Space Shuttle deliberate Goes Ballistic

President Obama vowed to protect his plan to mothball NASA's shuttle fleet as the debate over the spacecraft's future turned partisan.

The White House said Obama would explain to the country why he consider NASA would get more bang for its space buck by scrapping the shuttle and turning rocket launches over to private contractors in an address slated for April 15th.

After years of underinvestment in new technology and impractical budgeting, the President's plan will unveil an ambitious plan for NASA that sets the agency on a reinvigorated path of space exploration, the White House said in a statement, according to Reuters.

The shuttle program is scheduled to end later this year. Obama's proposed $3.8 trillion federal budget request, unconfined last month, also strips funding for the Constellation program, which was to see NASA return astronauts to the moon by 2020.

It also would efficiently outsource the transportation of astronauts to and from the International Space Station to the private sector.

Republican Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, of Texas, last week crashed Obama's agenda, claiming it would cause the U.S. to take a back seat to other countries in terms of space research and exploration.

Bailey also said the shuttle program shouldn't be crumbed until a replacement vehicle is ready.

We must close the gap in U.S. human space flight or face the reality that we will be completely needy on Russia for access to space until the next generation of space vehicle is developed, said Hutchison.

If the space shuttle program is ended, Russia and China will be the only nations in the world with the capability to launch humans into space. This is intolerable, said Hutchison.

Hutchison introduced a bill that would give the shuttle program a reprieve until NASA develops a replacement and expand the life of the International Space Station through 2020. The bill as well calls for the U.S. government to develop a new space vehicle for human flight by 2015.

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Progress Launches to Space Station

A new Progress cargo resupply vehicle launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to the International Space Station at 9:14 p.m. EDT Wednesday, Oct. 14. Less than nine minutes later, the ISS Progress 35 reached its preliminary orbit and deployed its solar arrays and navigational antennas.

It replaces the trash-filled Progress 34 which undocked on Sept. 21 and was destroyed on re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere over the Pacific on Sept. 27.

Progress 35 is set to dock to the station on Saturday, Oct. 17 at 9:41 p.m. with more than two tons of oxygen, air, propellant and other supplies and equipment aboard.

The station's 35th Progress unpiloted spacecraft brings to the orbiting laboratory 1,918 pounds of propellant, 110 pounds of oxygen and air, 926 pounds of water and 1,750 pounds of spare parts and supplies for the Expedition 21 crew.

Once the Expedition 21 crew members have unloaded the cargo, Progress 35 will be filled with trash and station discards. It will be undocked from the station and like its predecessors deorbited to burn in the Earth's atmosphere.

The Progress is similar in appearance and some design elements to the Soyuz spacecraft, which brings crew members to the station, serves as a lifeboat while they are there and returns them to Earth. The aft module, the instrumentation and propulsion module, is nearly identical.

But the second of the three Progress sections is a refueling module, and the third, uppermost as the Progress sits on the launch pad, is a cargo module. On the Soyuz, the descent module, where the crew is seated on launch and which returns them to Earth, is the middle module and the third is called the orbital module.

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