Source: Orlando Sentinel
U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida had nothing but praise for President Barack Obama last week when the commander-in-chief visited Kennedy Space Center and touted a new White House plan to rely on commercial rockets to launch a new era of space exploration.
But Nelson still isn’t 100 percent happy and on Wednesday inserted language into Senate budget plans that could revive a NASA-run rocket that Obama wants to cancel. While this budget outline is ultimately non-binding, the resolution shows Congress isn’t yet sold on Obama’s space vision.
Nelson’s provision calls on NASA to reinstitute testing of the Ares I rocket, which was designed to carry a crewed capsule named Orion to the International Space Station by 2015. Problems have dogged the program, however, and Obama proposed killing the Ares I after an independent space panel concluded last year that it would not be ready before 2017 — even with an increase in funding.
Instead of the Ares I, Obama wants to use commercial rockets to resupply the space station with crew and cargo. That way, NASA engineers could concentrate their efforts on designing futuristic new technologies that could one day take astronauts to nearby asteroids or Mars.
But in an afternoon budget hearing, Nelson argued that NASA still needs the Ares I so that it could test technologies needed to eventually build bigger rockets that could launch the heavier spacecraft needed for missions beyond low-Earth orbit and the space station.
He also said Ares I testing was essential to national defense, although he did not elaborate. U.S. Sen. Kent Conrad, D- North Dakota, who chairs the Senate Budget Committee, cited “classified discussions” that made the tests “absolutely essential for the national security.”
“It will not only be important to the future of us getting out of low-Earth orbit by building a heavy-lift vehicle for NASA but it’s going to be critical to the solid rocket motors that protect this country’s national security,” Nelson said.
At least one military official has disagreed with that assertion, however.
In an interview with Space News last week, Gary Payton, Deputy Under Secretary of the Air Force for Space Programs, said that the administration’s decision to cancel Constellation “has a trivial impact on [Defense Department] space launch” because the military doesn’t use big segment solid rocket motors like are used on shuttle and which would be used for Constellation’s Ares rockets.
To continue reading this story: http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/space/2010/04/nelson-aims-to-save-ares-i-testing.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+news%2Fspace%2Fspace_blog+%28Space+Blog+The+Write+Stuff%29