Posey presses Obama to keep shuttle flying

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

by the Orlando Sentinel

Give U.S. Rep. Bill Posey credit. Even though he confessed recently to our Mark K. Matthews and Robert Block that his quest to keep the space shuttle flying is “a fairly lonely crusade,” he keeps on keeping on.

The Rockledge Republican’s latest effort is a letter to President Barack Obama, whose new budget is supposed to include his vision for NASA when it is released early next month. There’s widespread expectation that the president will totally revamp NASA’s mission, focusing it on long-term exploration of the inner solar system while requiring the agency to contract with commercial rocket companies to bring crew and supplies to the International Space Station. It’s also expected to allow the space shuttle to retire, as scheduled, later this year so the $3 billion or so now spent to fly it can be redirected to design of a new heavy-lift rocket capable for going beyond lower Earth orbit.

But one consequence of that will be the layoff of 7,000 workers who now service the shuttle at Kennedy Space Center. While Russian-owned Soyuz rockets will shuttle astronauts and supplies to the space station once the shuttle stops flying, it could be six years or more before either a NASA-built or commercial rocket has the capacity to do that from a launch site at KSC.

“We will be locked into a space flight gap of up to six years unless bold decisions are made in this budget,” Posey wrote to Obama. “For an amount equal to less than 1% of last year’s stimulus bill, we could fly the Shuttle for an additional five years close the space gap and keep America first in space.”

Read his entire letter: LettertoPresident-Jan21-2010.pdf

This article is reprinted from http://www.orlandosentinel.com