14 DAY TRIAL // Charles Bolden, the NASA administrator, will reveal in a February 1 meeting the goal, expenditures and priorities that the agency will focus on in 2011. The space agency is in the midst of a hot debate at this point, in the sense that various panels and reports are arguing for and against the ARES I rocket and the Orion space capsule. These are two of the components of Project Constellation, but their faith is yet uncertain. NASA is in desperate need of money, but President Obama seems unwilling to grant it the $1-billion boost it needs to keep ARES I and Orion on track, Space reports.
The Augustine Commission, appointed by Obama last year to study possible paths of development for the space agency, has included the two spacecraft in only two of its eight possible options, both of which exclude the ISS being operated past 2015. Sources at the White House and the Congress revealed recently that Obama was highly unlikely to approve a course of action that would see NASA keeping Project Constellation on track. Rather, the president will seek to foster innovation in the private sector, by granting NASA billions of dollars in contract money, to give to contractors.
This is a very risky approach, some analysts say, as the space agency, for good or for worse, is far better at building rockets and spacecraft than any other organization on Earth. It can certainly do a much better job than companies such as SpaceX and Orbital Sciences Corporation, which stand most to gain at this point from the conclusions set forth by the Augustine Commission (which was led by a former Lockheed Martin CEO). The Dragon capsule developed by SpaceX, for example, was planned as a transport, unmanned vehicle, and now plans are to convert it to an astronaut carrier.
In other words, rather than supporting the development of a highly specialized capsule such as Orion, which would have the ability to link with the Earth-Departure Stage (EDS) and the Altair lander, some would rather invest in corporations that have yet to touch the basics of manned spaceflight. This, in the eyes of many, makes no sense, even when considering that Constellation is indeed over-budget and behind schedule. The magnitude of the project itself should prevent anyone from being surprised by this. However, White House officials hint that there may be a budget boost for NASA in 2011, but lower than $1 billion.