Shifting NASA priorities toward risky, expensive missions to the moon and Mars will mean neglecting the most promising space science efforts, states the American Physical Society (APS) Special Committee on NASA Funding for Astrophysics, in a report released today. The committee points out that the total cost of NASA’s ill-defined Moon-Mars initiative is unknown as yet, but is likely to be a substantial drain on NASA resources. As currently envisioned, the initiative will rely on human astronauts who will establish a base on the moon and subsequently travel to Mars. The program is in contrast to recent, highly successful NASA missions, including the Hubble Space telescope, the Mars Rover, and Explorer missions, which have revolutionized our understanding of the universe while relying on comparatively cheap, unmanned and robotic instruments. It is likely that such programs will have to be scaled back or eliminated in the wake of much more expensive and dangerous manned space exploration, according to the committee.
Op/Ed: NASA’s Moon-Mars Initiative Jeopardizes Important Science Opportunities American Physical Society
Op/Ed: Moon-Mars money Florida Today
The moon-Mars mission proposed by President Bush in January — one we have strongly supported as the key to unimaginable technological progress — is in danger of starvation in Congress. That should be ringing alarm bells for the entire Florida delegation, including Democratic Sens. Bill Nelson and Bob Graham, and local GOP Representatives Dave Weldon and Tom Feeney. With the short lame-duck session under way this week, they and their state colleagues must get to work to make sure NASA is assured all the money needed to get the potentially historic venture under way.
Dittmar Associates’ Market Study for the Space Exploration Program Dittmar Associates
On the eve of the Presidential election, Americans continue to support human space flight and endorse the Space Exploration plan to return to the Moon and to Mars, but they also question the relationship of NASA to its constituents.
A comprehensive, in-depth study by Dittmar Associates aimed at understanding public perceptions of NASA and particularly the Space Exploration Program reveals that Americans continue to support human space flight, with 69% supporting Space Exploration and 26% opposed.
New $50 Million Prize for Private Orbiting Spacecraft
While a team of aerospace engineers takes aim this week on the $10 million Ansari X Prize competition for privately developed suborbital spaceflight, a Nevada millionaire is planning an even loftier contest. Robert Bigelow, chief of Las Vegas-based Bigelow Aerospace, is apparently setting higher goals for private spaceflight endeavors with America’s Space Prize, a $50 million race to build an orbital vehicle capable of carrying up to seven astronauts to an orbital outpost by the end of the decade, according to Aviation Week and Space Technology. Bigelow told Aviation Week that not only would Space Prize winners secure the $50 million purse, half of which he’s putting up himself, but also snag options to service inflatable space habitats under development by Bigelow Aerospace.
Bigelow’s Gamble Aviation Week & Space Technology
The Bigelow Aerospace project to privately develop inflatable Earth-orbit space modules is beginning to integrate diverse U.S. and European technologies into subscale and full-scale inflatable test modules and subsystems at the company’s heavily guarded facilities here. While much public attention is focused on the massive International Space Station (ISS), Bigelow has quietly become a mini-Skunk Works for the NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC). Ongoing technical assistance to Bigelow from JSC is focused on helping the company spawn development of orbiting commercial inflatable modules by the end of the decade, with the possibility of JSC later using the Bigelow technology for inflatable modules on the Moon or Mars.
Budget Cuts Would Severely Hinder Exploration, O’Keefe Says Aerospace Daily & Defense Report
The cuts to NASA’s fiscal year 2005 budget request contained in the House Appropriations Committee’s NASA spending bill effectively would halt the agency’s plans to develop a Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) and achieve new breakthroughs in in-space propulsion, according to Administrator Sean O’Keefe. “We can’t do this at the levels that they’ve contemplated,” O’Keefe told Senate lawmakers at a Sept. 8, 2004 hearing.
Analysis: Bush stands by his space plan
President George W. Bush’s new space exploration plan has received a burst of hard-core support in Congress, aimed at blocking any attempt to cut its funding, and backed up by a rare veto threat from the president himself. This development has emerged in the wake of action by a House appropriations subcommittee last week, which cut the administration’s NASA budget request for fiscal year 2005 by more than $1 billion. Presidential veto threats have been a rarity in the Bush White House. Also, no U.S. president has ever vetoed a spending bill because it contained too little money for space programs.
Kerry is mum on moon and Mars Florida Today
John Kerry brought two astronauts with him to campaign at the Kennedy Space Center. He strolled among the rocket relics. And he recalled a day when those rockets were the tools a dedicated army of Americans used to do what then seemed impossible. But in the heart of a community where more than 20,000 people work on space programs, the Democrats’ candidate for president met with a roomful of voters without commenting on President Bush’s proposal to send astronauts to the moon and Mars or offering a specific vision of his own for exploring space.
John Kerry on Space 2004
Of course, the only comments from a Democratic presidential candidate in 2004 that have come to have any real relevance to the future progress of Bush’s new space policy (should Bush lose) are those of John Kerry, the Democratic Party’s 2004 nominee. The day after Bush’s speech, the San Francisco Chronicle quoted Kerry as saying, “Rather than sending Americans to Mars or the Moon right now, these people would be better off trying to figure out how to get Americans back from Iraq.”
White House Threatens to Veto Budget Bill Over NASA Cuts
The White House has threatened to veto a spending bill that would deny NASA the funding it is counting on to get started on a new space exploration agenda next year. The veto threat was issued after the House Appropriations Committee voted Thursday to cut President George W. Bush