Big space news this week — so big you could actually hear about it in mainstream media, a rare-ish thing indeed. President Obama delivered a (sort of) game-changing speech at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Thursday. After the budget release a few months ago and the announcement that the Constellation program would be canceled, the space industry was left asking, “well, what now?” Obama’s speech was meant to answer that question. The new plan is to vaguely resurrect Constellation, with the Orion spacecraft — originally designed to launch atop the Ares 1 rocket and carry 4-6 astronauts into deep space — now redesigned to be docked with the International Space Station and act as a rescue vehicle. Additionally, the plan includes design of a new heavy-launch vehicle, replacing Ares V, by 2015, sending astronauts to an asteroid by 2025, and to Mars by 2030. Lastly, the President committed to increase NASA’s budget by $6 billion over the next five years, with $40 million to help the tens of thousands of workers who will be laid off as the shuttle program ends.
Reaction has varied across the spectrum. But as Space Politics notes, the speech didn’t really cause anyone to change their opinion. Notably, the notoriously reclusive Neil Armstrong, along with Jim Lovell and Gene Cernan (Commanders of Apollo missions 11, 13, and 17 respectively), strongly oppose the new direction — or more accurately, the lack thereof — and claim that Obama’s decision will let America teeter into mediocrity, depending on the Russians to reach space, wasting the $10 billion invested into Constellation, and more importantly, wasting the spirit of command innovation that Americans have relied on to be a superpower.
Others are still inspired by the future, eager to find out how the new commercial enterprises could change the way we’re able to access space and how NASA might refocus on space and Earth science — rather than human exploration — particularly with the extension of the ISS to 2020. Even Armstrong’s fellow moon-lander, Buzz Aldrin, released an enthusiastic statement of support for Obama’s plan.
Essentially, the good news is there are goals that, as Obama not-so-engagingly put it, we might even see carried out in our lifetimes (not exactly channeling JFK there). The bad news? Said goals are pretty weak and far away, and we can all remember five years ago the announcement of a supposed “big space plan” the should have been funded properly but never was, leaving us right were we are now. What do you think of the President’s new policy?
