It appears that NASA is serious about ending the Space Shuttle program within the next four years.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (AP) — Atlantis will be the first of NASA’s three space shuttles to be retired, most likely in 2008, as the shuttle program winds down in four years, a senior agency official said Tuesday.
Atlantis’ parts will be used by the remaining shuttles, Discovery and Endeavour, until the aging spacecraft are mothballed in 2010, shuttle program manager Wayne Hale told workers at the Kennedy Space Center last week
I’d say that this was sad news, but the shuttle program has proven to be a boondoggle from the beginning. And the manned space program has barely advanced beyond where we were at the end of the Apollo era.
And what of the rest of the shuttle program ?
NASA has planned 17 more shuttle flights before the program ends in 2010. The next-generation vehicles are expected to be ready no later than 2014.
Meaning that there will be at least a four year period when there will be no manned space flights at all.
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