Updated 10:15 - India has just announced what appear to be plans to send a manned mission of their own to the Moon by 2020. This only adds more impetus to a NASA-Pentagon link for the future superiority of the American space program. More details to come.
I won’t say this too frequently, even given my pro-NewSpace (commercial spaceflight) mindset, but the current NASA administrator is a looney, and I’m specifically referring to his views on how we should be sending people back to the Moon. NASA Admin Michael Griffin, as commented on back in December, is ardently opposed to the incoming Obama Administration’s space policies. He’s become beligerent when approached by Obama staffers and transition team members when they’ve inquired about the costs involved in cancelling (his pet project) the Ares I booster.
It’s gotten to the point that when it was suggested a few days ago in a widely covered story that Obama might open up a connection between the Pentagon and NASA to hasten development of their new spaceships, a move that hasn’t been made since the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, Griffin still insisted that Ares I is the way to go. It’s completely mind boggling. NASA has just essentially been given a military priority which will hasten development of its new ships by at least a few years and would ensure independent American access to space beyond the retirement of the space shuttles next year, and yet Griffin still has a “go-it-alone” attitude.
The proposal goes something like this: the Pentagon has a space budget of $22 billion compared to NASA’s total budget of $17 billion (and people still argue space isn’t militarized!). Along with that, the Pentagon has been developing its own heavy lift launch vehicles, perhaps more extensively than NASA. The Atlas V (left photo) and Delta IV (right photo) launch vehicles are some of the most powerful heavy-lift boosters the United States operates, comparable in power to what NASA is expecting to get out of the Ares I booster. Comparing this to the dawn of the space age, President Eisenhower wanted America’s first steps into space to be a civilian matter, and so let what was then NACA (NASA’s precursor) go forward with their own rocket technology development. The military had the rockets necessary to launch a satellite into space as early as the mid 1950’s, but they were never given the authorization to do so, the logic being that the Soviet Union was not advanced enough and were still at best a decade behind us. Once Sputnik proved that thinking wrong, NASA was given a military priority and launched its first satellite just 4 months later.
Today, the threat is China. Their space program, like those of the US and USSR from the 1950’s through the 1970’s, is fueled with military dollars and is a national defense and pride issue, not just a national scientific endeavor. That’s why from one mission to the next they have been able to make leaps and bounds in terms of their space capabilities. At the current rate that NASA is going, it is estimated that Chinese taikonauts could be walking on the Moon before we do. Not that this is anything to worry about, I doubt that China will be able to conquer the Moon in the few years it would take us to catch up, but that’s beside the point.
There are rockets existing that with little modification could easily launch manned crews into orbit. The Atlas V and Delta IV rockets have been brought up by the Obama transition team, and these are more than viable solutions. Michael Griffin however insists that the non-existent Ares I booster will be safer and more reliable, compared to the Atlas and Delta rockets which have a proven safety record and could be fast tracked for human launch capabilities by 2013 instead of 2015 with the Ares I rocket. That’s not to mention the potential for using the Falcon 9 heavy lift rocket currently being assembled at Cape Canaveral for its first launch early this year. The point is, Mr. Griffin is caught up in his own legacy for the space program, which he perceives as being the Ares I and V boosters and the Orion spacecraft.
Has he forgotten the advances made since he started overseeing the agency? Two Mars rovers that after five years are still chugging away and churning out scientific data, far exceeding their initial three month missions. Another Mars mission successfully found water ice on Mars before succumbing to the extreme cold brought on by a Martian winter, still exceeding its three month mission. The Cassini-Huygens mission became the first to orbit Saturn and send a probe to the surface of its moon Titan while at the same time uncovering a potentially new environment for life in our solar system on the icy moon Enceladus. In terms of human spaceflight, he oversaw the return to flight of the space shuttles and the International Space Station has resumed construction and is set to be completed with only minor changes from its original design. His legacy is already quite successful and if he wants to stay on board at NASA during the Obama administration and add to an already “stellar” career there, he needs to start playing pragmatically and realistically to what’s going to be the most feasible and effective solution for getting Americans to the Moon and beyond.
Otherwise, he needs to get out of town, and will, when his term expires on January 20.