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NASA Confronted with Questions over Future of Space Shuttle Program.

Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News, February, 2003

The Orlando Sentinel, Fla. Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News

Feb. 24--HOUSTON -- Before Feb. 1, the future of the space shuttle was numbered in decades, as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration estimated the fleet that first lifted off in 1981 easily could keep flying through 2020.

With a string of 88 successful missions since the Challenger disaster of 1986 and plans for a replacement shelved indefinitely, the four-orbiter fleet was NASA's present and its future. Then Columbia broke up 200,000 feet above east Texas -- and suddenly NASA was confronted with a question it hadn't expected to face:

Should the shuttle fly again?

With 2 million parts, it's the most complicated machine ever built; it costs a...

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