NASA Administrator Charles Bolden will unveil the U.S. space agency’s spending priorities for 2011 during a Feb. 1 announcement at NASA headquarters here, according to administration officials.
President Barack Obama’s 2011 budget request is expected to realign NASA’s human spaceflight activities and investments to foster development of commercial systems capable of ferrying astronauts to the International Space Station. The request is not expected to include a much-sought after billion-dollar boost to aid NASA’s funding-hampered human spaceflight efforts.
NASA currently plans to retire its three aging space shuttles this year after five more missions. But plans to use the shuttle fleet’s replacement – NASA’s new Ares rockets and their Orion crew vehicles – for an eventual return to the moon are still in flux.
NASA Budget Request Expected to Realign U.S. Spaceflight Goals
Obama Backs New Launcher and Bigger NASA Budget ScienceInsider
President Barack Obama will ask Congress next year to fund a new heavy-lift launcher to take humans to the moon, asteroids, and the moons of Mars, ScienceInsider has learned. The president chose the new direction for the U.S. human space flight program Wednesday at a White House meeting with NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, according to officials familiar with the discussion. NASA would receive an additional $1 billion in 2011 both to get the new launcher on track and to bolster the agency’s fleet of robotic Earth-monitoring spacecraft. According to knowledgeable sources, the White House is convinced that scarce NASA funds would be better spent on a simpler heavy-lift vehicle that could be ready to fly as early as 2018. Meanwhile, European countries, Japan, and Canada would be asked to work on a lunar lander and modules for a moon base, saving the U.S. several billion dollars. And commercial companies would take over the job of getting supplies to the international space station.
House speaker questions more NASA funding, Mars trip Florida Today
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi raised questions Wednesday about boosting NASA funding, in competition with other budget priorities, and pursuing a Mars trip. The California Democrat also said any boost in funding, as recommended by a recent commission, would have to be measured against other priorities to create jobs.
“I, myself, if you are asking me personally, I have not been a big fan of manned expeditions to outer space, in terms of safety and cost,” Pelosi told reporters a roundtable on legislative accomplishments this year. “But people could make the case; technology is always changing.”
President Barack Obama, who met Wednesday with NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, is weighing how to support the agency. A recent report from the U.S. Human Spaceflight Plans Commission recommended phasing in a $3 billion boost in funding in order to pursue spaceflight safely, but Obama hasn’t signaled what suggestions he will adopt.
Official Mars Society Statement Regarding Augustine Commission Report
The recently released report from the Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee (AKA: The Augustine Commission), Seeking a Human Space Program Worthy of a Great Nation, states that “A human landing and extended human presence on Mars stand prominently above all other opportunities for exploration. Mars is unquestionably the most scientifically interesting destination in the inner solar system. It possesses resources which can be used for life support and propellants. If humans are ever to live for long periods with intention of extended settlement on another planetary surface, it is likely to be on Mars.”
The Mars Society is in perfect agreement with this statement and we hope that NASA will pursue a program that will realize this goal as quickly and as efficiently as possible. Unfortunately, the Augustine Commission report then goes on to state that we are not ready to go to Mars with current technology and we can go nowhere in the next decade, even with the expenditure of over a hundred billion dollars. While challenging, sending humans to Mars is possible with current technological expertise and we could have humans on Mars in the 2020s.
Panel Urges $3 Billion More Per Year to Go to Moon, Mars
To get to the moon and then eventually go on to Mars will take much more money and technology than the U.S. space program has now, according to a report released today by an independent panel convened, at White House request, under former aerospace executive Norman Augustine. The Augustine Commission made several recommendations today for NASA:
Tight budget quashes US space ambitions: panel
US ambitions for manned space exploration have hit a major hurdle in the wake of severe budget constraints, according to preliminary findings of a panel appointed by President Barack Obama.
Reaching Mars was deemed too risky while returning to the Moon by 2020 was ruled out barring an additional three billion dollars per year to replace the retiring space shuttle fleet and build bigger rockets, according to the group led by Norm Augustine, a former CEO of US aerospace giant Lockheed Martin.
“Really, we’ve given the White House a dilemma. The space program we have today, the human space flight program, really isn’t executable with the money we have,” Augustine told PBS public television last week.
VOTE: NASA’s budget focus: Moon, Mars, or ISS? cnet
If you had to choose the subject of NASA’s attention over the next decade, what would you pick? Would you want to push the space agency to go back to the moon? Would you want it to devote its budget toward a human mission to Mars?
The Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee, a panel ordered to chart the future of the U.S. space program, is trying to narrow those possibilities. So far, the group has come up with several ideas for how NASA should focus its resources.
NASA experts scale back moon and Mars plans in face of Obama funding cut fears Telegraph
Forty years after astronauts first walked on the moon, NASA, the US space agency, is officially committed to a $35 billion (£22 billion) plan instituted by President George W. Bush to build the first of a new generation of manned rockets that can return to the planet by 2020. However, the new president has appointed an independent panel to review America’s costly manned space programme, called Constellation, and make recommendations by the end of August. With NASA engineers now floating cut-rate rocket alternatives, some politicians and former astronauts fear that the 2020 deadline will be foiled by financial constraints.
Lawmakers Slash $670 Million From NASA Budget Request
In a move that reflects the uncertainty surrounding NASA’s current strategy for replacing the space shuttle and returning astronauts to the Moon by 2020, House appropriators slashed by 16 percent the space agency’s $4 billion request for manned space exploration in 2010.
The proposed legislation, marked up June 4 by the House Appropriations commerce, justice, science subcommittee, trims $483 million overall from U.S. President Barack Obama’s $18.7 billion budget request for NASA next year. The $670 million cut to the 2010 manned exploration request would leave $3.21 billion, which is less than is available for the effort this year.
Wanted! Your Views On America’s Space Program Goals
It’s time to put your 21st century thinking cap because you’ve been invited to take part in a new study into why the U.S. has a space program.
The new study “Rationale and Goals of the U.S. Civil Space Program” is looking for the public’s view on the following questions:
What’s the future of human, robotic, commercial, and personal spaceflight? Is your life impacted in a meaningful way by the space program? What kind of emphasis should the space program represent in going forward? How can the country’s civil, or non-military, space program address key national issues?
Views – positive or negative – of the general public are welcomed.
This study is sponsored exclusively by The National Academies, and it is not receiving any funds from government agencies or any other external sources. The assessment is a joint effort of the Space Studies Board and Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board.