February 27, 2009-- The Obama administration is sticking with the timeline set forth by the Bush Administration to retire the Shuttle program by 2010. In the meantime, Discovery’s flow control valve problems drag on. To make matters worse, NASA picked a target launch date one day before a Russian Soyuz launch could delay the Shuttle mission until April.

Safety rules on the International Space Station say, only one spaceship can be docked at any one time. In other words, there can’t be two vehicles buzzing around the Station simultaneously. Hence, NASA’s troubles. The agency wants to swap out the flow control valves on Discovery for newer ones that engineers think are less likely to snap off, possibly creating a launch day disaster. One valve broke on Endeavour back in November.

If Discovery doesn’t blast off on March 12^th, the Soyuz is scheduled to go next, so it could leap to the head of the line. That would delay Discovery until April when the Soyuz undocks and goes home. We’ll see how this plays out.

On an unrelated note, many thanks to the folks at the Mims/Scottsmoor Public Library near the Kennedy Space Center for their generous hospitality during this week’s talk and book signing. They even put my name up in lights on the library’s marquee—my already formidable ego is a lot bigger now ;). Next Tuesday, I’ll be giving a talk at the University of Central Florida’s Life Learning Institute—always a great group. I’ve been there twice already. The decision by the White House confirming the end of the Shuttle program by 2010, and the impending layoffs at Kennedy Space Center, just became the “hot topic”.

More to come