Space Forum / Astronomy / August 2009

> http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/orl-nasa-moon-return-augustine-073009,
0,1431682.story
>
> 2028? Goal of returning to moon could be slipping further away
> Mark K. Matthews and Robert Block
> Sentinel Staff Writers
> July 30, 2009
>
> NASA's goal of putting astronauts back on the moon by 2020 is all but
> impossible to achieve, a presidential panel was told Wednesday.
>
> An independent analysis concluded there is little hope NASA could
> replicate any time soon what Apollo 11 accomplished 40 years ago. And
> sources said an undisclosed part of the study showed it may take until
> 2028 — nearly 60 years after America's first moon landing — to get
> back.
>
> "We can't see [the gap] closing," Gary Pulliam, an analyst with
> Aerospace Corp., told a near-silent audience in Huntsville, Ala.,
> where engineers at the Marshall Space Flight Center have spent the
> past four years designing new rockets for NASA's Constellation
> program.
>
> One NASA analyst, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he
> is not authorized to speak on behalf of NASA or the review panel, said
> astronauts might be able to return to the moon by 2028, although
> another source said 2035 was more likely.
>
> The grim assessment, delivered on the second day of hearings this week
> on NASA's human spaceflight program, is the latest blow to the
> Constellation program, a 4-year-old effort to design new rockets and a
> crew capsule to take astronauts to the moon and eventually Mars.
>
> On Tuesday, former astronaut Sally Ride told the full panel, led by
> former Lockheed Martin CEO Norm Augustine, that she did not expect
> that Constellation's Ares I rocket and Orion capsule could complete a
> first mission into low-Earth orbit before 2017 — two years after its
> current target date.
>
> A second estimate, calculated by Pulliam on Wednesday, was even more
> pessimistic. Because of ongoing technical troubles and insufficient
> funding, he said, Constellation's first mission could be delayed to
> 2019. "It should not surprise anyone that problems exist," he said.
>
> The findings of the panel build on months of increasingly critical
> reports on Constellation, which ex-NASA Administrator Michael Griffin
> chose in 2005 to fulfill then- President George W. Bush's vision of
> returning astronauts to the moon by 2020 to prepare for an eventual
> Mars mission.
>
> Dramatic changes?
>
> There are already signs that the panel is preparing options that would
> dramatically change NASA's current plans to build two big rockets: the
> Ares I to take crew to the space station and low-Earth orbit, and the
> Ares V heavy-cargo lifter that would take up a moon lander and
> propellant to take the Orion capsule and astronauts to the moon for
> extended visits.
>
> One of the panel's subgroups, led by retired Air Force Gen. Lester
> Lyles, recommended that the group consider allowing America's
> international partners to participate in the development of NASA's
> human spaceflight plans.
>
> Another far-reaching recommendation came from a subgroup headed by
> former space-shuttle engineer and Boeing executive Bohdan Bejmuk. It
> called for NASA to give up flying to low-Earth orbit, including to the
> international space station.
>
> "Let's turn it over to the newcomers," he said, referring to companies
> such as SpaceX of California and Orbital Sciences Corp. of Virginia,
> which have NASA contracts to develop rockets and unmanned capsules
> that can reach the space station.
>
> Doubts about the direction of the manned-space program spurred
> President Barack Obama to name the committee, which has until late
> August to present financial and policy options as to how NASA should
> proceed.
>
> To stay on the current course, the White House would have to pump
> billions of dollars more into Constellation — or completely rethink
> how, and why, NASA sends astronauts into space. In the meantime, with
> the space shuttle slated to retire by 2010 or 2011, the U.S. will
> confront a years-long gap when it has no capacity to send humans into
> space and must pay the Russians for trips to the space station.
>
> An option to narrow that gap, suggested by Ride on Tuesday, is to
> extend the shuttle program past 2011. When the panel meets in Cocoa
> Beach today, U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson is expected to advocate this idea,
> according to an advance transcript.
>
> "I wish you would consider extending the shuttle to a point in time
> that would lessen the gap so that we can have Americans riding
> American vehicles to get to our station, and then on to the moon, and
> then on to Mars," said Nelson, D-Fla.
>
> A shuttle extension would prevent devastating job losses at Kennedy
> Space Center, which prepares NASA spacecraft for launch. One upcoming
> report estimates 7,000 job losses at KSC after the shuttle's
> retirement.
>
> Jeff Hanley, manager of the Constellation program, appeared resigned
> to the bleak reports that the rockets would be years late. He said
> that predicting when a new rocket would launch was akin to "hurricane
> forecasting."
>
> During the daylong hearing, however, several of Hanley's midlevel
> managers defended the beleaguered program. They offered their draft
> solutions to ongoing technical problems, including the Ares I rocket's
> tendency to shake violently on liftoff and potentially drift into its
> launch tower.
>
> "We believe [Constellation rockets] are the fastest, most proven
> [vehicles] to close the human spaceflight gap," said Steve Cook,
> manager of the Ares program.
>
> Vigorous defense from ex-chief
>
> But the most vigorous defense came from Griffin, who left the agency
> when Obama took office and is now a professor at the University of
> Alabama at Huntsville.
>
> In a letter to the panel, he said NASA and the Constellation program
> were "targets of broad but shallow criticism." And he said
> Constellation was the "most expeditiously attainable, broadly capable,
> lowest risk, and lowest life cycle cost design" under review. "Do not
> allow the parochial voices of the small-minded, the self-interested,
> and the uninformed to prevail. Choose the future," he concluded — a
> parting shot aimed at commercial carriers and military rocket
> companies competing to bury the Constellation program.
>
> Among the options being considered by the committee are designs that
> would put the Orion capsule atop military rockets and another system
> that would use the shuttle's engines, giant fuel tank and solid-rocket
> boosters.