Written by: Samuel K. Sloan (FarPoint Media Executive News Director)
Between 1963 until only recently, NASA was the leader in space science, travel, exploration, development and research. However, it would now seem that the billions spent everyday on the war in Iraq is not only affecting other programs here on the planet but also the nation’s space hopes. Due to a shortage of funding NASA has had to put its scheduled release of Shuttle’s replacement craft on hold.
The new Orion project, considered one of the best ideas to come out of NASA in decades, was scheduled to go into service by September 2013 allowing for a new fleet of space ships to replace the current Shuttles after they go into retirement. Yet, due to a lack of funding and some technical issues that will have to be curtailed.
NASA program manager Jeff Hanley said in a press call that “The window of opportunity….to accelerate Orion has closed.”
It would seem that between the war and an American Congress that can’t seem to get its own head out of its politically-expedient ass, many worthy programs important to the future welfare of this nation, and the world itself, are being forced to take a seat way, way, way in the back of the arena.
The U.S., a one-time leader in space travel and exploration, will now be without a way to carry people to and from the orbiting International Space Station (ISS) after the year 2010. That is the projected date the Shuttle program is to be decommissioned. Cargo can still be launched to the station via rocket transport, however, U.S. astronauts will have to rely soley on Russia to take and bring them back to the station for the foreseeable future. In other words, like the chicken farmer who lost it all, every egg is going in the one basket.
As the enterprising people American’s have always proven themselves to be whenever they become discontent with sucking on the governmental-bureaucratic teat, privately owned and openly public commercial companies are seeing this as an opportunity for them to step up to the plate and carry on where the U.S. government is now failing due to a useless legislature and prolonged war in the Middle East that is growing more wearisome by the day.
For NASA to at least meet its secondary Orion target of September 2014 additional funding will have to be approved by the U.S. Congress and in today’s devisive political climate, that doesn’t seem likely, especially in an election year. This delay with Orion will also require NASA to take a step back and look at some of its other projects, such as the Constellation program, future Mars endeavors, and certain of its contracts with other companies.
Could this and future Congressional budget cutbacks force the commercialization of NASA? For the sake of future space travel, discovery and a definite survival need to expand humanity into the cosmos, one can only hope so.
This is a sad sad day.
The sad thing is that space exploration is not a partisan issue. If anything they should be arguing about who will support it more.
Maybe this will turn out to be a good thing in that it will allow private firms to step in take up the slack. It could signal the opening to a new age of commercialization and discovery. Maybe someone else will show the will and daring to take back space. We Americans haven’t showed that kind of vision for decades.
It’s odd, the slow progress in space exploration really makes me feel claustraphobic. It’s not that I personally need to get off the planet but I just feel like we’re a bunch of people on a tiny tiny island and we can’t agree to work together to build boats and check out the other islands that we can see. If I were a multi-billionaire I’d hire all of Nasa’s best talent away and then get all the best new talent out of college and get this thing done.
Way to go Sam! Not pulling your punches are ya?
I hate to say this but this is a sign of the decline of America as a world leader. I’m sure our so-called leaders in Congress and the White House are barely paying attention to this development. They’re more concerned with covering their collective asses, kissing up to the lobbyists who buy their votes and running for re-election then actually doing something for the future of this country.
(And that covers both political parties.)
What is really amazing is that if every person in USA was to purchase a tube of lip balm you would have the yearly budget of NASA as it is now.
The other problem with this situation is that assuming that Congress does not want to increase NASA’s budget and NASA would like to stay on time (or nearly so) to deliver the Orion it will have to take money from somewhere else. This money will likely come from future missions such as JWST (the larger replacement for the Hubble Space Telescope) and the next generation of X-ray and infrared telescopes. Not to mention the planetary probes. This will delay our exploration of finding planets like earth around other stars. The Europeans, Chinese and Indians are going to start to take the lead in space exploration both manned and unmanned.
Well, at least there isn’t an asteroid on it’s way to earth with a slim (but still measurable) chance of hitting us. It would be terribly irresponsible to mothball the shuttles if we even had a tiny chance of being hit with a . . . with a . . .
Crap.
My new favorite catch phrase has been “You don’t have to be an idiot to do something truly stupid.”
And, yeah, there has been a lot of that going on for awhile.
Yay Sam..!!
I’m with ya man. The entire space program has lost its vision. AND… Don’t get me started on why we have not been to the moon in the past 40 years.
A sad day indeed.
It’s just as well that the Orion Space launch vehicle is put on the slow track. It appears to me to be a backward regression in technology. The Orion is basically a slightly scaled up expandable launcher with early 70’s era concepts. Nasa could scrapped this program and just buy some Photon rockets from the Russians or Ukrainians for a fraction of the development cost while planning for a proper Space Shuttle follow on program.
You could forget about a so call non-governmental Space commercialization. It takes a lot of cash to launch stuff into Space reliably. Take the case of Space-X and the continuing failure of their Falcon Rockets. Even governmental funded Space launch vehicles have significant failure rates.
Let hope with exit of the Bush Administration, the next President will have a workable and affordable space program.