14 DAY TRIAL // With the new budget proposal released by the Obama Administration on February 1, NASA's Project Constellation has been abandoned. Members of this new space program included the ARES I launch vehicle, the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle, the Altair Lunar Lander, the Earth-Departure Stage (EDS), and the ARES V heavy-lift vehicle (HLV). Though these spacecraft have now been shelved, the United States are still in need of producing a viable HLV, if it ever hopes to leave the low-Earth orbit (LEO), and head for the Moon, Mars, or near-Earth Objects (NEO), the BBC News informs.
In the days following the announcement that Constellation was no more, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden made it clear that the US would not abandon plans for an HLV, but the official has admitted that, at this point, the space agency has no clue as to how this new rocket may look like. What did become transparent was the fact that components already developed under Project Constellation would be implemented in the new design, so as not to waste the innovation and funding that went into creating them in the first place.
“We need [HLV] for science, we need it for intelligence, we need for Department of Defense, and NASA definitely needs it if we're going to talk about sending humans beyond low-Earth orbit. So, the need for a heavy-lift launch vehicle – I don't think there's any disagreement on the part of anybody. How do we evolve there? We take the lessons learned from Constellation,” Bolden said recently.
“If I'm able to negotiate with Congress appropriately, we may actually end up carving out some sub-systems that are in the Constellation program because they are advanced technology, and they are things we will need to develop any heavy-lift launch system,” the official added. However, the odds appear to be stacked against him on this one. Obama's move of canceling the Project made him many enemies in the Congress, in both parties, so the fight to pass the new budget proposal is expected to be rough and merciless. Under these conditions, it's doubtful that Bolden will obtain sufficient support from the Congress to move ahead with his plans.
Still, Bolden said that the decision to kill Constellation was a good one, and that he would not apologize for it. “The President has given us the money to expand the International Space Station to 2020. That's five more years of human space exploration in low-Earth orbit on the International Space Station than we were going to have under the Constellation. The President has given me an additional $6 [billion] over the next five years to try to enhance and speed the development of a commercial spaceflight capability, to get humans to low-Earth orbit. That is not killing human spaceflight,” he also added.