The US politician who counts the Kennedy Space Center’s workers among his constituents is demanding that NASA keeps the Shuttle flying beyond its current planned retirement date.

Republican Dave Weldon, who represents one of Florida’s districts in the House of Representatives, wants the Shuttle to keep going until 2015 rather than 2010. This will cost about $10 billion and will avoid the United States having to depend on Russia to get people to the International Space Station.

“The 2010 date was really an arbitrary date that was really picked more by OMB [US Office of Management and Budget] than NASA,” says his spokesman Jeremy Steffens (Reuters). “The risk does not increase overnight. Obviously there’s risk and NASA is doing its best to mitigate it. The risk is worth the goals we set out.”

Weldon will introduce an act containing the demand that NASA keeps flying soon, says the Orlando Sentinel, although he doesn’t think it is actually likely to pass. He hopes that it will force a debate however, the paper notes. “It is about our leadership in space and a very important policy issue: Are we going to put our space program into the hands of the Russians for such a long period of time?”

The act would also allow the launch of the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer. This $1.5 billion dark matter experiment instrument has been constructed but will be mothballed unless more shuttle launches are forthcoming (Florida Today).

Image: NASA