Jobs Trumping Safety?

Two Florida Congressmen are backing a plan to continue flying the space shuttle beyond 2010-- perhaps two flights a year-- and accelerate development of the Ares rocket and Orion spacecraft in order to close a gap of five years during which the U. S. will not be able to launch astronauts into space. The point of the plan, however, is to save thousands of Kennedy Space Center jobs that will be lost when the shuttle program ends.

Most NASA officials oppose the plan on safety grounds. The shuttle, for all its abilities, is obsolete. A new spacecraft is required, they say. Some experts, indeed, called for the retirement of the shuttles years ago-- before Columbia and its crew were lost. Many production lines that supply shuttle parts have already shut down, they also point out; re-opening them for a few flights would waste resources better spent on the new program.

A better solution may be to spend the money the Congressmen want to use to keep shuttles flying into 2013 on Ares and Orion, that plus the money they already propose to spend to accelerate those programs could accelerate them even more. With that money, perhaps the first flight of the new spacecraft could be brought into 2012.