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Problems May Keep Humans from Returning to the Moon

Posted on: Friday, 4 April 2008, 10:40 CDT

Uncertain planning and lack of adequate funding may keep an ambitious vision of taking people to the moon and Mars from ever seeing the light of day, according to experts.

The Constellation Program, NASA’s eventual replacement for the space shuttle, is in jeopardy, a congressional report says.

The program is scheduled to begin by 2015, but the U.S. Government Accountability Office reports it has been hampered by engineering, funding and mechanical issues.

One instance being, the program was meant to use heat shielding from the 1960s Apollo program, but experts apparently could not replicate the material.

The congressional report says both the planned Ares I Crew Launch Vehicle and the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle are in danger.

If something goes wrong with the development of the Ares I or the Orion, the entire Constellation Program could be thrown off course and the return to human spaceflight delayed.

“Existing test facilities are insufficient for testing Ares I's new engine, including troublesome vibrations," the report said. Both vehicles also have had "weight issues”.

All these unknowns, as well as others, leave NASA in the position of being unable to provide firm cost estimates for the projects at this point.

U.S. space agency officials told Congress earlier in the week that between 5,800 and 7,300 jobs would be cut over the next three years as the space shuttles are retired, most at the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida. The shuttles are scheduled to be grounded by 2010.

"From its beginning, NASA's exploration initiative has suffered from chronic under-funding, with a 'once-in-a-generation' project to develop a new space transportation system 'shoehorned' into a NASA budget that in some years hasn't even kept pace with inflation," said Mark Udall, a Colorado Democrat who heads the House of Representatives subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics.

NASA's Richard Gilbrech told the subcommittee hearing the Constellation Program has a $3 billion budget for 2009 alone.

Gilbrech told the panel that NASA recognizes the challenges that lay ahead and they are making progress in managing these challenges.

“Costs linked to retiring the shuttle had not been accounted for in NASA budgets,” according to former astronaut Kathryn Thornton, now a professor at the University of Virginia.

"Each year since 2004 when the Vision was announced, the NASA budget has fallen short of that required to achieve the mandated exploration goals and milestones," she said in submitted testimony.

Thornton says there is a mismatch between aspirations and appropriations that no amount of spin can disguise.

This could affect more than just the U.S.’s top spot at space exploration.

NASA has contributed billions of dollars in contracts with several aerospace companies such as Alliant Techsystems, Pratt and Whitney Rocketdyne, Boeing Corp and Lockheed Martin.

"Today, the global space economy exceeds more than $220 billion annually, and that figure is growing rapidly each year. NASA is a small, but integral component of this critical global economic engine," the GAO report reads.

Project Constellation is a NASA program to create a new generation of spacecraft for human spaceflight capable of performing a variety of missions, from Space Station resupply to lunar landings.

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On the Net:

Official Constellation NASA Web Site: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/constellation/main/index.html

Source: redOrbit staff and wire reports

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