Endeavour Rescheduled

NASA engineers think they have found and sealed the hydrogen gas leak that scuttled the shuttle launch last month. Endeavour is now scheduled to launch July 11.

The centerpiece of Endeavour's mission will be the delivery and installation of the final piece of Japan's Kibo laboratory to ISS. Kibo will be an important component of the scientific research capability of ISS.

At the same time NASA is pushing to complete construction of ISS before the planned retirement of the shuttle next year, it is also beginning to look to deorbiting ISS in 2016. After all the billions spent on ISS, that would only give us five years use of the fully deployed station. Surely there's a better way. Such shortsightedness is one piece of the argument for bringing private enterprise and commercial interests into the space program. An element concerned frankly with the creation of wealth would take a more strategic view of assets in space as well as fashioning a broader, more coherent vision of space development. In the current economic situation, creating new wealth would seem to be an excellent idea.

President Bush, in his 2004 speech announcing his Moon-Mars plan, held out the possibility that private companies might be brought into the heart of the program. His NASA never really pursued that. Perhaps the Obama administration, which seems to support public-private partnerships in other areas-- as well as an expansion of basic scientific research-- should approach the private sector about joint space projects. It could begin by trying to work out more of a future for ISS.