ABSTRACT
On January 14, 2004, President George W. Bush held a press conference at the headquarters building of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in Washington, DC, to announce a new direction for the nation’s space agency. Almost one year prior to the announcement, on February 1, 2003, NASA and the rest of the world witnessed the tragic loss of the Space Shuttle Columbia, causing much uncertainty about the future of the space shuttle program and the still incomplete International Space Station. With this second loss of a space shuttle vehicle (the first being the 1986 loss of the Space Shuttle Challenger), there was a growing concern that the shuttle program may be suddenly, and irreversibly, ended much sooner than previously anticipated. The agency needed a new direction that would guide space exploration through the shuttle’s planned Return to Flight and into a new era of space vehicle development and operation.
