Following President Obama’s address at the Kennedy Space Center regarding the administration’s new space exploration policy, NASA administrator Charles Bolden, Office of Science and Technology Policy director John Holdren, and retired Lockheed Martin chairman and CEO Norman Augustine spoke to a gathering of government, private, and academic leaders.
Holdren said that the administration's new strategy offered a number of important advantages, such as faster access to space, less cost to the taxpayer, and a wider range of space destinations. He predicted the policy will gain support as more people come to fully understand it.
Augustine briefly described how the 10-member commission that he chaired examined NASA’s current space exploration programs, budgets, and objectives. Having 90 days in which to write a report, the committee was tasked with offering options but not specific recommendations.
Explaining that a nation’s space policy depends heavily on how much it can afford, Augustine reviewed some of the factors considered by the committee. Among them was the years-ago decision made by the Bush administration to retire the space shuttle. The committee concluded that keeping the shuttle in active service would consume funding that is needed for the exploration program and increase the time that American astronauts would be confined to a low Earth orbit.
The administration’s new policy recommends the International Space Station be kept in service for an additional five years beyond its original retirement date of 2010. Augustine said this would be “a very good investment” that would avoid damaging US relationships with the station’s international partners.
Regarding the Constellation medium- and heavy-lift launch vehicle program, Augustine described how appropriations for the program had been about one-third less than what was originally planned, which has resulted in a significant disparity between the program’s objectives and its funding. The original program is, he said, “not executable.” The Constellation’s Ares I has had a schedule slippage of between three and five years, which will result in the rocket being put in service too late to ferry crews to the shuttle, and too early for use in exploration. It is important for the US to develop a heavy-lift launch vehicle such as the Ares V for deep space exploration. Work on this rocket has barely started because funding has been shifted away from it to other programs. Augustine concurred with the president’s decision to develop the Orion space capsule as a space station rescue vehicle.
One of the most controversial aspects of the administration’s new space policy involves the eventual use of commercial contractors for the transportation of astronauts to the space station following the shuttle’s retirement. Augustine contends commercial interests would be able to provide this service at less expense than the shuttle would. In addition, federal contracting for this service would encourage the development of commercial space providers in much the same way that the government’s use of commercial airlines did for the delivery of air mail. “I believe our industry is up to the job,” Augustine said, asking if critics have more faith in Russia’s Soyuz to transport American astronauts to the space station than US companies.
Augustine predicted that after spending tens of billions of dollars the US would land humans on the Moon in 2020, which, he said, many would see as their “grandfather’s” space program. Augustine said it would take decades for America to land humans on Mars. In the intervening years, much could be learned from sending Americans to other destinations such as asteroids, Lagrange points, and an orbital mission to Mars.
In concluding his remarks, Augustine explained that the administration’s new space policy is “very close” to Variant 5B in the Augustine Commission’s report, and would be “worthy of our nation.” It would, Augustine said, transform our space program from one of transportation to exploration.
Written by Richard M. Jones; edited by Paul Guinnessy.Originally published at the American Institute of Physics FYI.
