Nov 3 2008
From The Space Library
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a report assessing the implications of possible delays in the retirement of the Space Shuttle and the commencement of Constellation Program flights. The report determined that NASA had a 20 to 60 percent probability of being able to fly the 10 scheduled Space Shuttle missions in the next two years. CBO had studied the gap in NASA’s ability to launch human spaceflight after the retirement of the Space Shuttle and had determined that a one-year delay in the retirement of the SSP would result in a corresponding one-year delay in initial flights of the Constellation Program. Furthermore, CBO had found that that the gap could grow longer if NASA proved unable to meet the technological challenges of developing the Ares and Orion vehicles. Based on an analysis of 72 past NASA programs, CBO estimated that the cost growth of the Constellation Program would be approximately 50 percent and that the program would require as much as US$7 billion more than NASA had budgeted. Therefore, if NASA did not have real growth in its budgetary allocation, the additional costs could delay the initial operating capability for Ares I and Orion by as much as 18 months. CBO projected that funding of the Constellation Program would increase after 2013; however, CBO also reported that NASA had determined that additional funding would not change the date that the Ares and Orion vehicles would reach initial operation capability.
Becky Iannotta, “Report: Space Shuttle Retirement Date in Jeopardy,” Space.com, 4 November 2008, http://www.space.com/6062-report-space-shuttle-retirement-date-jeopardy.html (accessed 25 August 2011); U.S. Congressional Budget Office, “An Analysis of NASA’s Plans for Continuing Human Spaceflight After Retiring the Space Shuttle (report, Washington, DC, November 2008), http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/98xx/doc9886/11-03-NASA_Letter.pdf (accessed 25 August 2011).
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