension but was not optimistic it would make it through the Senate. “I think we can get it out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, but I’m not sure we can pass it,” he told Florida Today. That role is different from what Griffin told CBS News a few days ago, when he said “people who were already suspicious, like Sen. (Bill) Nelson, changed from being suspicious to being downright against” extending the waiver.

While extending the shuttle to compensate for the lack of Soyuz access might sound good for people on the Space Coast, worried about the job losses that will come when the shuttle is retired, Florida Today published an editorial Sunday endorsing efforts to extend the INKSNA waiver instead of trying to keep the shuttle alive until Constellation is ready. The Orlando Sentinel published a similar editorial last week; both cited cost and safety issues with extending the shuttle beyond 2010.

3 comments to The latest on INKSNA and extending the shuttle

  • Adrian

    I like the prospect of one extra mission to install AMS. more than that just isnt worth the risk.

  • Chuck2200

    I think we need both. The extension will guarentee access going forward, and extending shuttle will keep human access to ISS as it has been for the past years. This buts us access AND breathing room. In the mean time, use the resulting breathing room to complete Orion, MINUS the Ares-I. Build Orion to fly on an existing EELV, and reture Shuttle as soon as Orion is operational.

    After Orion is flying on an EELV, then we can return our attention to how we really want to go about implimenting the VSE, minus artificial deadlines set by politics devoid of common sense.

  • David Stever

    The ideal thing is to figure out how to get more money into the COTS companies. Monies spent in this way would go farther then money spent extending the shuttle for half a decade, and has the added benefit that while NASA figures out how the hell to make Ares fly, they’d have access to space FOR CHEAP. A year or two down the line, we might figure out what a boondoogle ARES is, and can the whole thing, and go with Atlas and Delta (along with Falcon 9)

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