Posted on 07/30/2007 4:25:28 PM PDT by KevinDavis
NASA expects progress, or the lack of it, next year for the agency's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) programme to determine whether the COTS rockets can deliver cargo to the International Space Station from 2010.
Because NASA's Space Shuttle fleet is to be retired in 2010, NASA needs an alternate cargo delivery system to maintain the ISS by providing around 54,500kg (120,000lb) of food, water, equipment and spares it is obligated to deliver until its de-orbit, planned for 2016.
The agency's associate administrator for the space operations mission directorate William Gerstenmaier told Congress that it would know next year if the COTS programme, with its two competing companies, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) and Rocketplane-Kistler (RpK), could provide the 9,000kg a year the station will require from NASA.
(Excerpt) Read more at flightglobal.com ...
“...it is obligated to deliver until its de-orbit, planned for 2016....”
Does that mean de-orbiting the ISS? If that’s done, it would be a waste. That’s nine years from now. Certainly it can be maintained longer than that. Mir was 15 years old when it was de-orbited. And they had all sorts of problems with it starting a few years before its end. ISS, OTOH, would be 18 years old in 2016. That just has to be a misprint.
That was the plan all along. Some deep thinkers came up with it.
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