Defense Dept Could Share Resources With NASA
Posted on: Monday, 5 January 2009, 07:10 CST
People close to President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team say there is talk of a future link between NASA and the Defense Department in order to step up the US’ efforts to return to the moon before China.
Bloomberg reported on Friday that the upcoming administration is weighing the options of a possible collaboration between NASA and the Defense Department because it may expedite the planned mission to the moon, which is currently slated for 2015.
Such a link between both agencies could be beneficial to NASA because the agency may be able to use more affordable military rockets to launch Orion, its next-generation spacecraft sooner than expected.
Currently, NASA intends to use its new Ares I rocket to launch Orion into space. But Ares I is not expected to be ready before 2015.
What’s more, NASA is expected to retire the space shuttle in 2010, leaving about a five-year gap before Orion would be ready to reach space.
This gap would cause NASA to rely on Russia to ferry items and astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS). In April, the space agency told legislators it would stop asking for Congressional permission to buy cargo space on Russian Progress re-supply vehicles after 2011.
“The potential change comes as Pentagon concerns are rising over China’s space ambitions because of what is perceived as an eventual threat to U.S. defense satellites, the lofty battlefield eyes of the military,” Bloomberg reported.
“The foreign affairs and national security implications have to be considered,” Neal Lane, former science adviser to President Clinton.
“The NASA review team is just asking questions; no decisions have been made,” said Nick Shapiro, a transition spokesman for Obama.
Dean Cheng, a senior Asia analyst with CNA Corp., an Alexandria, Virginia-based national-security research firm, said China’s ability to reach the moon would not be an intentional threat to the U.S.
“But it would suggest that China had reached a level of proficiency in space comparable to that of the United States,” Cheng told Bloomberg.
NASA has also offered some $500 million in so-called “seed money” which it hopes will revitalize the private sector and bring an incentive for competition.
“NASA not only should, but must, pursue and nurture appropriate partnerships with the emerging commercial space sector when it is reasonably within the grasp of such firms to meet our needs,” said NASA chief Michael Griffin, who told Obama’s transition team leader, Lori Garver that her colleagues lack the engineering background to evaluate rocket options.
Griffin said in July that he believes China will be able to put people on the moon before the U.S. goes back in 2020. The last Apollo mission left the lunar surface in 1972.
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Image Caption: Orion space capsule in lunar orbit (NASA).
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Source: redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports
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