“And then there’s the real 800 lb gorilla in the room. The shuttle is not designed to stay docked to the space station for a full crew expedition (6 months). It can’t carry enough consumables to last that long nor were its components designed with requirements to survive that long in space (they may or may not be able to, but they were never tested and certified for 6 month missions). The ISS crew will still need a “lifeboat” in case of a major emergency, and there’s only one current manned vehicle that I know of that can stay in space docked to the ISS for up to 6 months at a time. That would be the Soyuz. For a crew of 6 we would need 2 Soyuz docked to the station at all times, so we would still have to pay the Russians to launch at least 4 per year.

So in summary we’d be launching shuttles twice a year to ferry crew & cargo to/ from the ISS at a cost of ~$1 Billion a pop (at least) and STILL have to pay the Russians to launch Soyuz’? Oh, and we’ll probably have to once again raid other NASA programs to come up with the money for shuttle flights just so that we can say “Hurray, we don’t have to rely on the Russians for crew transport, and look how many jobs we saved!” Does that make sense to anyone other than congress critters?”

Personally I’d prefer the government to save the $2+ Billion/ year (and that’s not including the untold billions to re-start production lines) that would likely be required to extend shuttle. I know $2 billion isn’t that much when talking about a government whose budget is measured in the trillions, but our national debt is also measured in the trillions. We’ve got to start cutting back somewhere. A couple billion here, another couple somewhere else and eventually we’re talking about real money.

“Shuttle extension is most definitely still possible. It is simply a matter of reestablishing workforce and vendor supply lines,”

At least 2,000 Shuttle workers are aleady gone from USA, ATK, and Boeing. It is not a “simple matter” to bring back that many workers and their families or to find replacements for those workers that won’t come back. There will be even more gone before the Senate authorization bill passes (if it passes) later this year.

That’s just the first-tier contractors and says nothing of the second-tier contractors that Garver talked about in her speech. Whole production capabilities and companies have likely been lost in the second-tier.

“which will require additional funding…”

If Shuttle was extended for five years, paying those 2,000 workers’ salaries and benefits would cost NASA $1-2 billion that’s not in the budget. What should be cut from NASA’s budget to pay for it? Or should the U.S. government just go deeper into debt during a time of historic deficits?

And that says nothing of the incentives required to bring those workers back in the first year or search for replacements for those that won’t come back. And again, this is just the first-tier contractors. The second-tier is likely larger and requires an even greater amount of funding to reestablish whole production capabilities and companies.

It would be one thing if we were still at the stage where the delta cost of extending Shuttle was measured in the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. But we’re talking about opportunity costs in the many billions of dollars, here. If we’re going to spend that kind of money, then it should go to new, more efficient, and/or more capable systems that can send spacecraft to more locations than the ISS, that we’re going to use for more than ten additional flights to the ISS, and that we’re going to keep using for more than the next five years.

With all due respect to the Shuttle workers that have been laid off and will be laid off in the future, the horse left this barn long ago. It’s time to move on.

My 2 cents… FWIW…

One compromise could be to use the $600M for ensuring that the Shuttle finishes its ISS missions for an additional ISS cargo mission — iff the current series of ISS missions doesn’t eat too much into that $600M.

This might not be considered “a meaningful degree” of additional Shuttle time, but it would help shrink the “gap” a little bit (if that’s important), it would help supply the ISS which with the new plan may now need those supplies more, and from a jobs point of view it may help some Shuttle workers last a little bit longer so they finish at a time when the economy is (we hope) a little bit better. Of course all of that has to be balanced with the safety risk of the Shuttle and other uses for the $600M (the budget says it could be used to boost the Constellation transition funds).

The incessant screaming of tea baggers does make conversation difficult, though.

There was no Augustine option for pure POR and ISS to 2020. Prohibitive cost being the reason.