A Crazy Proposal

…from Senator Hutchison and Congresswoman Kosmas:

One alternative we have proposed would be to slow the flight rate of the remaining space shuttle missions and move those flights into next year and possibly 2012 while manifesting the planned backup flight with an available cargo capability. We can use this time to complete a detailed assessment of the spare and replacement equipment needs and provide for carriage to the space station if our analysis shows limits in other cargo vehicles. This modest measure would not call for increases to the number of shuttle flights, but instead would simply space them so the gap for America to deliver people and critical cargo to the space station under our own power would be narrowed considerably.

There is a tempo to processing the vehicles. If it is exceeded (trying to fly too fast) safety will be compromised. What these people apparently don’t understand is that you can also process too slowly, to the point at which the personnel will lose their edge. On top of that, each flight would end up costing two or three billion dollars. Each.

53 thoughts on “A Crazy Proposal”

  1. Governments are perfectly willing to take risks.

    Everybody is willing to take risk for a sufficient reward (power, profit, etc.) All I point out is there is profit potential in a privately funded ship. Government operates on it’s own whims.

  2. > Rand Simberg Says:
    > May 7th, 2010 at 12:30 pm

    > I don’t think you can provide a citation for such testimony to Congress,
    > or actual quotes to back it up.

    I could provide news video if I could dig it up.

    Given I was still in MOD at JSC back then — it made a big impression.

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