NASA Administrator Charles Bolden
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden urged aerospace veterans on Friday to support President Obama’s initiative to develop a commercial space industry that can transport astronauts to Earth orbit as part of a long range international effort to resume human deep space exploration.
Bolden characterized the space policy agenda outlined by the president since February as risky but necessary if the United States is to forge an affordable, politically sustainable strategy to explore beyond low Earth orbit for the first time since the final Apollo moon mission of 1972.
“We are about to embark on an incredible, incredibly risky venture,” Bolden told an audience of mostly NASA and aerospace industry personnel gathered for the annual Rotary National Award for Space Achievement banquet. “But it’s important to the nation.”
The administrator delivered similar a message on Wednesday, when he addressed the agency’s workforce by close circuit television from the Johnson Space Center. Johnson has served as home to NASA’s Constellation Program, which Obama intends to cancel. Bolden asked workers to unite behind the White House strategy.
“We have incredible partners in the commercial sector, most of them sitting in this room,” Bolden told Friday’s audience, many with Apollo and early shuttle program experience. “You are the only way we will get over the hurdle of getting to the places we all want to go. And we have been trying to get to Mars since time began.”
Obama’s policies scrap the previous administration’s under funded, back-to-the-moon program in favor of major new investments in research and technology to underpin missions beyond the moon.
In remarks at the Kennedy Space Center on April 15, the president directed NASA to prepare for a human mission to a near-Earth asteroid by 2025, an expedition to circle Mars a decade later and landed missions on the Red Planet to follow.
Critics claim the commercial sector lacks the experience to shoulder the space taxi role with out undue risk to the astronauts. The new plan has also encountered opposition in Congress from lawmakers concerned with high tech job losses in states with a stake in Constellation. Others claim Obama’s initiative does not include near term goals with more specific destinations and timelines.
As he did in Wednesday’s address, Bolden called on colleagues to debate but then set aside their differences.
Friday’s banquet honored Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA’s Associate Administrator for Space Operations, as the 2010 recipient of RNASA’s National Space Trophy.
Gerstenmaier, whose career with NASA spans 33 years, was selected for the trophy for his “unwavering commitment and remarkable contributions” to human spaceflight.
Since 2005, Gerstenmaier has served in Washington as the associate administrator responsible for space shuttle and space station operations. His guidance is responsible for the shuttle program’s recovery from the 2003 shuttle Columbia loss as well as the final stages of the 12-year-long assembly of the space station.