Source: Huntsville Times
HUNTSVILLE, AL – The man whose blue-ribbon panel gave President Obama the argument he used to kill NASA’s Constellation program came here Monday expecting “deep concern, even hostility” from a town with 2,200 Constellation jobs at risk.
Norm Augustine was right. He got direct, even blunt questions, and the applause was polite but tepid after his luncheon speech to the regional chapter of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
Augustine chaired the committee that reviewed the choices facing America’s space program last year. The president has since chosen one of its suggested options, which is to kill the Ares rocket parts of Constellation while preserving the Orion capsule in modified form, provide startup funding for commercial launch companies, and focus NASA on deep-space research.
He isn’t on a tour defending the commission’s findings, Augustine said. “You invited me,” he said, “and I’m here.”
As Augustine noted, parts of Congress don’t agree with killing Constellation after investing $9 billion in it.
“I can’t predict how this is going to come out,” he said
No matter how it does come out, Augustine said, “NASA Huntsville is going to be having a very big role.”
The problem with the space program as it existed last year was simple, Augustine said.
It was money – “the amount our fellow citizens are willing to allocate.”
According to Augustine, NASA’s basic challenge was two-fold. It has large fixed costs in its centers that its budget must support. And it had more expensive missions on the table – Constellation, the space station, the shuttle, and heavy-lift rocket research among them – than its funding would support.
Something had to give, Augustine said.
NASA thought it had a funding promise when it began work on Constellation five years ago, Augustine said, but actual appropriations were consistently one-third less than requested.
“Constellation made a great deal of sense at the time,” he said, but it was facing “a three- to five-year slip (in schedule) in the first four years.”
The result, he said, was that “the International Space Station was going to be in the Pacific Ocean before Ares 1 was ready.”
Obama has since decided to keep the station aloft for at least another five years, Augustine agreed, “but the real question was not could (Ares) be built, but should it be built.”
“The concern wasn’t about Ares architecture,” Augustine said. “The concern was about a mission back to the moon.”
People disagree about going back, Augustine admitted. Astronaut Neil Armstrong thinks it’s worth doing; Buzz Aldrin doesn’t. More importantly, Obama doesn’t think it’s the right mission. He prefers going to asteroids, LaGrange points, Martian moons and finally Mars itself.
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