NASA Chief Bashes Review Panel's 'False Claims'

In a fierce reply to the preliminary conclusions released by the US Human Space Flight Plans Committee, NASA's Chief of Lunar and Martian Explorations, Jeff Hanley, said that the results the panel came to were biased, and that the experts on the board were making false claims about Project Constellation and its successes. Additionally, the official shared, the panel was putting too much emphasis on the alternatives, and some experts were beginning to wonder whether the members were playing the agenda of private space companies, Space reports.

Over the past five years, Hanley pointed out, the American space agency had spent more than nine billion dollars on Project Constellation, which includes the ARES I and V delivery systems, the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicles and the Altair Lunar Lander, alongside innovative technologies for all these components. The official said that the committee systematically ignored “anything positive” about the Project, and that it only focused on the negative sides, making it seem like the agency simply made parade of the funds it received, without any tangible results.

Additionally, the panel was, in Hanley's opinion, completely “dismissive” of the recommendations made by the Columbia accident investigation team. In an email he sent to NASA Johnson Space Center Director Michael Coats, and obtained by Florida Today, the official also added that astronaut-safety issues were a “cop out” in the form the panel understood them. Members of the committee had said in the preliminary report they released that the Project was on “an unsustainable trajectory.” Expectedly, the alternative was to scrub ARES I and to launch astronauts aboard commercial spacecraft.

Former NASA Associate Administrator and Director of George Washington University Space Policy Institute Scott Pace said of Hanley remarks that they “reflect the informed engineering judgment of someone who's been living with these issues for years. [...] Where I might differ is that I think the Augustine Committee was clear in saying it was not making recommendations. Further, the document being discussed was an executive summary so it's hard to say that evidence is lacking for various assertions as we just don't know without the final report.” Hanley is an experienced astronaut and former shuttle commander.

“This group of smart people has looked at the riskiness of the commercial providers compared to the riskiness of NASA, and apparently come to the conclusion that the risks are comparable. They've looked closely at this and seem to have come to the conclusion that we are at a point in the evolution of space transportation where a commercial provider could balance risk, cost and profit and make a business – with, it should be added, significant help from the government,” Smithsonian Institution National Air and Space Museum space policy expert John Logsdon concluded for Florida Today.