It’s equal or better result for less cost may be about to shine in American space exploration
Despite the shrieks you might have heard from a few special interests, the Obama administration’s budget for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration deserves strong approval from Republicans. The 2011 spending plan for the space agency does what is obvious to anyone who cares about man’s future in space and what presidential commissions have been recommending for nearly a decade.
The Commission on the Future of the United States Aerospace Industry in 2002 suggested that greater commercial activity in space was the proper way forward. The Aldridge Commission of 2004, headed by former Secretary of the Air Force Edward C. “Pete” Aldridge, made clear that the only way NASA could achieve success with President George W. Bush’s Vision for Space Exploration was to expand the space enterprise with greater use of commercial assets. Most recently, the Augustine Commission, headed by Norman R. Augustine, former chief executive of Lockheed Martin, made clear that commercial providers of space-launch services were a necessary part of maintaining space leadership for the United States.
NASA consistently ignored or rejected the advice provided to it by outside experts. The internal culture within the agency was actively hostile to commercial enterprise. A belief had grown from the days when the Apollo program landed humans on the moon that only NASA could do space well and therefore only NASA projects and programs were worthy. To his credit, former NASA Administrator Michael Griffin adopted a program to begin to access commercial companies for hauling cargo to the International Space Station. That program existed alongside the much larger effort to build a new generation of space vehicles designed to take us back to the moon. It has been under constant financial pressure because of the cost overruns in the moon mission, called Constellation.
With the new NASA budget, the leadership of the agency is attempting to refocus the manned space program along the lines that successive panels of experts have recommended. The space shuttle program, which was scheduled to end, largely for safety reasons, will be terminated as scheduled. The Constellation program also will be terminated, mostly because its ongoing costs cannot by absorbed within projected NASA budget limits. The International Space Station will have its life extended to at least 2020, thereby preserving a $100 billion laboratory asset that otherwise was due to be dumped in the Pacific Ocean by middecade. The budget also sets forth an aggressive program for having cargo and astronaut crews delivered to the space station by commercial providers.
Move over, gov’t.
…but can the commercial providers do it in the scant ten years they’ve been given, considering that research and launch facilities are either run or controlled by the government?
To me, this is the same thing as a bunch of professional poker players inviting your kid to sit in, knowing he will be All In in two hands.
The only way to make this work would have been to order NASA to re-direct some of their assets, and that isn’t really done with this change.
I’ve been saying for some years now that SpaceX will be delivering cargo & passengers to the ISS at about 10% of NASA’s lb-to-orbit cost. The first man-rated Dragon capsule will sit atop the Falcon-9, now being assembled at the cape to rendezvous with ISS in March or April. http://www.SpaceX.com for more info.