Budget scraps effort to return to the moon
WASHINGTON - The Obama administration is killing Constellation, NASA’s ambitious back-to-the moon program. The decision represents a thunderous demolition of the Bush-era strategy at the space agency, which had already poured $9 billion into a new rocket, the Ares 1, and a new crew capsule, Orion.
Both were years from completion. And now both have been spiked by the administration’s 2011 budget, released yesterday. The budget includes $2.5 billion over the next two years to shut down Constellation.
Instead of continuing to develop the Ares 1 and Orion, the administration wants to invest $6 billion over five years in a commercial space taxi to carry astronauts into low Earth orbit. The budget would also funnel billions into developing new space technologies, such as the ability to refuel spacecraft in orbit.
Change does not come easily in the complex and highly political enterprise that is space travel. The Obama plan triggered immediate protests on Capitol Hill.
“The president’s proposed NASA budget begins the death march for the future of US human spaceflight,’’ Senator Richard Shelby, an Alabama Republican, said yesterday. “If this budget is enacted, NASA will no longer be an agency of innovation and hard science. It will be the agency of pipe dreams and fairy tales.’’
But Senator Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat whose state stands to lose 7,000 jobs when the space shuttle program ends next year, signaled that he would not fight Obama’s decision.
“When the president says he’s going to cancel Constellation, I can tell you that to muster the votes and overcome that is going to be very, very difficult,’’ Nelson said.
The change in course is hardly shocking given the events of the past year. Obama appointed a committee, led by retired aerospace executive Norman Augustine, to examine options for human spaceflight. The panel saw no chance that Constellation could succeed in its goal of a 2020 moon landing.
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said yesterday that the agency will pursue technology that will enable astronauts to explore the solar system.
