Orbital: NASA may send astronauts aloft in commercially owned rockets like SpaceX's Falcon 9, which was test-fired in March.
Image: Courtesy of Chris Thompson SpaceX
A crisis at NASA forces a new president to take action. A panel issues a report. The president gives a speech. He directs NASA to find a better way to get astronauts into orbit and to encourage private companies to enter the space taxi business. The plan promises to be the biggest shake-up of the space program since the glory days of the moon landings. Some embrace it; others take a dislike.
So it was with President George W. Bush’s vision for NASA in 2004, which sought to rekindle the agency’s exploratory spirit after the space shuttle Columbia disaster. The plan, though, fell apart when Bush failed to come through with the money to implement it. And so President Barack Obama came into office, found NASA in dire straits, commissioned a panel, led by aerospace veteran Norman Augustine, to work the problem, and made a big speech in April. How will the story end this time? Only strong presidential follow-through can keep NASA on course.
Obama proposed jettisoning much of the Constellation program, which Bush set up to build rockets and Apollo-like capsules to replace the space shuttle, and instead paying private companies such as Elon Musk’s SpaceX to launch astronauts into orbit. He also relaxed Bush’s deadlines to return to the moon, refocusing on what the Augustine commission called a “flexible path” of incrementally more difficult missions to asteroids and ultimately Mars [see “Jump-Starting the Orbital Economy,” by David H. Freedman].
For supporters of Constellation, the proposal was a call to arms. Even the reclusive Neil Armstrong came out to question it, and over the summer Congress tore it apart. The Senate agreed to a stripped-down version; the House of Representatives rejected it altogether. As an end-of-September fiscal deadline loomed, the House caved in and went along with the Senate.
Leaving aside the politics, the disagreement hinged on a genuine dilemma. Skeptics of the plan say that private companies are unproved. Proponents worry that keeping Constellation alive would be throwing good money after bad. Better to fund entrepreneurs who can drive down the cost of orbital launches.
Both sides have a point, but what tilts the balance in favor of Obama’s plan is that we can’t really “leave aside the politics.” For Congress, NASA is not solely—or even primarily—a space agency. It is also a jobs agency, an industrial policy agency and a foreign policy agency. These ulterior motives keep getting in the way of good engineering. For instance, Obama had proposed undertaking basic technology development and only then deciding on the design for a new heavy-lift rocket, but the Senate insisted that NASA build the rocket with existing technology—which preserves jobs, even if it raises costs and hampers innovation in the long term.
The charm of Obama’s plan is that it seeks to disentangle NASA from these vested interests. NASA will set the price and technical specifications of orbital launches and leave the details to private enterprise. It will be able to spread its eggs among many baskets rather than putting them in one. The plan thus fights the political pressures with the only force that might be more powerful: the profit motive. Space businesses have a strong incentive to buy equipment and hire people for their technical merit rather than because their congressional representative was able to bring home the bacon. That’s one reason why Obama’s plan met with so much opposition. Still, Congress ended up mostly going along with it—and that will help to let NASA be NASA.
Bush’s plan failed for lack of follow-through, and if Obama’s is not to do the same, he must keep pushing for more reforms. The first goal should be to fix the flaws in the plan that Congress has enacted, beginning with the lack of sufficient funds for technology development. If NASA were more consistent about investing in new technology, future missions could pull what they need off the shelf and would have a fighting chance of staying on budget. More broadly, Congress must find a way to give NASA some stability of funding and purpose. The Augustine Commission pointed out that NASA has been hobbled by “recurring budget ambiguities” and congressional micromanagement. The agency needs greater autonomy, perhaps even a dedicated funding stream.
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14 Comments
Add CommentI think it was a big mistake for NASA to give up commercial satellite launch business after the Challenger disaster. Today US satellites getting launched to orbit using Russian rockets! If NASA goes back to satellite launching, it would provide a big steady revenue source.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNASA also should focus on developing new propulsion tech because keep using tried-and-true old tech is not progress!
Another worthy goal for NASA would be to start putting in orbit a long-term observation satellite to all planets and major moons in the Solar System (especially using Polar orbits which provide global surface coverage). That would increase scientific knowledge about Solar System exponentially.
Clearly, two issues are being blurred here. Both involve manned spaceflight. One issue concerns LEO transport of passengers and cargo to the ISS or other destinations. These flights could be accomplished by either or both private and NASA spacecraft. Preferably, NASA would relinquish this roll as private enterprise proves itself.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe other issue, which I believe Neil Armstrong refers, is manned space exploration. Here a clear vision is required. Yes, cost is an issue but the benefits especially, those indirect benefits, are incalculable. Look not at the cost of Apollo; look at the technological benefits to all mankind. Neil Armstrong's statement: "This is one small step for man, but a giant leap for mankind" must be examined on multiple levels. We are political animals and politics will always be involved, even in private companies. Will private businesses explore? Where is the profit? We need to revive the Apollo and post-Apollo plans. Let us first return to the moon and establish a base there. A mass driver for launching and mining water on the moon for fuel will drop long term costs significantly. Fly by Venus. Fly to Mars, land on one or both of the moons. Thoroughly study the surface from these vantage points and decide where to establish a colony. Fly to an asteroid and ride it, studying our solar system. Do not return to earth, at least not with the spacecraft. Orbit the earth or the moon and ferry to the moon base or the ISS and then return to earth. Reuse all of the spacecraft.
NASA has run down the same path so long that they have lost their way and purpose. When a business like NASA becomes stagnant they no longer serve a purpose and must be redirected and given a new purpose. That is what President Obama has tried to do and we should not let the Republicans knock NASA's engine in reverse like they are trying to do with the clean energy engine. NASA should embrace the changes and move forward to a new direction and purpose.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisManned space flight has little to do with science and lots to do with providing a revenue stream for aerospace contractors.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNASA need to focus on science and not politics. Manned missions are public entertainment we can no longer afford. We need to optimize the science and that means taking out the human element from space exploration.
This article does a great job at explaining what the intent of Obama's plan was, and how it turned into the shell it is now. We at the Space Frontier Foundation have whole-heartedly supported the Obama plan for NASA since it came out. I invite everyone reading this to see the video we published explaining why we support it:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://spacefrontier.org/2010/09/27/space-for-the-people/
Sure, it is good For Nasa. All the people involved have their interest in the obsolete technology of rocket companies.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI offered Nasa the technology of the Flying Saucer in 1980 but the Propulsion Engineers were not interested until the Space Disasters happened. Then they "forgot" to ask me for advice like I had urged, got the setting of an E-Bomb instead of the one for Gravity Control and Propulsion and caused another disaster (The Big Black-out of 2003)and informed Nasa that the technology of the Flying Saucer was unsuitable for Space Travel. Nasa refused to pay me my fee.
The rocket industry was jubilant, now they could start building One Billion Dollar Heavy Lifters, which by the time it is ready will probably cost $10 Billion.
In the mean time some other country wih smarter brains will have made me an offer for the system. It may have a real Space Craft flying all over our creation. The Moon in a few hours, Mars inside one day. A few years before the HL is ready.
Nasa (and the USA) will look like primitive Barbarians, scientifically. Thank the new management of Nasa.
On the other hand, maybe the technology is too advanced for a country like the USA. I know it was too advanced for my own country Canada.
President Obama is part of the wing of the Democratic Party that has always hated the fact that government money is spent on manned spaceflight instead of more important social programs. So just turning over manned spaceflight to private industry seemed like the perfect solution since it would appear to appease the Republican's anti-government philosophy. However, there are many Democrats and Republicans in Congress who love NASA and believe in a government manned space program.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPresident Nixon trapped NASA at LEO after the end of the Apollo Moon missions, transforming America's manned space program into merely a symbol of the pioneering space program that it use to be. Unfortunately, Bush allowed NASA's Moon Base program to revert into an expensive Apollo on steroids program while Obama attempted to continue the Nixon policy by terminating America's return to the Moon altogether.
Thankfully, the Congress took a much more rational approach. There was no logical reason for further studies on heavy lift vehicles since HLVs have been studied to death by NASA for the last 20 years.
There's nothing wrong with NASA helping private industry to develop their own private commercial space programs. But the government agenda and the private agendas are totally different. Private industry should focus on space tourism and launching private space stations and not be dependent on an ISS program that should actually be terminated after 2016 in order for NASA to focus its funds on the next generation of heavy lift launched space stations and beyond LEO missions.
Marcel F. Williams
Only robotic missions to the moon and asteroids will save NASA.It will do so by bringing back rare earth minerals that are in short supply on Earth.The profit from these endeavors can then be used to fund manned missions back to the Moon and then on to Mars.Who Knows there may be enough profits to fund the entire government.What is going to happen is that the government's that do this first will take a gigantic lead over all the rest.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA common misconception is that NASA builds rockets. They don't, their prime contractors do. For example, the Space Shuttle is built and maintained by Boeing, P&W, ATK, Lockmart and so on. Once a launch system is designed to NASA's specifications, the prime contractors have a monopoly on their fiefdoms and a rationale to be the most expensive in the world. Guess what the results are?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisObama's plan to use more commercial launchers will allow a choice of rockets and foster competition to be the most reliability and cost effective, something that doesn't currently exist with the Shuttle.
Project Constellation spent approximately $50 Billion developing the Ares 1, part of the Shuttle's replacement, and is still hasn't launched, just a first stage test so far. That's a lot of money considering the Ares 1 uses recycled shuttle and even Apollo hardware. Meanwhile, SpaceX developed the Falcon9 from scratch, in just a few years, and made it into orbit. But here's the kicker, they did it for about one-hundredth the cost of the Ares 1. Yes, 1/100th. Obama is on the right track inviting commercial launchers to participate more with NASA.
NASA is good at doing things that have never been done, making fantastic one-off machines and science experiments that would never be built in the private sector. It isn't very good running a cost effective manufacturing program for rockets.
NASA should concentrate on what it does best, and it's prime contractors need a little competition. They've been gorging themselves at the trough for too long. These prime contractors are huge and powerful and rich, which explains the political fallout of Obama's plan. The mere though of having to compete with SpaceX must keep them up at night.
as a Chinese college student majored in aerospace engineering,I'd rather say a closer global collaboration should be needed on manned space exploration and other domains in space science.Literally speaking,science has nothing to do with politics,whether you are a capitalist or a communist.For example,China or Russia is responsible for making efficient rockets because they have more experience;Japan is for electronic devices ; Europe is for navigation or life support system;US, with no doubt,has the core and trains astronauts,with more and more countries participate in this program,the cost is lowering down, and new technologies may be developed. Space science benefits humankind so it's our common business.Make an extreme analogy ,when we are ruled by other other-space creatures, our politics has no point of existence,there is no difference between a capitalist or a communist in their "eyes".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis could be useful, What befuddles me is why The United States Of America the most powerful nation in the world is going to have to pay the Russians to travel to and from the ISS? We've become so weak minded and inept that using and controlling that which placed in space in the hands of a Landlord!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPrivate enterprise my be our only hope as the Congress Collectively hasn't the Will and intelligence to see the this is the high ground....ALWAYS TAKE AND HOLD THE HIGH GROUND...... anything less and we lose!
The late great U.S. Space program!
It is nice that they allow the internet to be accessed at the mental health facility you are confined to. It must be very boring there otherwise.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Project Constellation spent approximately $50 Billion developing the Ares 1..."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat $50 billion amount sounds way too high. Was Ares 1 program initiated in 2005? So, in 5+ years Ares 1 cost ~$10 billion per year? More than the Shuttle and ISS combined?
Cheers! ~Michael (ARM*Radio / Astronomy.FM)
Since Apollo NASA has been in a rut from which it cannot escape. It is a zero-sum game of a project growing at the expense of another. Some entirely new paradigm is needed. Google "microlaunchers" for a plan to start with space exploration what the microcomputers did for creating a computer culture and what I type this on.
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