A senior NASA official expressed doubt on Wednesday that the agency could send astronauts beyond low-Earth orbit without extra money or using vehicles radically different form those it is currently working on.
NASA鈥檚 space shuttle programme manager John Shannon made the remarks in a presentation to a committee reviewing NASA鈥檚 human spaceflight plans at the request of the White House and chaired by former Lockheed Martin CEO Norman Augustine.
Shannon said the space vehicles designed by NASA鈥檚 Constellation Program to replace the space shuttle and ferry astronauts to the moon were 鈥渨ell thought out鈥�, but that the agency does not have enough money to make them a reality.
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The White House budget request for NASA released in May proposes to freeze the agency鈥檚 spending between 2011 and 2014 鈥� eliminating billions of dollars of growth envisioned for those years in previous requests.
And in early June, the House Committee on Appropriations cut $670 million from NASA鈥檚 budget for exploration, which provides funds for Constellation, a 17 per cent drop from the White House request of $3.96 billion.
鈥淭he Constellation Program has put together a viable architecture, but it has not been funded 鈥� it has not been funded to the level that we would need to see it through,鈥� he said, speaking at a public meeting of the committee in Washington, DC. 鈥淭he congressional budget numbers that have been provided to NASA basically took away the lunar programme.鈥�
Fallback plan
鈥淚 think the first option should be to fund the plan that we have, but if we can鈥檛 do that, I don鈥檛 think we鈥檙e ready 鈥� to cede the opportunity to go outside of low-Earth orbit,鈥� he added.
As a possible fallback plan, Shannon said he had asked three NASA employees in the space shuttle programme to study a potentially cheaper alternative, called the Heavy Lift Vehicle. It would see a crew-carrying capsule ride to orbit using the same rockets currently used to haul the space shuttle to orbit, and a variant of it could also be used to send a lunar lander to the moon.
Also at the meeting was Stephen Metschan, a representative of a project called DIRECT, which is another proposed alternative claimed by proponents to be less expensive than the troubled Ares I and Ares V rockets that NASA is currently developing to replace the space shuttle and send astronauts to the moon.
One launcher
He argued that NASA is unlikely to get the money it needs to develop the Ares V, which is the more powerful of the two rockets, and is needed in NASA鈥檚 current plan for human missions to the moon. NASA is farther along in the development of the smaller Ares I rocket, which is not powerful enough on its own to enable lunar missions, but would be capable of launching astronauts to the International Space Station.
By contrast, the Jupiter rocket proposed by the DIRECT team, which includes some moonlighting NASA engineers, is powerful enough for human moon missions, Metschan says.
鈥淲e really only have the money to develop one launch system鈥o lets鈥� make it as capable and as expandable as we can,鈥� he told the committee.
Space start-ups
Elon Musk, head of the SpaceX company, based in Hawthorne, California, told the committee that commercial launch providers like his own company could take care of transporting crew and cargo to the International Space Station, freeing up funds for NASA鈥檚 loftier ambitions.
鈥淭he reality is NASA is not going to get a giant budget increase,鈥� Musk said. 鈥淚t seems like the only way we鈥檙e going to do exciting things in human spaceflight is if commercial companies handle the low-Earth orbit stuff and NASA handles the stuff beyond low-Earth orbit.鈥�
The committee will produce a report in August outlining what it considers to be viable options for human space transportation vehicles and the destinations they could reach. The group has been asked to take a very broad look at the possibilities, Augustine said in a press conference following Wednesday鈥檚 meeting.
鈥淭hat involves everything from the flyout of the shuttle to the International Space Station to new launch capabilities to potential landings possibly on the moon, possibly on Mars, possibly on asteroids or moons of Mars,鈥� he said.
