By Emelie Rutherford
NASA leaders argued yesterday President Barack Obama’s proposal to cancel the Constellation program would not hamper human spaceflight, as lawmakers whose states’ economies are linked to the space-shuttle replacement pledged to fight for its survival.
The fiscal year 2011 NASA budget request the White House sent Congress yesterday calls for eliminating all of the Constellation program, including the developmental Ares I launch vehicle and Orion capsule, and future Ares V heavy-lift rocket. ATK [ATK] is the prime contractor for the Ares I first stage, Boeing [BA] is developing the Ares I upper stage, and Lockheed Martin [LMT] is making Orion.
In a statement, ATK said, “It is not clear why at this time the nation would consider abandoning a program of such historic promise and capability-with so much invested.” The company added that Ares is “meeting all major milestones” and is “10 times safer than any launch vehicle in existence or on the drawing board.”
The budget request, though, seeks to boost NASA’s FY ’11 budget to $19 billion, up from $18.3 billion in FY ’10, and to increase it over the next five years by $6 billion. The proposal includes monies for three new technology-development programs, including $3.1 billion over five years to develop a new heavy-lift rocket.
The spending plan notably seeks $500 million next year, and $6 billion over five years, to spur the development of human spaceflight vehicles by commercial companies in the United States. The agency hopes to do this through a range of competitive solicitations, NASA Chief Financial Officer Beth Robinson told reporters during a teleconference yesterday.
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden described NASA partnering with industry in a “fundamental new ways” to transport astronauts to the International Space Station, which under the budget proposal would have its life extended to around 2020.
“An enhanced U.S. commercial space industry will create new high-tech jobs and spin off other new businesses that will seek to take advantage of affordable access to space,” he told reporters.
NASA is using funds from the economic-stimulus law passed last year “to drive the beginnings of a commercial crew industry and the as many as 5,000 new jobs that industry suggests it can create,” Bolden said.
NASA will award $50 million to five companies to help the commercial sector transport crew to and from low-Earth orbit, he said. The firms will help develop “crew concepts, technology demonstrations, and investigations for future commercial support of human spaceflight,” he said. NASA plans to announce more details today on the awards to the five companies, which are: Blue Origin, Boeing, Paragon Space Development Corp., Sierra Nevada Corp., and United Launch Alliance.
NASA and White House officials acknowledged to reporters the battle that looms with Congress over canceling Constellation, an effort initially intended to return astronauts to the moon by 2020 on which NASA has spent approximately $9 billion.
Bolden noted the Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee, a blue-ribbon panel led by retired Lockheed Martin CEO Norm Augustine, found last year that Constellation was facing major schedule problems and needed a substantial funding boost.
“The truth is we were not on a sustainable path to get back to the moon’s surface…(and) neglecting investments in the key technologies that would be required to go beyond,” he said.
Administration officials insisted they remain focused on exploring space, and that NASA’s new technology development efforts will allow it to pursue technology that can take it beyond the moon and eventually to Mars.
“While we are canceling Constellation we are not canceling our ambitions to explore further and farther into space,” Jim Kohlenberger, chief of staff at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, told reporters. “This isn’t a step backward. I think the step backward was trying to recreate the moon landings of 40 years ago really largely using some of yesterday’s technology instead of game-changing new technologies that can take us further, faster, and more affordably into space.”
Kohlenberger said the administration and NASA will work closely with Congress to advance the “bold and ambitious new strategy” swiftly.
The Constellation cancellation, along with a series of new NASA efforts, Bolden said, amount to a “big change” that enables the agency to “harness the nation’s entrepreneurial energies.”
“This change is going to be difficult and it will require that we all work together– Congress and the administration, industry and academia, existing international partners and new, non-traditional international partners,” Bolden said.
Lawmakers whose state’s economies are impacted by NASA’s plans–such as Florida, Texas, and Alabama–have decried news of the space agency changes (Defense Daily, Feb. 1).
Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) called the NASA budget proposal the “death march for U.S. human space flight” and expressed concerns about relying on commercial firms.
Shelby, the ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies subcommittee, in a lengthy statement noted the Ares I rocket had a successful test launch last fall.
“To discard Ares I as the foundation of space exploration without demonstrated capability or proven superiority of an alternative vehicle, is irresponsible and not cost- effective,” Shelby argued. “We cannot continue to coddle the dreams of rocket hobbyists and so-called ‘commercial’ providers who claim the future of U.S. human space flight can be achieved faster and cheaper than Constellation. I have consistently stated the fallacy of believing the cure-all hype of these ‘commercial’ space companies, and my position has been supported time and again by both the experts and the facts.”
Shelby argued against NASA creating “yet another social welfare program for these ‘commercial’ companies.”
Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), chairman of the Senate Commerce Space and Science subcommittee, told reporters yesterday he was “troubled” by the proposal to cancel the Orion capsule’s development. And Nelson, a former astronaut, also expressed concerns about relying on commercial firms to transport astronauts to the space station.
He said he commended the administration for moving to extend the space station to 2020, “but if the commercial boys don’t work, then we are stuck for upward of a decade relying on the Russians, and that’s not a good position to be in.”
Nelson said he was not ready to call for restoring Constellation’s funding, as Shelby and other lawmakers did, because he had not seen all the details of the proposal.
“When the president says that he’s going to cancel Constellation, I can tell you to muster the votes and to overcome that is going to be very very difficult,” Nelson acknowledged.