NASA's current administrator, former shuttle commander Charles Bolden, believes the new approach, in contrast to the Constellation moon program, is sustainable and also the right path forward in an era of tight budgets and additional restricted horizons.
"Some say that our final shuttle mission can mark the tip of America's fifty years of dominance in human spaceflight," Bolden said during a recent speech. "As a former astronaut and also the current NASA administrator, i would like to inform you that yank leadership in area can continue for a minimum of subsequent half-century as a result of we've got laid the inspiration for success--and here at NASA, failure isn't an choice."
There's a widely held belief among Apollo veterans that NASA's new marching orders are a step back. In an open letter to the president, Apollo eleven commander Neil Armstrong, Apollo thirteen commander James Lovell, and Apollo seventeen commander Eugene Cernan said America is on the verge of forsaking its leadership in area.
"For the u. s., the leading space-faring nation for nearly 0.5 a century, to be while not carriage to low Earth orbit and with no human exploration capability to travel beyond Earth orbit for an indeterminate time into the long run, destines our nation to become one in every of second or maybe third rate stature," they wrote. "While the president's set up envisages humans traveling removed from Earth and maybe toward Mars at your time within the future, the shortage of developed rockets and spacecraft can assure that ability won't be out there for several years.
"Without the ability and skill that actual spacecraft operation provides, the U.S. is way too probably to be on a protracted downhill slide to mediocrity. America should decide if it needs to stay a frontrunner in area. If it does, we must always institute a program which can provide us the easiest probability of achieving that goal."
Layoffs loom as NASA changes course
As NASA's fortunes have waxed and waned, buffeted by political upheaval, an economic crisis and unsure public support, the one constant has been the shuttle's looming retirement and also the slow however steady elimination of the program's highly skilled workforce.
In 2006, about 14,000 contractors and one,800 civil servants worked on the shuttle program, most of them in Florida, Texas, and Alabama. Going into the Atlantis launch campaign, the contractor workforce had been reduced to five,615. 1/2 the remaining workers are laid off when landing.
"Right now, we're right down to those needed only for sustaining engineering and operation of the last flight, therefore it's concerning five,500 contractor workers unfold across Texas, Utah, Louisiana, Alabama, Florida," said shuttle Program Manager John Shannon. "And a trifle bit underneath one,200 civil servants, therefore we're at concerning half dozen,700 total individuals operating within the shuttle program.
"The huge layoff is basically right when the shuttle landing and then we'll keep some individuals in Florida for down-mission processing. therefore on July twenty two, if we have a tendency to launch on July eight, there'll be a major loss, about 3,200 contractors. There are alternative layoffs in August for all of our prime contractors and also the subs, in order that they can go into the transition-retirement, that is simply the configuration of the vehicles and also the dispositioning of hardware. that is underneath one,000 individuals total. that is where we have a tendency to are at once and where we must always be during a month and a 0.5."
"The landing task, you're hyper targeted on obtaining Atlantis back safely," said pilot Douglas Hurley. "But i am very trying forward, when they pry all four folks out of the orbiter, to simply get down and share that moment with the oldsters who have literally been here since the primary orbiter showed up, to be on the runway with them...and simply reasonably share those reminiscences."
Added area station veteran Sandra Magnus, another of the four crew members on this final flight: "It's attending to be terribly unhappy. I told Fergie, i am likely to be crying once we land simply because it's simply therefore sad!"
"The shuttle's given most to the country," she said. "When you consider the various sorts of missions it will do, it designed the area station, it's done science missions that ranged from taking the Spacelab up to the large radar missions we've done, it's done astronomy, it's done biological science, materials science and then it's done satellite deploy, repair and retrieve. It's an implausible legacy this vehicle has given us. And whereas we have a tendency to do got to retire it, it's still attending to be terribly unhappy to check it go."
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