And you know, good and well, when they renegotiate that the next time around, it’s going to be a lot more money.” We’re saying that we’re putting complete reliance on the Soyuz, at enormous expense, to get our people back and forth from space. “We’re throwing away the shuttle, which is the most complex vehicle ever put together by human beings. “I think it was very short-sighted,” Glenn says. is a fully dependent space client, Russia will use its advantage to up the price. After listening to Glenn’s appeal in a 40-minute meeting at the White House, the president said, “We just don’t have the money to do it,” Glenn recalls. John Glenn, the space pioneer and former Democratic senator, was so bothered by the prospect of a space gap that he personally pleaded with Obama last year to keep the shuttle program going until a replacement system was ready. In the meantime, American astronauts will have to hitch rides with Russians, paying around $60 million for each trip aboard the Russian Soyuz capsule. will lose the capacity to launch humans into space for several years, possibly as long as a decade. Some close to the space program have an even bigger worry-that the era of American preeminence in space is nearing an end. The only way to reach the roof is by way of a staircase on the outside of the building black netting was draped over the stairs to protect Giffords from the view of news cameras, perched at the press center across the way.

President Obama, who also came for that launch, didn’t return for this one.Īt the Cape, Giffords watched the launch from the rooftop of the Launch Control Center, a vantage point reserved for the shuttle crew’s family, with an unobstructed view of the launchpad, more than three miles away. A similar routine was used last month for Giffords’ first foray to the Kennedy Space Center, but the launch was canceled due to technical problems. According to a person close to the Giffords-Kelly family, her trip Sunday from the rehab hospital in Houston to Cape Canaveral was partly choreographed by Scott Kelly, Mark’s twin brother and fellow astronaut, and handled like a military mission, complete with the deployment of decoy vehicles, to avoid the press. Giffords’ attendance at the launch has been a key goal of her rehabilitation process, as she recovers from the grave brain injury inflicted by a Tucson gunman in January. For months, the mission’s most captivating angle has been the parallel saga of Gabrielle Giffords, the Arizona congresswoman whose husband, astronaut Mark Kelly, is Endeavor’s commander.

Nasa space shuttle launch endeavor