Today, President Obama outlined a plan for the future of NASA that was heavy on rhetoric but woefully light on substance. Under his plan, America’s ability to send humans into space will be put on hold, indefinitely. Decades of American leadership in space will be forfeited to Russia and China, who will be the sole gatekeepers to the final frontier.
The President’s plan scraps the six years and $9 billion of time and taxpayer money that have been invested in the Constellation program. It carelessly casts aside the proven technology developed through the program and literally sends us back to the drawing board. While I support allowing the private sector access to space, I believe it is foolhardy to rely on unproven technology to maintain America’s strategic edge. This would be akin to privatizing the Navy and simply renting out the U.S.S. Harry S. Truman any time we needed to defend ourselves. It is with this in mind that I share Neil Armstrong’s objection that this decision places the American space program “on a long downhill slide to mediocrity.”
America should never be associated with mediocrity. We need to utilize the technology developed under the Constellation program to the fullest extent. This is the best way to end America’s lack of access to space and boldly take Americans to unexplored regions of deep space.
Thank you for your support of this Constellation Program. I have been involved with manned space flight for the past 35 years. I have seen programs come and go, depending on what flavor of the month that the political tide is turning. If I don’t consider the effort allready expended on the Constellation Program, and I disreguard the potiental of massive job cuts, all tha I am left to consider is the plan that President Obama has outlined. This plan is consistant with the “getting something for nothing” approach that seems to be gripping our country. The translation to a “more competitive” environment has already taken place in the competitive bidding process that commericial companies are required to go through in order to receive a successful bid. The main problem with “going back to the drawing board” for achieving this capability will take much longer and will end up being much more expensive than fully supporting the Constellation Program as it is presently baselined. This “plan” is laced with more faults than can reasonably be supported. The funding model required to support many companies – all doing the same thing, and developing the same infrastructure to accomplish these goals will require massive expendatures in research and development (which alredy has been paid for once). At the end of the process, these companies will not realize the appropriate return on their investment to support this process and therefore will either be bailed out again – or go out of business. Comparison to the airline industry is not possible due to the lack of commercial opportunities that is presently avilable.
An increase in the funding for NASA is welcomed, however this increase will barely keep the existing NASA centers in business. Approval of this new plan will cost much more to keep all of these companies viable in this infant insdustry.
We need a solid funding model before any plan can be presented. Staying with the present Constellation program provides a solid set of platform techoloogies that is already in the production phase. This present set of hardware has the capabilities that President Obama and the Nation desire to embrace. We can contain the costs by tailoring the full range of capabilities to match the available funding.
Any program that is brought to the present production stage has specific cost and schedule challanges. New hardware such as the Falcon rocket presently on the launch pad will also experience its share of issues before anyone would certify that it is ready for human transportation. I wish much success for the Falcon Program – but experience shows that test programs are designed to find problems – which take money to correct.
If I can be of any further assistance – please let me know.
Thanks
Don Clark
donc542@me.com