NASA faces deadline for tough decisions on shuttle
WASHINGTON -- The U.S. space agency NASA is facing a critical deadline to make its biggest decision in a generation: whether to go forward with plans to retire the space shuttle fleet and replace it with a new mode of space travel.
The agency still has no chief to make the $230 billion call.
NASA seems so far off the White House radar, said one presidential expert, that it might as well be on Pluto.
"As each day goes by, the need for these decisions becomes greater and greater, and the absence of an administrator becomes more and more an issue," said John Logsdon, a member of the NASA Advisory Council, who also advised President Barack Obama's campaign.
Obama's science adviser has said that crucial decisions on the shuttle and a new spacecraft to carry astronauts back to the moon will not be made until NASA gets a new administrator. In an interview two weeks ago, John Holdren did not know when that would be.
A crucial deadline is April 30, when a congressional rule governing the shuttle's infrastructure expires. After that date, NASA will be free to start taking apart the shuttle program if it chooses.
But some in Congress want the shuttle to fly longer because retiring the fleet would force the United States to rely on Russia for trips to space for nearly five years. Obama has said he wants at least one more shuttle flight beyond those already planned.
And that is not all. A Congressional Budget Office report concluded that NASA cannot carry out its current plans on its existing budget. The report outlined options that include delaying the flight of the new spacecraft, spending more money to meet the current schedule or drastically cutting back on science.
NASA also has an extra $1 billion in stimulus money, but little direction in how to spend it.
In past new administrations, the lack of a permanent boss might not have been such a big problem. The space program has typically focused on shuttle flights needed to complete construction of the international space station.
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