ONE MORE TIME: Space shuttle Atlantis, seen here touching down in May at the end of what had been its final scheduled mission, may fly to the International Space Station once more in 2011. A Congressional authorization bill for NASA calls for an additional shuttle flight before the program is phased out.
Image: NASA
-
The Best Science Writing Online 2012
Showcasing more than fifty of the most provocative, original, and significant online essays from 2011, The Best Science Writing Online 2012 will change the way...
Read More »
President Obama's plan for NASA—or at least a modified version of it—cleared a major hurdle late on Sept. 29, when the House of Representatives agreed to the Senate's version of a three-year authorization bill for the space agency. The legislation would add one space shuttle flight to the docket, raising the total number of remaining shuttle missions to three, and would pave the way for commercial operators to return astronauts to orbit once the shuttle is retired in 2011.
The bill, which Obama is expected to sign, lays out authorized expenditures for fiscal years 2011, 2012 and 2013, but the actual funds allocated to the agency will depend on later appropriations legislation.
In his February budget request, Obama proposed sweeping changes to the way NASA does business, essentially scrapping the agency's prior objectives of building a new set of rockets and space hardware to deliver astronauts to low-Earth orbit and then the moon. Instead, the president's plan called for delegating the development of low-Earth orbit services to the private sector. Having endured criticism for omitting details on where, if not the moon, astronauts would be headed, and on what time frame, the president announced in April that an unprecedented visit to a nearby asteroid would be the first destination, perhaps as early as the 2020s, followed by a manned mission to Mars in the 2030s.
The Senate passed its authorization bill, which matched the $19 billion that Obama had requested for NASA in fiscal year 2011, on Aug. 5. The bill authorized $612 million to develop commercial crew and cargo services in 2011, as well as $500 million for commercial crew development in both 2012 and 2013. But a very different House bill that was introduced in July offered a much smaller commitment to the private sector—only $64 million for 2011—and proposed devoting the bulk of NASA's exploration budget to essentially reviving the family of Ares rockets that Obama sought to cancel.
The triumph of the Senate authorization bill over the House version is good news for private spaceflight companies such as SpaceX, who could step into the void left by the shuttle's retirement to ferry astronauts to orbit. "The bill sets NASA on an exciting course to focus on exploration beyond low-Earth orbit, while recognizing the valuable role American companies are ready to undertake in ending our reliance on Russia to carry our astronauts to the International Space Station," SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said in a prepared statement.
The Senate version hardly puts NASA out of the rocket business, however. In 2011 alone, the authorization bill budgets $1.1 billion dollars to continue developing the Orion space capsule that was originally intended to launch atop Ares rockets and $1.6 billon to develop a vehicle called the Space Launch System to boost astronauts beyond low-Earth orbit. The bill cleared the House by a vote of 304–118 at 11:36 P.M., toward the end of a marathon legislative day as the House prepared to adjourn until November 15, after the fall elections.
"As you can imagine, we're thrilled to have this three-year authorization bill," NASA deputy administrator Lori Garver said in a teleconference with reporters Sept. 30, calling the bipartisan Congressional support a resounding vote of confidence in the agency. "I think it's clear that our space program inspires passion across party lines," Garver said.
The extra shuttle flight, which would launch no earlier than June 2011, would be used to resupply the International Space Station with hardware to extend its usability. "We have a space station where we're all getting complacent on how well it's operating," Garver said. "We'd love to put additional spares up on the space station."
That Congress took action and green-lit a sizable budget for NASA is a good thing, says Jim Bell, a Cornell University planetary scientist and president of the nonprofit Planetary Society. On balance, Bell says, the legislation appears to be a step in the right direction, laying out a healthy program of Earth science, robotic exploration and technology development, among other things. "On the flip side, we're a little disappointed in the rather tepid or backhanded support for the new proposed human spaceflight program," Bell says. "We were solidly behind the administration's original proposal," he adds, which was more focused on commercial investment and research and development of new technologies for human spaceflight.
The plan authorized by Congress is more aligned with existing technology. The bill stipulates that the Space Launch System be based on shuttle- and Ares-derived components wherever possible and specifies performance metrics for the vehicle. "It seems like Congress is going in and trying to build a rocket. And so that's a little unfortunate that the bill is so specific and prescriptive," Bell says. "We'd really like NASA to focus on exploration rather than transportation."
See what we're tweeting about
10 Comments
Add CommentTime to scrap tens of billions put into manned space flight and put the resources into unmanned probes, space telescopes, etc.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat 'extra' Shuttle flght is going to cost about 4 billon dollars....pure pork because nobody has ther guts to pull the plug before the November elections.
The bill provides funding for a new shuttle derived heavy launch booster.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWith their country led by engineers as opposed to the West where nearly all our leaders are attorneys, China has a much better idea for a heavy lift booster
The Chinese could care less about greenies, so a modification of Freeman Dyson's Orion scheme is in the works to give them all the lift capacity for which anybody could ever envision a need.
Drill a 2 mile hole in a salt formation. Put a small nuke at the bottom in a water tank, put a thick steel plate on top of the tank with a automated payload capsule on top. Light the nuke and let er rip. When the projectile exits slam the door shut and redirect the radioactive steam back underground. Radiation leaks - a lot less than the daily radioactive output of one of their coal plants.
3000 tons at $10 a lb straight to the moon. Seal the hole and drill a new one for the next load.
Great for compressable are ice, steel,frozen food,fuel tanks, rocket fuel, circuit boards, nuclear fuel, copper wire and a thousand other commodities needed in space.
Humans and flower petals will have to be launched another way.
Google 150-kiloton-nuclear-verne-gun for more
With the cargo capacity available, a simple very efficient spacebased transport could use the nuclear engines from stolen NASA Nerva designs since we aren't allowed to use them.
A nuke powered stream cannon seems so 18th century. What happened to the idea of the maglev rail cannon? This would do the same thing. It would be reusable and nonpolluting. After you consider the mining expenses, the environmental contamination and clean up of the U236 extraction, making the hole in the ground, the contamination of the ground water, etc, this type of launch system is so expensive that I really do not think the Chinese would waste money like this. My two Chinese daughters in laws are very frugal. I can not imagine that the Chinese government would waste money with this.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere have been lotsa underground nuke tests in Nevada and elsewhere in salt formations. There is no water table in them and nobody has even bothered cleaning them up.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe $10 a ton includes all costs including the nuke.
Rail guns, while a great option, couldn't handle even a small fraction of the load this sucker can boost.
The USA has discarded plans for tentative steps towards colonization of the moon. Instead the focus is now on Mars. I wish another nation will focus on the moon. Being nearer, the moon offers itself to mankind as the cheapest first stage in space colonization.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe moon enables us to test space colonization at much lower cost than distant Mars. By the time we venture to Mars we should have perfected our techniques etc on the moon.
No surprises here. Hedonistic societies do not undertake to perform great accomplishments.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf someone would take the trouble to type into the computer:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this> http://www. rexresearch/hiddink/hiddink/htm <
you fill find the technology of the Flying Saucer.
Maybe Scientific American could print the patent in an upoming issue.
With that we could build a disposable space ship, load it with tons of dangerous material and fly it to Jupiter and dump it there..
The technology was suggested to Nasa in 1980.
A Shuttle would have taken off VTOL and with a constant acceleration/braking force of only ONE G would have arrived at the ISS in one hour. This all at much lower cost than the (at least) One Billion that a Shuttle flight costs now.
It could have flown to the Moon in a couple of hours and to Mars inside one day. The inherent force field would have protected Crew and Shuttle from collisions with Space Debris and radiation.
To get rid of all the dangerous materials we could build a big space ship, fill it with it and with remote control fly it to Jupiter and dump it there.
wee...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAstrodont....a shuttle flight doesn't cost 4 billion...try 500 million...still way too expensive but it's what we have right now....
sethdayal...using nuke's to launch a satellite or material does not make sense to anyone but you....
hartson...right on...rail guns for orbiting material are the way to go....rapid fire to launch pretty much anything but people....
Tofara...the Chinese are focusing on the moon...not that I believe it is the best path...we've been there....
frgough...what is the great accomplishment you want to see....
ennui...guess what, your link doesn't work...what a surprise...
Wayne Williamson, I got it working but you can try:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOne Terminal Capacitor Joseph Hiddink
that one worked and is better than the us patent office copy(some of the figures don't show)....still it disturbs me that he went to all these governments and wanted money but was unwilling to show them anything....he claims to have done all these cool things but refused to show anyone them...no investor would give something like this a second thought with out seeing some proof...too bad...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this