Future
The Space Shuttle was retired in 2011. The VAB could be used to some extent for assembly and processing of any future vehicles utilizing Launch Complex 39. As of early 2012, NASA is offering tours of the VAB for "a limited time." In the future, the VAB will be used to prepare commercial launch vehicles, and for the use of NASA's new Space Launch System.
The NASA FY2013 budget includes $143.7 million USD for Cost of Facilities (CoF) requirements in support of Exploration programs including Space Launch System (SLS) and Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV). NASA will begin modifying Launch Complex 39 at KSC to support the new SLS. NASA will begin with major repairs, code upgrades and safety improvements to the Launch Control Center, Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) and the VAB Utility Annex. This initial work will be required to support any launch vehicle operated from Launch Complex 39 and will allow NASA to begin modernizing the facilities, while vehicle specific requirements are being developed.
Read more about this topic: Vehicle Assembly Building
Famous quotes containing the word future:
“I shall soon be six-and-twenty. Is there anything in the future that can possibly console us for not being always twenty-five?”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“Imagination places the future world for us either above or below or in reincarnation. We dream of travels throughout the universe: is not the universe within us? We do not know the depths of our spirit. M The mysterious path leads within. In us, or nowhere, lies eternity with its worlds, the past and the future.”
—Novalis [Friedrich Von Hardenberg] (1772–1801)
“The ellipse is as aimless as that,
Stretching invisibly into the future so as to reappear
In our present. Its flexing is its account,
Return to the point of no return.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)