US President Barack Obama has ditched plans to return to the moon and hitched NASA’s future to private industry in a budget calling for the space agency to stay close to Earth and research.
In a blueprint for the US space agency’s budget next year unveiled on Monday, Obama proposed dropping the massively over-budget Constellation program former US president George W. Bush implemented to develop a new-generation rocket aimed at returning Americans to the moon by 2020.
The White House said it wanted to ground Constellation because it was too costly, used outdated technology and would not be ready to ferry humans to the moon before 2028.
In its place, “a bold and ambitious new space initiative that invests in American ingenuity to propel us on a new journey of innovation and discovery” was being launched.
The president called for spending US$6 billion over five years for NASA to develop commercial spacecraft that could carry astronauts into low Earth orbit.
That was a far smaller increase than the US$3 billion a year a president-appointed panel has said would be necessary for a viable human flight program.
“The United States and its partners in other nations, in industry and in academia will pursue a more sustainable and affordable approach to spaceflight through the development of transformative technologies and systems,” NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden told reporters. “We will blaze a new trail of discovery and development. We will facilitate the growth of new commercial industries. And we will expand our understanding of the Earth, our solar system and the universe beyond.”
Private industry will take on the role of building the space vehicles that take humans to the International Space Station, while NASA focuses on research and development — a proposal that has critics raising safety concerns.
Jim Bell, president of the Planetary Society, a global public space advocacy group, said there was nothing new in the private sector’s involvement in building spacecraft or other vehicles for the government.
“Every government uses the private sector to build fighter aircraft,” Bell said, noting that the lunar lander in the Apollo program that landed humans on the moon for the first time in 1969 was built by a commercial contractor.
“The difference here is the magnitude of change: From the rocket to the nose cone, they’re calling for major commercial development,” said Bell, who backs the NASA plans and pledged to pressure Congress to approve them.
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