Can NASA afford a shiny new generation of robotic space missions?
The agency is developing the brawny Ares V rocket to take astronauts back to the moon. But it is also hopes the rocket will double up as a heavy lifter for robotic science missions which the current shuttles are too puny to lift off the ground. In the works, though yet to be approved, are a visible-light space that would dwarf Hubble鈥檚, and an interstellar probe that could explore space beyond the boundaries of our solar system.
But the huge price tags attached to these proposals could make it very difficult to scrape together the necessary cash, says . Many of the missions will cost a minimum of $5 billion each in today鈥檚 dollars.
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鈥淭hey are flagship class missions, and if you look at what the NASA budget is now for science missions, it doesn鈥檛 seem like a lot of them would fit in that budget,鈥� says panel co-chair and former shuttle astronaut Kathryn Thornton, who is now at the University of Virginia.
Equally worried is former NASA science chief Alan Stern, who argued in The New York Times this week that projects overrunning their budgets by billions of dollars, like the (pictured) and the , are sharply limiting the number and capability of missions NASA can undertake, and that they will continue to do so if not brought under control.
