By Marina Malenic
Pledging a “transformative agenda” for NASA, President Barack Obama said his new national space plan aims to send Americans to an asteroid and eventually to Mars in the 2030s.
“Nobody is more committed to human space flight than I am,” Obama said in a speech at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. “But we have to do it in a smart way.”
Under his proposed plan, the United States would begin testing spacecraft for deep space exploration by 2025.
“And, by the mid-2030s, I believe we can send humans to orbit Mars and return them safely to Earth,” he added. “We will actually reach space faster and more often under this new plan.”
Recently, top NASA leaders defended Obama’s Fiscal 2011 agency budget, which includes the proposed cancellation of the Constellation effort, the successor program to the Space Shuttle. The program had been made up of the Ares I launch vehicle and Orion capsule and future Ares V heavy-lift rocket. ATK [ATK] has been the prime contractor for the Ares I first stage, Boeing [BA] has developed the Ares I upper stage, and Lockheed Martin [LMT] has been making Orion.
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, begun during the Bush administration, was facing major schedule problems and had not been adequately funded.
Obama recently said his NASA budget would grow by another $6 billion over five years. Specifically, the plan revives a scaled-back version of the Orion spacecraft, which would be launched unmanned to the International Space Station to serve as an escape capsule for astronauts. And a heavy-lift rocket would be built by 2015 for the launch of new spacecraft into deep space and in preparation for a manned flight to Mars.
“Unlike the previous program, we are setting a course with specific and achievable milestones,” he said. Obama also said his plan will add more than 2,500 space industry jobs to the economy, will the potential for more than 10,000 more as a private space transportation industry takes root over the coming decades.
Speaking at the same venue, Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), chairman of the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Science and Space, said the president is moving in the right direction. He warned, however, that Congress “will not just rubber stamp” his plan.
“We’ll take what he’s saying to our committee, and then we’ll change some things,” he said.
Key Republicans were more critical of the Obama plan. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (Texas), ranking member on the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, raised concerns about relying on Russian Soyuz missions for transporting U.S. astronauts to the International Space Station.
“The president’s evolving vision for NASA continues to leave America grounded,” she said in a press statement. “Even the president’s second try at stating a vision fails to address the hard reality that without the space shuttle and years from a commercial developed vehicle, our human space flight options are limited to other nations such as Russia and China.”
House Science and Technology Committee Ranking Member Ralph Hall (R-Texas) expressed strong concerns with the president’s proposed direction for NASA.
“The president’s announcement today, unfortunately, still will do nothing to ensure America’s superiority in human space exploration or to decrease our reliance on Russia in the interim,” Hall said in a statement. “America needs to have a bold presence in space and a proven plan for access to low Earth orbit and beyond. This is essential to our national security, and global predominance.”
Obama’s proposal to call on commercial spacecraft manufacturers to provide spacecraft for U.S. exploration was also met with skepticism. Former astronauts like Neil Armstrong and Jim Lovell have recently criticized the plan. Others, like Buzz Aldrin, however, have praised the new vision.