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Shuttle vs. Constellation: The trade-off between funding the Space Shuttle flights and supporting the Constellation Program is illustrated by this graph of NASA's estimated budget.
NASA
Requests for an interview on the topic sent to both the Obama campaign and president-elect Obama's Change.gov website were not answered.
Because of the funding shortfalls, instead of an overlap between the Shuttle's missions to complete the ISS and the first Constellation launches--as originally called for in the Bush administration's Vision for Space Exploration--the United States now faces a gap of five years between the planned retirement of the expensive-to-operate Space Shuttle and the expensive-to-develop Constellation Program. Current estimates are that the Constellation Program will not fly earlier than 2015, leaving U.S. astronauts and cargo to hitch rides on other nations' rockets. Moreover, some experts believe that the delay will be longer.
"The current timescale is unrealistic, and putting it out there has made it more unrealistic because it has created budget tensions," says Louis Friedman, executive director for the Planetary Society, which last week released its own recommendations for space exploration. The society's report, titled "Beyond the Moon: A New Roadmap for Human Space Exploration in the 21st Century," calls for the Obama administration to retire the Space Shuttle on time and focus on creating a new transportation infrastructure to carry humans to destinations beyond the Moon before landing on the Moon itself. The United States would have to find rides into space on other nations' rockets to bridge the gap.
The plan, which is the result of an earlier meeting of more than four dozen space experts, focuses on moving past what has already been done. Rather than landing on the Moon to replicate what has already been achieved, the Roadmap calls for the United States to escape the Earth-Moon system and only land on the Moon for a practical reason. "Get the Shuttle retired," Friedman says. "Get the Ares [rocket] out there. Be the first out into interplanetary space. Keep going further and further for longer durations, always making steps toward Mars. And once the transportation infrastructure is in place, then we focus on using a lunar base for astronaut training."
The society's report has met with some criticism, however. The day after it was released, NASA's chief administrator, Michael Griffin, stressed that, if he were to keep his job, he would require that the Bush administration's mandate to first establish a base on the Moon before going further remain unchanged.
Some space advocates argue that a big boost in funding for NASA could allow the Obama administration to both keep the Shuttle and continue developing the Constellation Program. In addition, investing in space exploration could help the next president deliver on promises of creating jobs in high-tech industries during the current economic crisis. "One way to look at the space program in these economic times is that it is a jobs program," AIAA's Bell says. "It would be bad to encourage people to go into science and technology and then get rid of one of the agencies that is the primary employer for those types of people."
Independent review of human-spaceflight plans gets under way today.
I worry we won't be able to afford NASA and other programs if things keep going this way. Again, this morning, more news of layoffs and a tumbling market.
Guest (giogavi)
Obama as next president of the United States has the hitoric opportunity,not just to decide the fate of the space shuttle, a very limited decision at this moment, but to finally redirect the entire space plan to a more profit oriented one, creating new jobs and opportunities.
The change needed is to switch from an Earth- based plan , as is now, to a space based one for the future utiizing resources already in space, deflected asteroids, as launching bases as well as cycler spaceships .
A serious study about this possibility will show tremendous advantages, saving time in the overall space development picture at a fraction of current costs and promoting a private gold rush to space initiatives.
Please, Mr. President, dump the shuttle program ASAP and kill all attempts to put a man on Mars. Work on closing the SSS (Silly Space Station) soon.
Place whatever money is available into robotic probes and remote sensing. Trying to put a creature that breathes air, must eat and that requires an extremely narrow range of temperature to survive into a vacuum is crazy. Instead let this creature put his or her brain to use designing fabulous instruments that will do his/her bidding in all manner of harsh environments and for a relative pittance! Putting a man on the moon was a groovy stunt from a time when we were all growing our hair long, but please, please give NASA the haircut it has needed ever since.
In some limited technical sense, what you say is true. But in the long run (and I really do mean the very long run) humans must explore, and do it in the flesh. There's just no substitute for it. It would be rather like denying the efforts of the early aviation pioneers on the grounds that weather balloons give more bang for the buck than some dangerous contraption that must be steered by a human. There's a practical aspect to it too. If we are to set up colonies in space or on Mars, to safegaurd the future of the human race from George Bushes here on Earth if nothing else then sooner or later humans will have to learn how to build re-entrant space vehicle, repair space stations without loosing the toolbag, and all manner of other tasks. So, we really need to be sure we do both: missions with immediate and long term scientific as well as learning potential.
sned, I don't follow your logic. Why can't unlimited exploration occur with robotics and THEN decide if what is found might make a human mission advisable. We are mortal with a lifetime that is not enough to make any kind of inter-planetary, let alone inter-solar system voyage if not impossible then very questionable. Even then, the energy required to heft humans and all they would need for life-support in an extra-terrestrial colony is immense. To compare exploration away from earth to earthbound expeditions of history is untenable. Anywhere on the surface of this planet we can breathe without assistance and in a great majority of places, eat and defecate just as well. Away from earth no basic human natural function is possible without great assistance. Yes, Man may long to visit the stars just as he did to explore the unknown parts of the earth, but the cost/benefit analysis even of the current very limited shuttle and space station efforts should be enough to sober us up. Bring on the robots.
Ares is a bad architecture for current and future U.S. launch needs. It has very little in common with the Shuttle, so development costs have skyrocketed (so to speak). Almost all aspects of the two vehicle designs (Ares-I and Ares-V) are brand new, so delays are inevitable.
The Orion crew capsule has been scaled back dramatically: crew size was reduced from six to four, safety features have been deleted, and landing on land (instead of ocean) has been abandoned. All because the Ares-I is overweight and under-performing.
The Ares-I is too small. It will barely be able reach orbit (if it works at all), and even then there is no cargo capacity for ISS support missions. The Ares-V is way, way too big, and getting bigger, more expensive, and further off into the future all the time. The solution is to use a single launch vehicle design that can support ISS missions, support a fully functional Orion spacecraft, AND support Moon, NEO, and Mars missions in the future.
The plan is DIRECT 2.0, www.directlauncher.com, and the vehicle is Jupiter. Not too big, not too small, it's just right! Plus, it re-uses much more of the Shuttle's hardware with as little modification as possible.
The trick is to get Mike Griffin to admit that Ares is a bad design and drop it before it is too late. Right now, that is not happening. We may need some "change" from higher up to get things moving again.
Mark S.
Dallas, TX
The Shuttle should be extended as this is the most responsible thing to do to both protect our $100 billion investment in the ISS, reduce the reliance on the Russian Progress and Soyuz carriers, continue to employ our highly specialized space personnel and continue to serve the intended purpose of the ISS as stated in President Regan's state of the union address, "to save and enhance lives on earth".
A few companies are currently flying commercially valuable products to space with great results; Spacehab has just returned with a vaccine target for salmonella; and Richard Garriott, the space tourist and son of a famous NASA astronaut who flew in SpaceLab, just went up to the station and grew valuable protein crystals that will soon lead to the discovery of new drug treatments. So this ends the argument that microgravity has no commercial use as the Spacehab success proves the otherwise. The reason that there were no famous micro-g discoveries to date was due to how NASA funded and managed the experiments; first remember, NASA saw one primary goal, to build the ISS not micro-g science. Also, the micro-g science money (very little) was 100% funneled to U.S. university scientists and while each project had to have an explanation as to its commercial value, this was not a requirement to receive micro-g money; in fact NASA never put much thought into commercialization as they did not see the Agency as a venture capital fund that would or could determine the commercial value of a product or service. Again, Spacehab is a commercial company that is spending investors money and has now proved the skeptics wrong as the company has a commercial vaccine that was develpoped in micro-g that is being filed with the FDA (as per their 10-K. Spacehab has said that it will continue to fly even more vaccine targets. Therefore the Shuttle needs to continue to fly so that the taxpayers will receive the benefits of saving and enhancing their lives from products produced in space. That was the vision, now give it a chance!
The ISS will be complete by 2010 and NASA is very busy to meet that deadline. Once finished, the extended Shuttle flights would be used for crew change and the delivery of cargo and micro-g manufacturing. There is more than enough capacity for manufacturing on the ISS as the U.S. has their own Express Racks (micro-g processing facilities) and under the barter agreement with the Europeans and Japanese where the U.S. delivered their modules (Columbus & Kibo) in the Shuttle, the U.S. gets half of the Express Rack capacity of these two very large and very modern modules. It would be a shame to turn our backs on this incredibly valuable and unique micro-g facility that the U.S. taxpayers have been paying for over 15 years just when it has begun to bear fruit.
Moreover, if the U.S retired the Shuttle and only had the Russian solution to rely on, NASA would not be able to increase the ISS crew size from the current 3 to the planed 6 in 2010 due to the experience we had when Columbia STS-107 crashed and the Shuttles were grounded requiring the U.S. to depend 100% on the Russians for both crew and cargo; during this three year GAP, the U.S. was forced to reduce the crew size down from 3 to 2 due to the limited cargo that the Progress and Soyuz can carry and the limited rockets the Russians could produce. So, even though the U.S. has recently paid billions for the expansion of the on-orbit facilities to house 6 full time crew members, without the Shuttle this goal could not be maintained. Extending the Shuttle would solve this problem.
As for the Constellation program, we should colonize the moon but there are a few things that came up along the way that must change our way of thinking; first, the Ares development has hit some significant problems as the solid rocket design has oscillation problems that threaten to rattle it apart(this problem has been known about since the 1970s); also the Ares has proven to be under powered for the task of providing cargo and men to the ISS; this not very successful development is extremely expensive at $3.4 billion per year for another 5 years (per NASA); and the program is very behind schedule at 2014+(was 2011). NASA’s approach to this problem is all wrong as they want to retire the Shuttle so that even more money can be spent on their Ares rocket development being convinced that money will solve all their problems, but lets face it, they had their chance and now the delay is causing international problems and red faced reliance on the Russians. Concluding, once again, that it would be a better idea to continue to fly the Shuttle until a replacement can be found.
The replacement would be the Atlas V as it is a very safe and reliable rocket that has successfully flown over 225 times with only one mishap back in the early 1980’s (better than the Shuttle); it can easily reach the ISS; can carry massive cargo (Atlas=5 metric tons, Progress/Soyuz=2.3 metric tons, Shuttle=30 metric tons); can carry the Orion manned rated spacecraft (now under development by NASA) and it can be easily man rated per a report by Lockheed years ago. Also, don’t forget there are other potential replacement options, there is the European spacecraft the ATK (but cannot re-enter the atmosphere) and the new Japanese HTV (which can re-enter but can’t carry humans) and then there is the U.S. public/private partnership, COTS lead by the Pay Pal founder Elon Musk and his Space-X Falcon 9; of all of these, the European ATK is the only one currently flying but is limited as it can’t carry any crew; the other rockets and spacecraft are under development and won’t be ready for crew delivery until 2014.
And, there is one other issue that can’t be ignored, global warming. The majority of the world’s public considers it a big problem and NASA can help as Earth observation satellites are great at watching melting icebergs and glaciers. Satellites are also great at staring down through the atmosphere with sensors that can determine the causes of global warming and determine a much needed solution. Therefore, NASA needs to spend a significant amount of their resources on observing the Earth and providing technical solutions to the problem.
This brings us to the conclusion and the only reasonable solution given the circumstances:
1. Extend the Shuttle until there is a replacement probably 2012
2. Develop the Orion to fly on the Atlas V as a Shuttle replacement in 2012
3. Keep the Constellation program going, just slow it down to a 2020 completion
4. Put the money that is saved slowing Constellation into Earth observation satellites
Regarding any discussion as to terminating NASA, this is completely preposterous as the Agency is a very large contributor to what keeps the U.S. at the forefront of technology. Eliminating this competitive edge is absurd. There is no doubt that NASA could spend their money more wisely and could be a lot better at commercializing products that come out of the Agency, but to eliminate its existence is not an option.
I think I have covered the top issues and provided the obvious solutions to circumvent the Russian concern, commercialize the taxpayer’s $100 billion investment in the ISS and generally keeping all the politicians and workforce happy.
Why are we diddling around with 'Apollo' style technology?
Burt Rutan has the right idea. What we need is a 'micro-shuttle'. Built durable, re-usable, relatively cheap, and easy to maintain. I picture something that carries up to four men, and/or a modest payload. Shaped like the current shuttles, only much smaller with a better wing to weight ratio. Also, a tough ceramo-plastic heat proof underbelly rather than those fragile tiles.
A heavy lift aircraft lifts the shuttle high and fast, then top of the wing solid boosters carry it most of the way to the I.S.S.
Get the price of a mission under $5 Million, and then charge the space tourists $10 Million and turn a flipping profit on it.
MadPoet.
Manufacturing in the United States is in trouble. That's bad news not just for the country's economy but for the future of innovation.
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robert.hargraves
39 Comments
Aim High
I have been giving a talk, Aim High, which proposes redirecting some of NASA resources towards a national energy project. Navigate to the Aim High talk at:
http://rethinkingnuclearpower.googlepages.com
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