The current mission of the space shuttle Endeavour will complete the last unfinished part of the International Space Station. With only four more shuttle launches remaining before the retirement of the shuttle fleet at yearend, the latest launch heralds the approaching end of an era for American space exploration.
Back on earth, President Obama's proposed budget for the space program envisions a radical redesign of America's space program for a new era. If the President is a socialist, as so many of his adversaries claim, his space proposals certainly don't show it. He wants to stake the future of much of the U.S. manned space program on the success of free private enterprise.
In a recent national poll, 63 percent of Republicans said they think the President of the United States is a socialist. Even a few Democrats may agree. But look closely at what he has recommended in his proposed budget for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Something entirely different emerges.
From Gemini to Apollo to the space shuttle, NASA has always designed and built its own launch systems. That's what the space agency been doing the past few years in designing new rockets and a new crew capsule for the "Constellation" program that's been supposed to take Americans back to the moon by 2020.
But we're nowhere near returning to the moon. The Constellation program has been plagued by technical problems, delays, and ever-rising costs. NASA has been squeezed tighter and tighter by a budget with many more missions than money to pay for them. And, following the recommendation of a blue-ribbon panel he appointed shortly after taking office, the President has proposed cancelling the entire Constellation effort.
With only a few more missions left, the space shuttle fleet, after long years of historic service, is up for sale. Finally completed, the International Space Station will still circle in low earth orbit, producing needed scientific knowledge. Importantly, the President's proposed budget would extend the expected life of the space station by five years to 2020.
Consistent with the traditional approach, Obama is looking to NASA itself to develop new heavy-lift rockets that would eventually carry new spacecraft beyond Earth orbit on new manned missions of space exploration. Back to the moon? On to Mars? What those new missions would be and when they would happen has yet to be determined.
In the meantime, though, the President is looking not to NASA, but instead to a rapidly growing American commercial space industry, to fill the gap. He wants to invest $6 billion over the next five years to enable private commercial rocket companies to develop much less expensive vehicles to resupply the space station.
Private companies already have contracts with NASA to transport cargo to and from the station. Now Obama wants these American companies to provide space taxis for transporting astronauts as well.
Clearly, the President has considerable faith in the private sector. If the private companies don't come through with a workable way back and forth from space, NASA will have no backup. We Americans will have to rely, once the shuttles stop flying, solely on our Russian partners as our only way to and from low earth orbit to provision the space station.
Congress has long encouraged the development of a commercial space industry. While a Member of Congress, I initiated and co-sponsored some of those legislative efforts. At a time when American leadership in space technology is being increasingly challenged worldwide, we need to continue to help move our private sector forward. The President's proposal would definitely do that.
What are the concerns?
One is safety. No one who watched the Challenger explode in the skies over Central Florida -- as I did -- need be reminded about the risks of space travel or the imperative of safety. Chip Bolden, the new NASA administrator, surely needs no reminder. He is a former astronaut.
Careful consideration must be given to what it will take to qualify commercial rockets for a "human rating." It is one thing to carry cargo. It is quite another to carry people. We need the highest safety standards.
Another concern, of course, is jobs.
The retirement of the shuttle fleet at yearend will jeopardize 7,000 jobs at the Kennedy Space Center and all along the "Space Coast" of Central Florida in my former Congressional district. We must do all we can to save those jobs.
For me, the simple fact that many of those jobs are held by my friends and my former constituents is reason enough to do everything possible to save them. But much more is at stake for our entire country.
Overall U.S. industrial capacity fell by an estimated one percent in 2009 -- the largest yearly decline ever. Goods-producing businesses shed more than 2.3 million jobs last year.
At such a time, do we really want to throw away the critical mass and the critical skills of thousands of space workers in Florida, Texas, California, and elsewhere in this country whose labors have secured and sustained America's comparative advantage in what will surely be one of the key global industries of the twenty-first century?
Space workers have dealt with transition before, from Gemini to Apollo, and then from Apollo to the space shuttle. The President's proposed national investment in commercial space would save some jobs, and he would also create jobs by spending $2 billion to modernize the Kennedy Space Center. My hope is that Congress will do much more to ease this transition by enhancing that investment in ways that will save a lot more.
The President makes spending recommendations. The Congress alone makes spending decisions. No doubt some in Congress will seek to salvage the troubled Constellation program. They are unlikely to succeed. Much more promising of success for the long-term future of NASA, manned space flight, and the overall quest for continued space exploration would be an eager Congressional embrace of the President's bet on the private sector.
Like our President, we Americans are not socialists. We believe in initiative, incentive, and entrepreneurship. We have long sought to help inspire all those essential capitalist virtues in a vibrant commercial space industry for America. Why stop now?
In an America much in the grip of deep division and angry gridlock, why not promote both unity and progress by reaffirming our national commitment to space exploration, and by expressing anew our full confidence in the vast creative potential of free private enterprise?
How is Obama cutting NASA funding showing ANY commitment to space?
how is it not just another giveaway to China and Corporations?
2. He did cancel a program that was drastically underperforming, and wouldn't deliver
3. Its less of a giveaway to the Corps, since they can't charge obscene cost overruns
As for committment to space - Dreamchaser, Orion-lite, Dragon and Cygnus - those are our future space shuttles
There are "Buy American" provisions in the contracting process. There are ITAR restrictions on the export of intellectual property relating to aerospace vehicles.
The contractors under consideration have low foreign labor content. SpaceX, SpaceDev, and Blue Origins don't use any foreign labor. Boeing and Lockheed Martin are obviously multinational corporations, but the majority of the labor for their launch service businesses is domestic, if for no other reason because transporting voluminous rocket stages isn't cheap.
The NASA industrial base is overwhelmingly American. The most notable component of the American space fleet that isn't made in America is the Russian RD-180 rocket engine used on the first stage of the Lockheed Martin Atlas V. Under the LM/ULA commercial launch proposals, the RD-180 (or a similar engine) would be produced domestically.
Besides, its time space actually be open to everyone, and not just NASA
Are we really going to patent the cosmos and classify every major breakthrough as being proprietary just to avoid the label of "socialism?" This is a wealth of information that should be shared, and even though that information wasn't always freely shared by NASA, or worse was covered up, it will be harder to get when it becomes the intellectual property of Xe or Lockheed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FR_4_pUw9oA
Establishing a permanent base on the Moon would be the first meager step in that direction.
By the way, studies have shown that for every dollar spent on NASA, more than $2 is returned to the general economy in jobs and economic growth practically every region of the country. So if you want fewer jobs and a poorer nation then don't invest in the space program that has brought us satellite telecommunications, plasma arc technology that can convert our garbage into clean renewable fuels, and many other important technological innovations.
Marcel F. Williams
Privatize space! Wonderful idea!
Give American labor a chance to survive? Huh?
More recently, the combined effect of the Air Force and NASA contracting process led the to conglomeration of the two largest American producers of launch vehicle -- Boeing and Lockheed Martin -- into a single joint venture called the United Launch Alliance.
NASA has always worked through contractors. The Space Shuttle orbiters were built by Rockwell International (now Boeing). The External Tanks are made by Lockheed Martin. The Solid Rocket Boosters are made by Alliant Techsystems (formerly Thiokol), the world's largest manufacturer of ammunition.
The change is that NASA will no longer impose its own detailed design specifications on the contractors and pay whatever it costs -- plus a profit -- to implement them. Instead, NASA will submit more general mission requirements, and the contractors will propose competing designs with fixed prices for implementation.
Further, the money is being spent ON NASA JOBS, and contractor/commercial space jobs.
Consider the advances made in civil aviation in the first 48 years after the Wright Brothers first successful flight on December 17, 1903.
Civil aviation was heavily subsidized by the U.S. government (among others) from the end of World War 1 until well into the 1980s, but it was private enterprise that built the planes and the airlines.
Where are the entrepreneurs of the space age?
Jeff Greason
Jeff Manber
Rick Tumlinson
Dave Masten
John Carmack
Jeff BEzos
There are more, but thats a good start
If commercial outsourcing of LEO launches turns out not to be viable, it will be much easier to shift to something else than it will be if everything is yoked to a giant supertanker of a program that takes decades to turn around – as the space shuttle has been, and as Constellation was already turning out to be. (That's the dark side of a single-mindedly "goal"-oriented program, and it's exactly what the Augustine Commission's "Flexible Path" plan was intended to counteract.)
I think the Obama budget is a blast of fresh air, a big dose of sanity after 30 years of foolishness. If Congress can keep its mitts off it, it bodes very well for the future of American manned space travel.
NASA meanwhile will get back to doing what it should have been doing all along -- Bold, Non-profitable Research.
Change is a good thing.