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Apr 23, 2009 03:35 PM | 16
NASA's stated goal of returning humans to the moon by 2020, which received a tentative boost in February with an affirmation in President Barack Obama's budget request for fiscal year 2010, is reportedly now in danger.
According to a report in the Orlando Sentinel quoting unnamed NASA engineers and contractors, the space agency's timelines "are quietly being revised" in light of ongoing technical and budgetary problems. That revision, engineers told the newspaper, means the "2020 date to send humans back to the moon is in deepening trouble."
The agency has pushed back by two years its internal timeline for the scheduled moon launch of Ares V, a planned heavy-cargo carrier rocket, according to the Sentinel report. NASA had reportedly tagged the Ares V with a 2018 internal target—which builds in leeway for unforeseen problems—for a lunar launch, while announcing a 2020 date to the public. Grey Hautaluoma, a spokesperson for NASA, declined to comment on the Sentinel story. "We won't have any comment about our budgets and schedules until the 2010 budget is released next month," Hautaluoma said.
The Ares V rocket is designed to be unmanned but will play a role in planned astronaut missions to the moon by delivering the Earth departure stage and lunar lander to Earth orbit for rendezvous with a separately launched crewed spacecraft. With the internal timeline for its moon shot now reportedly set to 2020, there is little room for error if NASA is to meet its stated target.
One contractor told the Sentinel that an announcement of the delay by Kennedy Space Center officials "was not received with enthusiasm" by his group. Any delays will likely exacerbate job losses at Kennedy and elsewhere along Florida's "Space Coast," where the shuttle program has fueled the space industry for three decades. Without intervention from Washington, the space shuttle program will be shut for good down next year, and its replacement, the Ares I rocket and Orion crew capsule, will not be ready before 2015.
Artist's conception of Ares V: NASA/MSFC
Tags:
space shuttle,
NASA,
Constellation program,
Orion,
Ares V,
KSC,
Ares I,
moon exploration
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16 Comments
Add CommentOK, despite all the conspiracy theories about faking the moon landing, I know that we made it to the moon. So tell me this, why is it that when we start the space race, with no experience in putting a man in orbit, we completed in less than a decade...but now, with all the more knowledge and technology we have, it takes them over 10 years of planning, in addition to already putting several men on the moon.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIs it a $$$ issue? Is it a labor issue? It can't be a technological issue, we already did it!
NASA, you aren't making yourselves look any better...
NASA is an old buracracy, and they never do anything innovative or efficiently.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe only way to get rid of all that red tape and inefficiency is to fire them all, the good and bad, and start again.
Scrap NASA, and give the money to a new organization, almost ANY new organization, and they'll get the job done faster and for less money.
@agenthucky: the main reason we could do it in the 60's in a single decade was because NASA's budget at the time peaked at 5.5% of the total federal budget, compared to about 0.5% of the federal budget today. It was also a race in the 60's, whereas today we are trying to develop a sustainable lower cost program with reusable components rather than racing to get it done fast.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFace it, this is Science run by Politics, which all comes down money. In the 60's we were in a very hot Cold War, and we won. Since we didn't get any miraculous profit making new warp drives and transporter beams from NASA, now we cut the budget and pretend we care. I abso hate politics...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen the new world was discovered, it opened up a wealth of opportunities for the nations that took a gamble. If we don't send missions to the moon we can't use it as launch point for a rich and lucrative option of mining asteroids for precious metals which we may have not even discovered yet. Then there's the advantage of not putting all of our eggs into one basket.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI fear we may have waited too long to go back. In times like this people are more worried about keeping the roof over their heads and putting food on the table.
It is a political and management issue. The first run at the moon was done with the best and brightest in an atmosphere of only those who could truly produce would go forward.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisToday it is all about funding and reducing career risk. If you get the work done, you funding goes away. If you accept a tough challenge, or any challenge, you risk your career - so managers maneuver for the greatest funding and the least responsibility.
And that is killing not only the space program, but the Air Force fighter programs, the Navy ship building programs, the Intel community's software projects, and the US economy as a whole.
well, that's the problem isn't it? when the "new world" was discovered, they were literally bringing back ships of gold. it made going there worth all the cost, risks, and loses, because the profit was more than 100 to 1.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisin contrast, if the earth had a ring of solid gold circling in low earth orbit, we still couldn't go up and get it and have any profit left over after costs. never mind somewhere as far away as the asteroid belt.
the only thing I've seen going up and back at a profit in my lifetime has been space tourists, and it's the Russians willing to do that, not us.
Don't worry. China will probably do it. US is a has been.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe biggest difference between the 60's and now is the economy. In the 60's, our industrial output was just about at its peak. Couple this fact with adequate federal funding, and miracles can be achieved.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHere is how the timetable should be estimated:
5 years if all goes well
5 more years for expected problems
5 more years for unexpected problems
5 more years for unforeseen unexpected problems
50 more years due to budgetary cuts caused by the inability to achieve the goal within 20 years.
It could be a technology issue, actually. I've heard it said we couldn't build a Saturn V today if we wanted to.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisjamerz3294: We did get the miraculous profits from the space race. They just weren't in the form of warp drives and transporter beams but rather in the form of the iron lung and micro electronics. We owe most of our modern medical equipment and all of the information age tech to the space race.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe article is right on but the fact is with all the inovations we have in the private and business sector need to come together and do this in 5 years. Because of the tech of today and the advances we are still making.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat a depressing thought.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat ever happened to the race for He3? Did Russia decide they would just steal the technology from us rather than laying a claim to the He3 fields?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBesides He3, there is also an abundance of titanium on the moon. A brand new U.S. Patent No. 7,523,892 titled: "Centripetal Reflex Method of Space Launch" describes a cheaper method of climbing out of the gravity well and reaching the moon for a dramatically lower cost-per-kilogram transported.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe main problem with going to the moon (whether the expensive NASA way or some less expensive way) is not that the American people can't afford it, but that they don't want to. The new mood that has possessed this current generation of Americans is anything but heroic. Not that we don't have heroes--there are plenty of the conventional kind from the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, but no celebration of that except maybe in the South where they also celebrate NASCAR drivers who don't go anywhere at high speed except around a loop.
Typical Americans simply have no curiosity about anything and no heroic impulse or appreciation of heroic activity. They are entirely self-absorbed and the politicians who endlessly promise to give them every benefit and advantage that they can dream of and make someone else pay for it will ever be re-elected.
But someone will colonize the moon. Someone will make it into an industrial base for spreading outward into the solar system. Six billion people on this planet have too much energy and too much outrageous smarts to stay home. The genie can't be put back in the bottle, not even by degenerate Western civilizations that increasingly view the human race itself as an unfortunate and highly negative blight upon an otherwise pristine and Eden-like world.
Well from what Ive heard, we dont have the same technology or people backing it like we had when we made the Saturn V rocket that took us to the moon the first time. With that being so, I still believe we have the technological capabilities to create a comparable rocket, or at least Id hope so.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlso, were not in a large race to get to the moon first like we were with Russia back for the first moon landing. Isn't one of the reasons were going to the moon again is because China is going in 2020 too?
Perhaps we should just forget about going to the moon again, we've done that, we should focus on getting to Mars, that would be much more rewarding because no one has gone there yet.
Either way, I hope they continue to fund NASA and create more space missions, whether that is going to the Moon or going to Mars, because the future of mine and many others careers depends on it.