Big News on April 15, 2010
When Americans hear the date April 15, they immediately think of federal income taxes. However, in 2010, the most important thing that happened on April 15 did not involve the Internal Revenue Service. President Obama gave a speech at the NASA facility at Cape Kennedy, Florida. He outlined his plan for America’s future in space.
Earlier this year, when the fiscal 2011 federal budget was announced, it was revealed that the president was cancelling the Constellation program that had been started in 2004 by President Bush. Six years into the program which was supposed to replace the aging Space Shuttle, it had become clear that the original goals of the Constellation program would not be met.
The program had never been provided with the budget needed to achieve its goals. Consequently it was behind schedule and over budget. Furthermore, ongoing operating expenses were projected to be 50% higher than the operating expenses of the shuttle it was supposed to replace. To top it all off, its safety record was projected to be worse than the shuttle’s. This, when one of the primary reasons for retiring the shuttle is its poor safety record. An average of about one in eighty shuttle flights has been a complete failure, with loss of all crew aboard. The shuttle today is still susceptible to the type of damage that destroyed the shuttle Columbia.
President Obama proposed to increase NASA’s budget by $6 billion spread out over five years. These funds, plus the money that would not be spent on Constellation, would be used to provide a new path to outer space. The overall goal would be changed. Rather than the old goal of establishing an outpost on the Moon, the new goal is to develop the capacity for people to work, learn to operate, and live safely beyond the Earth for extended periods of time. This is a welcome change from the old flags and footprints philosophy that characterized the Apollo Moon landings 40 years ago. Obama has a “been there, done that” attitude about returning to the Moon. He has set his sights higher, looking beyond the Moon to asteroids that might threaten Earth and ultimately to Mars.
Here are the President’s specific proposals:
1. Rather than have NASA continue development of the Ares I rocket to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station, contract with private companies to provide that ferry service. Despite politically motivated opposition, this decision seems really obvious. The original plan was to de-orbit the Space Station in 2015 to free up funds for the Constellation program. However, recent estimates place the first flight of the Ares I in 2017. What’s the point of that? the Ares I would be capable of resupplying a space station that no longer existed. It would have no place else to go either. It would be a solution without a problem. With the new plan, the Space Station is being extended to 2020, maximizing the return on the investment that has already been made in it, and private companies such as SpaceX and Orbital Sciences will be able to provide the needed ferry service sooner and cheaper than Ares I could have.
2. Use a slimmed down version of the Constellation program’s Orion capsule to act as an emergency “lifeboat” on the Space Station. If the station should become uninhabitable, astronauts could enter an Orion capsule and return to Earth in it. This would eliminate the need to rely on Russian Soyuz craft for emergency escape.
3. Develop a new heavy lift launch vehicle capable of lifting large loads out of Earth’s gravity well for missions to the Lagrange points, asteroids, and Mars. The president is initially committing $3 billion to this effort. A design will be finalized by 2015 and construction would start immediately after that. This is much sooner than was contemplated for Constellation’s Ares V heavy lifter which would have become operational in 2028 in the old plan.
4. Serious work will be done to solve the major challenges of deep space exploration, including shielding astronauts from space radiation, harnessing the resources of distant worlds, and providing spacecraft with the energy needed for long journeys. These are all capabilities which will be needed when we go to Mars, that would not have been addressed with the old Moon-centered plan.
The new plan will get us back into space sooner and more often than the old plan, while extending our technical capabilities in ways that the old plan would not. Early in the next decade we will be testing capabilities that will take us beyond low Earth orbit. By 2025 we will send a crew into deep space, beyond the Moon. A Near Earth Asteroid will be our first destination. By the mid-2030’s we will send a crew to orbit Mars. Landing on, and ultimately living on Mars will follow.
The ambitious goals that the president has outlined will stretch our capabilities. Breakthroughs in many areas will be required in order to achieve those goals. The president has promised that the resources required to make those breakthroughs will be available. It is an exciting time for the space industry, as well as for all Americans who lift their eyes to the heavens.
© 2010 Allen G. Taylor
I think that space exploration should be prioritized more in the world today, but I personally think that Obama’s new course is rather vague. The things he has outlined have always been the goal of NASA- ie get to the lagrange points, asteroids, Mars etc. Ultimately these things will fail with this approach because by using vague and noncommittal language to describe space you’re basically sucking out the public appeal of it and turning it into just another dry government enterprise- a luxury- and the first department to cut funds from in the nearest expediency. And believe me, once there is a reshuffle of presidents this will be cut.
Either two things need to be done: 1, You need to pick ONE goal and shout it out to high heaven; like Health-care reform, you need to be single-minded about it. Raise it’s public profile to garner widespread public support. I get the impression from Charles Bolden that he is somehow embarressed by the “high-fluting talk” employed by the likes of Kennedy to launch the space program in the 60s, but you need that kind of jingoism to get public support (whos tax dollars are paying for the whole thing).
2. The second option, to pursue more widespread missions is to merge NASA with the space-programs around the world- the Chinese, Indians, Russians, Japanese etc. This way funds can be channeled from many nations into one giant fund, the likes of which would get us to Mars in 5 years. If the world could pull something like this off- a kind of Space UN if you will, centralizing space as a Terran enterprise as opposed to an enterprise of any one nation- we would be able to achieve far more in space than we are now.
Philip Saunders
http://upism.wordpress.com/
Phillip, you make two very good points. Obama’s plan is not as easy to understand as was Kennedy’s clearly defined goal and timeline. There was no room for doubt about the charge that Kennedy gave to NASA. Kennedy summed it all up in a single sentence. Brilliant! What Obama wants to accomplish is not so easily stated. To say that the goal is to land on Mars would be too big a leap. The intermediate goals provide reasonable stepping stones that will enable us to eventually get to Mars.
On your second point, international cooperation would be great, not just from the point of view of getting to Mars sooner, but also from the point of view of making the world a safer place by cooperation among the major powers. Politically, this is much harder to accomplish. Perhaps there is room for international input to aspects of the program Obama has outlined.