Change I Can Believe In?

Now, I have been, and continue to be, supportive of President-elect Obama, but the latest bit of news that I have come across has created some doubt for me.

According to Daily Tech, the Obama transition team is looking to scrap the next-generation manned spaceflight booster program. The Ares was being designed to replace the Space Shuttle and has been in development since 2005 (though initial concepts were thrown around as far back as 1995).


Note: Ares IV development has been discontinued.

Now I realize that the economic crisis and need to cut the federal budget means that money is at a premium, but I must iterate the importance of the space program. Mr. Obama, among others, has talked about investing in the future of America and it's hard to find a better symbol for that future than the manned spaceflight program. I cite the 1960s NASA programs that inspired a generation of young Americans to become scientists, engineers and advocates.

Critics legitimately point-out that the costs of the Ares program are ballooning and that using old heavy-lift rockets such as the Delta or Atlas series would be cheaper. Cost estimates of the Ares program have usually hovered around $3 billion, which is a lot, but nowhere close to other major government aerospace programs of the 21st century. In 2000, four years before the first delivery, a Congressional committee report indicated that the cost of developing the F-22 fighter aircraft would be $14 billion (up nearly a billion from six months earlier). In 2005, the Washington Post reported on the $44.8 billion cost to development of the F-35 strike aircraft (cost was partially mitigated by contributions from other governments). 2006 Department of Defense budget: $527 billion (not counting expensive things like foreign wars); 2006 NASA budget: $15 billion.

The safety of the Delta and Atlas rockets is also a major concern. Right now, these boosters are used to get satellites and probes into space. The benefit of the Ares is the top-to-bottom focus on delivering people into space. Furthermore, Delta and Atlas boosters are not true heavy-lift rockets and would not be able to send astronauts to the moon. If we want to send astronauts to the Moon and beyond, which we should want for a plethora of reasons, we need to rediscover and reinvent the heavy-lift capability of the 1960s. In order to illustrate the heavy-lift question:

Delta IV Heavy: 23,000 kg to Low-Earth Orbit (LEO)
Atlas IIIB: 10,000 kg to LEO
Ares I (shuttle replacement): 25,000 kg to LEO
Space Shuttle: 24,000 kg to LEO
Ares V (heavy-lift): 188,000 kg to LEO/71,000 kg to TLI (Trans-Lunar Injection)
Saturn V: 118,000 kg to LEO/47,000 kg to TLI

As I blather about the manned spaceflight program, the other important things that NASA does, like planet-side research and development, should not be neglected either. As the Daily Tech article noted, during the campaign, Mr. Obama was inconsistent in his plans for NASA. Fortunately, Mr. Obama has nominated some very smart people for science and educational roles. Hopefully, they can keep the next administration from neglecting science, research, technology, and the future.