Shown on November 5, 2001, this Soyuz spacecraft, which carried the Soyuz 5 taxi crew, is connected to the Pirs docking compartment on the International Space Station. Photo provided by NASA.
The space shuttle program is scheduled to end in 2010, leaving the United States and its partner countries dependent on Russian Soyuz rockets to get to the International Space Station. Right now, the United States is on the opposite side of the table from Russia, supporting Georgia with humanitarian and diplomatic aid.
What happens if our relations with Russia break off completely and we lose access to Soyuz rockets? Will the ISS astronauts be stranded? Admittedly, Russia, as a major partner in the ISS, has a big stake in keeping the space station operating. But anything could happen in a political dustup between the United States and Russia.
Maybe we should think about keeping our shuttles cocked and ready – just in case. NASA Administrator Michael Griffin suggests we should keep the old launchers up and running until the new U.S. Ares rockets are available around 2015.
“NASA doesn’t have a big enough budget to fly the shuttle while we’re developing a new system to take us to the Moon,” Griffin said two weeks ago, while expressing regret that we would have to rely solely on another country for transportation to the ISS. “It seems silly to put a $100 billion system (the ISS) at risk because we don’t want to spend, say, $3 billion to keep the shuttle going and have a backup for the Russian system to get to the ISS.”
Now Griffin’s statement seems all the more poignant – even prescient. We have a responsibility to guarantee that we will be able to resupply our astronauts and transport them to and from orbit. The only apparent way to have such assurance between 2010 and 2015 is to keep shuttles available.