Motherboard

Though many up and down Space Coast USA are worried, amazed and fuming over the budget cuts that would end our near-term shot of going to the moon and beyond, there’s word that during a star-studded conference at NASA today, Obama will unveil a new vision that includes $6 billion of extra cash for the space agency for the next five years, on top of its original budget plans.

Rather than shedding 7,000 jobs, the plan would create 2,500 new jobs in and around NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, in the service of building a brand new rocketship. That Orion manned space capsule the agency’s been spending way too much money on (according to a commission set up by the White House)? That will become an emergency escape vehicle for the international space station.

“This new strategy means more money for NASA, more jobs for the country, more astronaut time in space,” Reuters quotes a White House official. “This is a rocket that is going to happen two years earlier than would’ve happened under the past program.”

How and why? Instead of focusing on a relatively “new” rocket, the heavy-lifting Ares V, the plan appears to focus on a spin-off the technology used for the Space Shuttle, that 70’s era transportation system that to this day relies on amazingly rudimentary, if very dependable, systems. Instead of the “Apollo on steroids” Constellation program, a space transporter based on the Space Shuttle, perhaps along the lines of the 1989 Space Shuttle C design, has the potential to be cheaper, easier and faster than Ares V. (Would the lift-off itself for a new kind of space shuttle be as spectacular as the current Space Shuttle? If you’ve seen a launch of a rocket like Soyuz and a launch of a shuttle, you know this isn’t an insignificant question.)

At it’s simplest the “Shuttle on steroids” idea could replace the space shuttle orbiter – the plane that sits atop the fuel tank and solid rocket boosters – with yet another rocket that would be capable of getting us to the moon, Mars and a future of glorious spaceflight like that envisioned by Arthur C. Clarke and Robert McCall. You know, where we were headed 40 years ago, where we imagined we would be by now – not just to a space station a somewhat measly 300 miles up.

Astronaut Doubts
Not so fast, Obama, say some people who have gone faster, and farther, than anyone else. In an open letter to President Obama this week, Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon and former Apollo Commanders Eugene Cemen and James Lovell (currently celebrating the 40th anniversary of Apollo 13) wrote to the President saying, "The … decision to cancel the Constellation program, its Ares 1 and Ares V rockets, and the Orion spacecraft, is devastating. The men went on to write, "It appears that we will have wasted our current $10-plus billion investment in Constellation.”

Look for some sparks to fly this afternoon. After Obama reveals his plan at NASA, the agency will host a conference on the future of American spaceflight. Whatever happens, until we have a replacement for the Space Shuttle, our astronauts will need to keep brushing up on their Russian.