Source: The Space Review
On April 15th President Obama outlined the administration’s new plan for civil space exploration in a speech at the Kennedy Space Center. This article is part 2 of an analysis of the President’s announcement. The first part of the analysis discussed the cancellation and modification of the previous crew and cargo transportation efforts and the extent to which these changes represent a fundamental shift in the US approach to civil space exploration.
President Obama’s new policy reflects the findings of the Review of US Human Space Flight Plans Committee (also known as the Augustine Committee). The Augustine Committee found that the Constellation program was over budget and behind schedule, although the extent to which this is either a result of underfunding and the normal teething pains associated high technology procurement, or is symptomatic of poor technological decisions, is beyond the scope of this article. What is clear is that interactions among the White House, Congress, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and NASA tightened the program’s time and cost constraints, making it ultimately unsustainable politically and programmatically. Although President Obama’s new plan represents a sharp departure from the Constellation program, begun under the previous administration, the new policy follows much of the same thinking that appears in President Bush’s 2004 Vision for Space Exploration.
President Obama’s new plan modifies President Bush’s Vision for Space Exploration (VSE) by changing the approach to crew and cargo transportation to low Earth orbit (LEO). In the previous plan, NASA was to develop its own crew transportation system, comprised of two different rockets and a crew capsule, to send astronauts to LEO, including to the International Space Station (ISS). The capsule component would be augmented over time to provide a deep space transportation capability. Simultaneously, commercial transportation capabilities would be allowed to evolve, eventually taking over responsibility for crew transportation to LEO. The plan announced by President Obama makes reliance on commercial transportation of crew to LEO the primary plan, while retaining a secondary NASA-developed crew capability by pursuing the immediate development of an “Orion-lite” lifeboat that would be launched as an unmanned vehicle but could return crew from the ISS to Earth. The Orion-lite could, in addition to being evolved for deep-space travel, also be modified to transport crew to LEO, in the event that commercial systems are not able to meet that need.
The new space exploration policy also stops development of the previously proposed heavy-lift vehicle, and delays final decisions on the design and development of a future heavy-lift vehicle until 2015. Under the previous architecture, existing equipment and designs would be evolved, leading to the development of a heavy-lift vehicle that would become operational in the latter half of this decade. In response to the growing costs and technical difficulties associated with the previous launch vehicle design, the new plan calls for several years of technology development followed by a reexamination of an exploration heavy-lift strategy. President Obama’s plan calls for the development of a number of specific space exploration technologies, in contrast to the previous approach of letting NASA’s architecture decisions drive technology development. The array of technologies mentioned in the new plan include on-orbit refueling, closed-loop life support systems, and in situ resource utilization—all of which are technologies that should, at least in the long-term, reduce the operational costs associated with maintaining a human spaceflight program.
As occurred with President Bush’s previous plan for space exploration, before NASA developed its specific plans to implement this policy—the Exploration Systems Architecture Study (ESAS) and Constellation program—speculation about the ramifications of the new plan has outpaced announcement of specific architectural details. Consequently, the debate has prematurely moved discussion of the policy beyond any reasonable analysis based solely on the information actually available. This article, part 2 of an analysis of President Obama’s plan, examines the long-term political viability of the new space exploration plan by examining three elements: the appeal of the exploration objectives, the role of international cooperation in meeting these objectives, and how resilient the plan might be to future political challenges.
Destinations, objectives, and paths
President Obama’s April 15th statement that the establishment of a base on the Moon would no longer be considered the primary near- to medium-term objective of the American human spaceflight program has generated some controversy. Instead, President Obama has made rendezvous with and landing on an asteroid in 2025 the next major goal for NASA. From there, NASA will continue with further deep space exploration, leading to a human mission to orbit Mars in the 2035 timeframe, with a landing to follow at some point thereafter. Those who have followed the deliberations of the Augustine Committee closely should not find this surprising, as the committee exhibited a preference for what it called the “Flexible Path to inner solar system locations, such as lunar orbit, Lagrange points, near-Earth objects and the moons of Mars, followed by exploration of the lunar surface and/or Martian surface.” There has been much discussion about whether either the older or newer approach presents viable objectives for space exploration. The newer Flexible Path approach has met with some resistance, owing in part to its perceived lack of concrete details and milestones, and, as a consequence, may be more difficult to sustain politically over the longer term.
To read more: http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1616/1