New Vision for Space Exploration 'Will Take Months'

Officials at the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced in a press conference yesterday that rebuilding the space agency's vision for exploration might take up to several months. Up until this point, engineers had Project Constellation to work on, but this initiative has been shelved under President Obama's 2011 budget proposal. Though the faith of the program will not be clear until the Congress approves the president's approach, many believe that the ARES I launch vehicle, and the crew capsule Orion have reached the end of their run, Space reports.

During the meeting, which took place at the National Press Club, in Washington DC, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said that the decision to cancel the Project would affect many people severely. “To people who are working on these programs, this is like a death in the family. Everybody needs to understand that and we need to give them time to grieve and then we need to give them time to recover,” he said, barely holding back his emotions. Under the 2011 budget proposal, Obama will support basic science, such as alternative energy, but basically sacks ARES I and Orion. Thus far, these two vehicles have taken five years and $9 billion dollars to get to the point where they are now.

At the same conference, Bolden presented the companies that would benefit from $50 million in NASA funding to develop spacecraft capable of reaching the low-Earth orbit. Some of these corporations received contracts for developing the ships themselves, while others were alloted money for studying the development of life-support systems, or launch-abort methods. However, this reorientation process was very likely to take a few months, until a battle plan was crystallized, officials said. “I'm not trying to fool anybody that this is going to be easy. [It will take] more than a couple of weeks, but less than years,” Bolden told the media.

The Associate Director for Space Exploration at the agency, Doug Cooke, added that the decision that came from the White House wasn't the easiest one to swallow. “It is difficult, to be perfectly honest. It is difficult for those of us who have worked on it for a number of years and made sacrifices in order to make it successful,” he said. Cooke explained that researchers and engineers involved with the Project would look this year at and review all technologies, hardware and computer models that had been developed for ARES I and Orion up until that point. “We will look at everything that's been developed, both in terms of studies and designed, and hardware, to see where it might be used in the future,” he concluded.