On April 15, U.S. President Barack Obama delivered an address on space policy at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. After successfully overhauling the U.S. healthcare system, Obama now wants to overhaul the U.S. space program, directing it away from more moon missions toward a mission to Mars.
Obama's vision for the future of the U.S. space program has created a deep rift in the space community. Advocates of new moon missions claim that Obama is essentially ceding space to Russia, China and even India. The "Martians" object to this argument, alleging that Obama's critics fail to grasp the ambition and grandeur of his vision - in other words, his critics have no idea what they are talking about.
These critics include 27 of the biggest names in U.S. space exploration, including three Apollo astronauts: the legendary Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, Gene Cernan, the last man to walk on the moon, and Jim Lovell, commander of the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission.
The astronauts wrote an open letter to Obama, urging him to reconsider his new policies, which will be "devastating" for the future of NASA. They say the United States will have to completely rely on Russia to send its astronauts into orbit for the next five years as a result of these changes in the national space program.
"Without the skill and experience that actual spacecraft operation provides, the USA is far too likely to be on a long downhill slide to mediocrity," the letter reads.
Standing behind Obama's new space plan is the looming U.S. budget crisis. The simple fact is the U.S. cannot afford the spending like it did in the 1990s, let alone the 1970s, when the U.S. put 4-5% of its budget toward space exploration. If those spending levels were maintained today, NASA would have received $190 billion of the $3.8 trillion federal budget for 2011, as opposed to the meager $20 billion it has received.
These are the main points of Obama's speech:
1) Under the new plan, the United States will focus on developing more advanced space technology, engines and launch vehicles, as well as robotic and unmanned missions. Although manned missions will continue, lunar exploration is no longer a top priority.
2) Over the next five years, the United States plans to develop a new heavy-lift vehicle for deep-space missions. Beyond that, goals include landing U.S. astronauts on an asteroid by 2025 and sending astronauts to orbit Mars and return safely to Earth by 2035.
3) By the middle of this decade, NASA will switch over to a federal-private system for ferrying astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS).
4) The Space Shuttle will be retired in September-October 2010.
5) The ISS, which was slated to close in 2016, will operate for another five years beyond that.
George W. Bush is the only U.S. president who can rival JFK in his commitment to send astronauts to the moon. In 1961, Kennedy challenged America to become the first country to put a man to the moon. Twelve U.S. astronauts have reached the moon since then. President Bush announced that the U.S. would return to the moon no matter what under the Constellation Program.
In February 2010, Obama scrapped the $108 billion Constellation Program, which had already received $10 billion. Instead, he has directed NASA Administrator Charles Bolden to immediately begin developing a rescue vehicle using technology from the expensive Orion crew capsule "so we are not forced to rely on foreign providers if it becomes necessary to quickly bring our people home from the International Space Station."
Over the next five years, NASA will receive an additional $6 billion for this project. Among the contractors chosen is Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX), a space-transportation start-up company founded by Elon Musk, a South African-American physicist and entrepreneur.
SpaceX's unmanned Falcon 9 launch vehicle is scheduled for lift-off at Cape Canaveral this May. Musk is promising NASA that he will charge no more than $20 million per astronaut. Washington claims that a seat in Russia's Soyuz spacecraft costs $56 million.
Under the Constellation Program, which involved the development of new rockets and a new crew capsule, the price per astronaut would have come out to $300 million. So Obama is saving taxpayers almost $250 million on each astronaut it sends into space.
This shift in U.S. space policy toward unmanned spacecrafts and robot-based exploration follows a 20-year debate both in the U.S. and Russian space communities. Which is more economical, safer and more efficient - sending humans into space or relying on robots and unmanned probes? The latter is much cheaper, while the former is more expensive and dangerous.
But the reality is you need both. The optimal combination of man and machine should be the goal here. It appears that Obama and his top space advisors have decided to reduce the role played by astronauts. However at the current stage it would be impossible to scrap manned missions altogether.
Obama's space program will spark more debate between these opposing camps in the space community, and not just in the United States.
The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.
MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti political commentator Andrei Fedyashin)
