Christmas Comes Early, Part II (Maybe)
Although Keith warns that the story is premature and may not be correct in its particulars, this Science Insider preview of the Obama administration’s revised space policy (particularly regarding Constellation) indicates that it might include some longed-for Christmas presents…including (and especially) the cancellation of Ares I.
I can’t say that I’m thrilled at the possibility of handing off Altair and the hypothetical lunar base to international partners, given the distortions that imposed on the ISS (e.g.: the higher-inclination orbit that allowed Soyuz to reach ISS from Kazakhstan). Nor am I especially enthusiastic about the possibility of accelerating the development of the unneeded Ares V, but I do recognize that it would be a political necessity to appease Sen. Shelby (R-Huntsville Makework Jobs) should Ares I actually get the long-overdue and well-deserved axe. Nor am I thrilled that NASA may be given $1-4B more, given the waste that has already plagued Constellation (Ares-1X, MLAS, and Ares I design mitigations, for example).
The potential stocking stuffers in this story, though, are the appearance that commercial cargo to ISS is finally being taken seriously as a part of NASA’s operations, and (personally, since I work on Orion) the possibility that Orion could switch to riding an EELV as it should have from the beginning. If true, the former will be a big boost to a true commercial space transportation industry, and the latter will make our design job on Orion a heck of a lot easier through more benign launch and abort environments and mass margins (not to mention the stack won’t look like a corndog any more — that’s just embarrassing). While the rumored policy update does nothing to address what I consider to be the root problem — NASA shouldn’t be doing this stuff in the first place, but rather (if anything at all) encouraging through tech transfer and incentives the growth of robust private sector space industries — it would at least be a step towards a somewhat more sensible way of doing what the agency has been tasked with doing.
