Most of this post is from posts on Phil Plait's
Bad Astronomy website. Phil treats the news of the Ares and moon program cancellations as mixed; but, doesn't react. In his
latest post, he gives Pres. Obama credit for some good news:
The good news for sure is an increase of $6 billion over the next five years. It stresses new technology and innovation (to the tune of over $1.5 billion), which is also good. A lot of NASA’s successes have been from pushing the limits on what can be done. It also stresses Earth science, which isn’t surprising at all; Obama appears to understand the importance of our environmental impact, including global warming. So that’s still good news.
The very very good news is that half that money — half, folks, 3.2 billion dollars — is going to science. Yeehaw! The release specifically notes telescopes and missions to the Moon and planets. That, my friends, sounds fantastic.
In a previous post:
Give space a chance, he states:
OK, yes, it does look like (assuming the rumors are true) the Obama budget for NASA is cutting out the Constellation rocket program in general and Ares in particular. But that doesn’t mean manned spaceflight is dead.
As I said in that above link, private space companies are still a ways off from putting people in orbit. However, I strongly suspect they’ll be doing it before Ares would’ve been ready to do it anyway. Private companies like Space-X may be two years from that, while Ares wouldn’t have been ready for five, assuming NASA could even get Ares ready by the scheduled time and in the assigned budget (which I would give a chance of, oh, say, precisely 0). So it’s possible, perhaps even likely, that after the Shuttle retires later this year (or early next) companies like Space X will be able to reach the International Space Station with rockets before NASA could.
Phil definitely is
not a fan of the Ares rocket. Neither is
Apollo 11 astronaut Buz Aldrin, and neither am I. Some Apollo-era NASA engineers quit when they learned the new space shuttle design would rely on solid rocket boosters. There are the obvious safety issues, and the fact that the SRB's were a major factor in keeping the cost of shuttle launches high.
Space-X is still forging ahead with it's
Dragon and Dragonlab capsule projects as well as the
Falcon 9 Heavy Lift vehicle.
Back to Phil's latest post:
So, where does this leave us as far as going back to the Moon? It leaves us delayed, again. That sucks. However, as I have pointed out before, Constellation was already a mess. Behind schedule, over budget, and starved of funding. It was a mandate from the Bush White House, but never got the money it needed from them or Congress to ensure it could be done (this didn’t work when it was attempted from the Bush Sr. White House/Congress either).
Phil continues with a very good, in-depth analysis of the Obama Administration's decision as well as prospects for future manned exploration.
