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:
“We must choose. Be a child of the past with all its crudities and imperfections, its failures and defeats, or a child of the future, the future of symmetry and ultimate success.”
—Frances E. Willard 1839–1898, U.S. president of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union 1879-1891, author, activist. The Woman’s Magazine, pp. 137-40 (January 1887)
““Dark times” is what they call it in Norway when the sun remains below the horizon all day long: the temperature falls slowly but surely at such times.—A nice metaphor for all those thinkers for whom the sun of mankind’s future has temporarily disappeared.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“When we raise our children, we relive our childhood. Forgotten memories, painful and pleasurable, rise to the surface.... So each of us thinks, almost daily, of how our own childhood compares with our children’s, and of what our children’s future will hold.”
—Richard Louv (20th century)