SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has hit out at critics of Barack Obama’s new direction for NASA, during a week in which the US President reiterated his commitment to the development of commercial human spaceflight.
Just prior to Obama’s address on NASA at Cape…
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has hit out at critics of Barack Obama’s new direction for NASA, during a week in which the US President reiterated his commitment to the development of commercial human spaceflight.
Just prior to Obama’s address on NASA at Cape Canaveral, Musk released a statement backing the President’s fiercely criticised decision to scrap the Constellation Program intended to return US astronauts to the Moon.
“As a result of funds freed up by this cancellation, there is now hope for a bright future in space exploration,” said Musk. “The new plan is to harness our nation’s unparalleled system of free enterprise (as we have done in all other modes of transport), to create far more reliable and affordable rockets.
“Handing over Earth orbit transport to American commercial companies, overseen of course by NASA and the FAA, will free up the NASA resources necessary to develop interplanetary transport technologies.”
SpaceX is one of the main beneficiaries of the new approach. It already holds a US$1.6bn Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) with NASA for the provision of cargo supply services to the International Space Station. The company also aims to use its as yet unproven Falcon 9 rocket to fly astronauts to low earth orbit.
Musk’s statement is an attempt to redress a media narrative in the US that has sought to gloss over the glaring structural faults within Constellation that were decisively investigated by last year’s Augustine Commission.
He points out the Commission’s conclusion that the Ares I rocket and Orion spacecraft would only have been ready by 2017 at the earliest, and that the completion of the rest of the project, including the heavy-lift Ares V would have required an extra US$50bn in government funds.
Despite being designed as the Space Shuttle’s replacement as a transport to low earth orbit, Ares I would only have been capable of carrying four passengers to the Shuttle’s seven. The cost of each Ares I flight was estimated to be US$1.5bn compared to US$1bn for the Shuttle.
Musk said: “The President quite reasonably concluded that spending $50 billion to develop a vehicle that would cost 50% more to operate, but carry 50% less payload was perhaps not the best possible use of funds.
“Cancellation was therefore simply a matter of time and thankfully we have a President with the political courage to do the right thing sooner rather than later.”
Orbital Sciences Corporation, the other main beneficiary of the COTS program, has also come out strongly in Obama’s defense.
Speaking at Orbital’s Q1 results conference call, Orbital CEO David Thompson said: “We are very excited about what this means for the company, and we also think it is the right approach, being the right combination of a bold and aggressive set of goals, but with a practical level of spending that has been laid out for NASA.”
The NASA full year 2011 budget offers a US$300m funding boost to SpaceX and Orbital for risk reduction and program acceleration.
Orbital’s Taurus II rocket and Cygnus spacecraft are well advanced in development, having originally lagged behind SpaceX.
“I do think, given where we are in our Taurus II launch vehicle and COTS spacecraft work today that we have pretty much caught up with SpaceX,” said Thompson.
“They had about an 18 month head start in their COTS agreement with NASA, which dated back to the fall of 2006. Ours was awarded in the late winter, early spring of 2008. At this point I would say we are neck and neck in the race to be the first to fully demonstrate commercial cargo delivery to the space station. And I think we have higher probability than they do of being the first one there.”
Obama resurrects Orion as he defines NASA vision
During Obama’s visit to Florida the President sought to mitigate the job losses caused by Constellation’s cancellation, and firmed up some of the objectives for the new-look NASA.
He made one sizeable concession to his critics by committing to the continued development of the Orion capsule, albeit a simplified version that will be used as a life raft for the International Space Station (ISS).
Much of the opposition to Obama’s vision has come from Senators and Congress representatives with large numbers of space industry jobs in their constituencies, especially across Florida’s “Space Coast.”
Obama responded by claiming that NASA’s new direction would create more jobs than Constellation would have done, and also pledged to offset some of the effects of the Shuttle’s cancellation.
“My plan will add more than 2,500 jobs along the Space Coast in the next two years compared to the plan under the previous administration,” he said. “I’m proposing a US$40m initiative led by a high-level team from the White House, NASA, and other agencies to develop a plan for regional economic growth and job creation, and I expect this plan to reach my desk by August 15. It’s an effort that will help prepare this already skilled work force for new opportunities in the space industry and beyond.”
The other main criticism of the President’s plan is that it is too vague, and does not set in place firm targets for NASA to aim for. He attempted to remedy this by setting a target date of 2015 for NASA to begin work on a new heavy lift rocket system.
This system will then form the foundation for deep space exploration, culminating in an eventual manned mission to Mars.
Obama said: “Unlike the previous program we are setting a course with specific and achievable milestones. Early in the next decade crewed flights will test and prove the systems required for exploration beyond low earth orbit. By 2025 we expect new spacecraft designed for long journeys to allow us to begin the first crewed missions beyond the Moon and into deep space.
We’ll start by sending astronauts to an asteroid for the first time in history. By the mid-2030s I believe we can send humans to orbit Mars and return them safely to Earth. A landing on Mars will follow and I expect to be around to see it.”
During the week prior to Obama’s NASA address, his plan came under attack from a group of the original Apollo astronauts, including Neil Armstrong, the first man on the Moon.
Armstrong, alongside fellow Apollo mission commanders James Lovell and Eugene Cernan, issued a letter which stated that the decision to axe Constellation was “devastating” to the long-term prospects for American space travel, condemning it to “a long downhill slide to mediocrity.”
One extract said: “The availability of a commercial transport to orbit as envisioned in the President’s proposal cannot be predicted with any certainty, but is likely to take substantially longer and be more expensive than we would hope.
“It appears that we will have wasted our current ten plus billion dollar investment in Constellation and, equally importantly, we will have lost the many years required to recreate the equivalent of what we will have discarded.”
