Shuttle repair bill swells

WASHINGTON – NASA administrator Sean O’Keefe said Wednesday the cost of fixing all the problems with the space shuttle fleet could top $2.2 billion – double the estimated price tag given to Congress a year ago.

O’Keefe, testifying before the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, was pressed on whether that estimate again could rise.

Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., who led the panel, noted that the space agency still had 10 items left on 15 required improvements it must complete before shuttles again can fly. Brownback asked O’Keefe whether the agency had confidence in the higher estimate.

“We’re getting a lot closer, that’s for sure,” O’Keefe said. “I don’t see any new unknowns coming down the road.”

Thomas Stafford, co-chairman of a task force monitoring the space agency’s progress in meeting the new safety requirements, said he expected NASA would earn at least conditional approval on the remaining 10 items by the end of 2004.

The space shuttle fleet has been grounded since Feb. 1, 2003, when the shuttle Columbia broke apart over Texas, killing all seven astronauts.

Boeing is a prime contractor for the space shuttle program.

O’Keefe said it was not clear whether damage to Kennedy Space Center from Hurricane Frances would result in a delay of the anticipated launch next spring of Discovery. NASA disaster response teams are completing an inventory of damaged facilities.

Flipping through oversized, color images, NASA officials pointed to hundreds of missing panels from an Apollo-era hangar where pre-launch assembly of shuttles should occur.

Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., said those represent an open window through which damaging wind and rains from Hurricane Ivan, the next brewing storm, could pass.

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