The Vision-2004

In 2004, President Bush announced a new space policy for the country termed “Vision for Space Exploration” which included a NASA initiative called the Constellation Program, centering on future human space flight. Its purpose was to give new direction to the American space pro­gram and regain public enthusiasm for space exploration. The new program set out an ambi­tious agenda:

• The International Space Station was to be completed by 2010.

• The Space Shuttle was to be retired by 2010.

• Replacement of the Space Shuttle, by a pro­gram called Orion (successor to the Crew Exploration Vehicle), was slated to be opera­tional by 2014.

• A new generation of reusable and partially reusable launch vehicles was to be devel­oped using some Space Shuttle technology, called Shuttle-Derived Launch Vehicles. These launchers included the Ares I, Ares IV, and the Ares V. The new concept was to use the Ares I for crew lift and the bigger, more expensive Ares V for cargo lift. These were to be the launchers for further moon exploration. (See Figure 41-12.)

* Renew moon exploration by launching robotic missions to the moon by 2008 (which never evolved) and crewed missions to the moon by 2020.

• Continue the exploration of Mars with robotic missions to be followed by crewed missions.

The Reality-2010

Although presidential candidate Barack Obama campaigned on a positive NASA plat­form, including human launches to the moon by 2020, the Obama White House has maintained no consistent position on space development. By 2010, the Constellation program had been canceled, except for a modified version of the Orion space vehicle. The Ares launch vehicle program had been converted into a “Shuttle – Derived Heavy Launch Vehicle,” effectively replacing the Ares V. It appears that the Inter­national Space Station is being approved for funding for an additional five years, through 2020—the ISS has been continuously manned since the year 2000.

The Obama White House also seems to favor the use of commercial launch vehicles and spacecraft as the basis for future U. S. civil space policy. This has brought many powerful Congressmen, who favor stronger government control in manned space flight, and important former astronauts, including Neil Armstrong, into conflict with the administration. Con­gress has provided no money for the COTS program in the NASA budget for 2013. The conflict is over whether there should remain funding for several of the top-ranked commer­cial launch and spacecraft upstarts (like Space X and Orbital Services) or whether a tried and proven commercial launch and services program (like Boeing, Lockheed, United Launch Alli­ances) should be funded alone. The argument against funding several companies in a competi­tive atmosphere is that there is no proven track record (other than the one-time Space X orbit rendezvous with the ISS in 2012), that it would be more costly to fund the competition, and the satellites and other payloads that must be put in orbit are so expensive that launch customers will be hesitant to trust upstarts. Many think that this is a short-sighted view since competition has been historically proven to provide creativity and innovation. It is also contrary to the con­cept of the NASA Centennial Challenges, to the spirit of the Commercial Space Launch Amend­ments, and to the history of pre-space flight innovation.

While the debate continues as to the coun­try’s future in space, American astronauts must be launched to the International Space Station aboard Russian Soyuz spacecraft, since the United States has no human space launch pro­gram. And we have the rather puzzling declara­tion by newly Obama-appointed NASA Chief Charles Bolden that he has been tasked by the White House with a new mission that has noth­ing to do with space. According to an interview given by Bolden to A1 Jazeera while in the Mid­dle East,35 his “foremost” mission as the head of American’s space exploration agency is to improve relations with the Muslim World.36 Spe­cifically, (Bolden said that Obama charged him with three specific assignments: “When I became the NASA administrator—or before I became the NASA administrator—he charged me with three things. One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math, he wanted me to expand our international relation­ships, and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science. . . and math and engineering.”).

At the same time, NASA is moving ahead in unmanned, robotic space exploration. In August 2012, a one-ton, four-wheeled vehicle was suc­cessfully landed on Mars. Known as the “Curi­osity Rover,” it is a full-fledged geochemical laboratory equipped with lasers, video cameras,
and measuring instruments, and it has the capa­bility of analyzing soil and air samples and then sending the results back to earth. Its main func­tion is to search for evidence of microbial life. “Curiosity” follows the much smaller and sim­pler Sojourner rover, which landed on Mars in the 1997 Pathfinder mission. “Curiosity” repre­sents the 40th mission to explore the Red Planet over the last 50 years.

There are also currently satellites orbiting the Sun, Mercury, the moon, the asteroid Vesta, Mars, and Saturn, which provide an on-going flow of information, as well as missions now en route to Jupiter and Pluto. Sixteen earth obser­vation satellites are currently studying various
systems of the earth, including climate, the oceans, and the Polar Regions.