Find hope in this, NASA, science and Mars fans: President Obama’s new stance on NASA’s funding will likely pump no less than $6 billion into the agency to create a new heavy rocket sooner than we’d hoped. Mars is its target.
Over the previous few weeks we’ve heard rumors about what NASA’s future might look like. All of them seemed attractive compared to the grim reality we’d assumed would happen: The Space Shuttle grounded, the Constellation moonshot program canceled, big delays in getting private space ventures ready to fire humans into space, and huge job losses in NASA and its supporting industries.
Now there’s word that during a big space event tomorrow, Obama will unveil a new vision that includes $6 billion of extra cash for the space agency, on top of its original budget plans, phased over five years. This money has very specific purposes: Firstly it’s going to create 2,500 additional jobs in and around NASA’s Florida installations, and secondly it’ll result in a new large rocket that’ll be key in taking humans to Mars. Spin-off work will include continuing to develop the Orion manned space capsule to act as an emergency escape vehicle for the international space station.