Space Shuttle/ISS Expansion Update

Looks like the International-Space-Station-expansion missions will round out the year a single mission behind.

You may remember me blogging about my hope for the shuttle missions this year, and then months later belly-aching about the delay of an early March mission that forced it to launch in June instead. Growing up in the 1970s & '80s -- with the snail-like pace of space missions back then -- I was afraid that this delay would knock the ISS completion missions off schedule so that in 2010, when the space shuttles are permanently retired, the ISS would be left incomplete.

But the shuttles have been BUSY this summer!!! :D

Comparing the original mission schedule for this year with the current mission schedule I see that NASA is mostly on-track!

The bumping of the mission that was originally scheduled to happen in December means that instead of 4 ISS-expansion missions in 2008, there will be 4.

Now, I'm not a pessimist, but I do believe very strongly in Murphy's Law: If something can go wrong, it most likely will.

Especially when you're funded by government money and answerable to governmental bureaucracy.

Still, my gloom-and-doom fear -- when a March mission was postponed until June -- was that this year's ambitious schedule would fall behind by 2 or more missions.

And it still can, to be sure.

But with Discovery slated to launch on the 23rd, I feel SO MUCH more confident about the possibilities!

As I've said before, probably too many times, I WANT A SPACE STATION!!! Not for my very own. I mean I want one for the citizens of the Earth! (NOT the corporations of the Earth, the CITIZENS!)

So, yeah...

If my earlier posts about the ISS-expansion missions caught your interest -- even a little -- here's where they stand right now.

Not too bad, either! :D

Fingers crossed for no more delays, though!