14 DAY TRIAL // Speaking yesterday, February 24, in front of senators, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said that sending astronauts to Mars was even at this time the agency's primary objective. Despite the fact that some of the basic technological capabilities for this are missing, and that the objective is at this point at least a decade away, the official does not believe that plans should be sacked. In a heated debate that took place in the Senate's Commerce, Science and Transportation subcommittee, the top NASA official stated that US human spaceflight should strive to view Mars as the ultimate objective in space exploration.
“Mars is what I believe to be the ultimate destination for human exploration in our solar system,” he mentioned at the hearing. NASA currently does not have the technical capabilities to pull this off, and some of the necessary studies to gage threat level on astronauts are still ongoing. “There are too many capabilities that we don't have in our kit bag,” he told senators, as he defended these plans against critics. In this regard, the official explained, the 2011 budget is very helpful. While it sacks Project Constellation, it provides more funding for the more rapid development of spaceflight technologies that would take human astronauts beyond low-Earth orbit faster than NASA would have been capable all on its own.
But Bolden's ideas were not welcome by everyone. There are many in Senate and elsewhere who believe that sacking Project Constellation is a big mistake. They argue that this approach to space exploration created a whole new way of approaching traveling through the solar system. Plans were to construct two types of rockets, the light ARES I and the heavy ARES V, which could have carried the Orion astronaut vehicle, the Altair lunar lander, as well as the Earth-Departure Stage (EDS). This last component was essentially a rocket that would have been attached to the Orion/Altair spacecraft in orbit, and provide the necessary boost for insertion on a Moon-bound course.
Naturally, such an ambitious project ran over budget, and took more time than initially estimated, but only because new technologies had to be produced from scratch in order to make Constellation work. When President Obama proposed that it be shut down come 2011, many criticized this decision. One of the more pertinent reasons for disagreeing with the White House is the fact that NASA will stand to lose most. While private space companies will be flourishing, the agency will lose thousands of extremely well-trained engineers and technicians, who will move over to the private sector.
“With the retirement of the space shuttle later this year, and if the administration's proposal is followed, the United States will no longer be a space-faring nation,” said at another hearing Robert Gibson, a former shuttle commander on five missions. “You don't accomplish great things without a clearly defined mission. And this budget has no clearly defined mission,” said subcommittee member Sen. David Vitter (R-Louisiana). The official added that the new approach would leave the US in the dust of countries such as Russia, China, India, as well as Europe, which are all investing heavily in space exploration. “I will fight with every ounce of energy I have to defeat this budget or anything like it,” Vitter said.