Astronauts Face End Of Shuttle
The New York Times reports:
What happens when you have the right stuff at the wrong time?
Members of NASA’s astronaut corps have been asking just that, now that the space shuttle program is ending and their odds of flying anywhere good anytime soon are getting smaller. The Endeavour is scheduled to launch this week, and the Atlantis is supposed to fly the last shuttle mission in June — and all the seats are spoken for.
“Morale is pretty low,” said Leroy Chiao, a former astronaut who now works for a company that wants to offer space flights for tourists. “This is a time of great uncertainty.”
Under President Obama, NASA’s human spaceflight program has been curtailed. The Ares I and Constellation programs, which were meant to succeed the space shuttles and take astronauts to the moon, were canceled, and NASA is instead hiring outside companies to devise alternatives.
So when the Obama family heads to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida this week to sit with Gabrielle Giffords, the injured Arizona congresswoman, as she watches her husband, Capt. Mark E. Kelly of the Navy, take off for theInternational Space Station, it will be one of the last spectacles of its kind for a while. Over the next few years, American astronauts will be competing for a handful of slots on the International Space Station, flying there on Russian Soyuz capsules.
“We hope we will overcome this hurdle and continue to explore,” said Peggy A. Whitson, the head of NASA’s astronaut office, whose job includes selecting the astronauts who will fly each space mission. While people’s spirits are a little down, she said, “we’ll have to see — NASA has gone through different phases like this before.”
The current situation may not dampen the career aspirations of the elementary school set, but last year alone, 20 astronauts left NASA’s active-duty roster; today, 61 remain, down from a peak of about 150 in 2000. Back then, NASA was gearing up to staff the International Space Station and the shuttles that supplied it.
The shift has made a big difference to people like John M. Grunsfeld, the Dr. Fix-It of theHubble Space Telescope, who has flown five missions for NASA. After his last flight, in May 2009, he asked Dr. Whitson about his chances of returning to space. “She was honest,” Dr. Grunsfeld said. “Slim to none.”
If Dr. Whitson had dangled even a small chance at a plum assignment, like commanding the International Space Station, “I probably would have stayed,” said Dr. Grunsfeld, 52. But she did not. So in January 2010, he left NASA to become deputy director of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, which operates the Hubble.
Another astronaut for whom the new realities presented a problem was Capt. Scott D. Altman of the Navy, who has flown four missions for NASA. But at 6-foot-4, he does not fit into a Soyuz capsule.
After his last shuttle flight in 2009, Captain Altman, 51, saw the writing on the wall. As he wrestled with the decision over whether to leave NASA, the Obama administration made the decision to scrap Constellation and Ares I. He announced last August that he would depart.
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