Future of NASA Goals and Roles in Manned Space Flight Unclear After Obama Cuts Constellation from Budget

President Obama’s budget for NASA terminates the agency’s back-to-the-moon mission, creating great uncertainty in the agency and the space community. Funding for the Ares rocket and Orion spacecraft will wind down next year. The Constellation Program was supposed to be NASA’s primary goal to build long term bases on the moon by 2020. Instead the budget puts more emphasis on near-earth missions, including continued support and activity on the International Space Station and more earth science satellite missions to improve space-based data gathering of atmospheric and ground phenomena. 

With three missions left on the Space Shuttles work schedule, the loss of Constellation could mean the loss of thousands of jobs at NASA and its United Space Alliance partners. NASA planned to make use of the talents of thousands of Shuttle engineers and managers by transferring them to Constellation. None of the new initiatives for NASA come close to creating new jobs for workers at Johnson and Kennedy Space Centers.

Congressional reaction was swift and neatly split.  Representatives of Texas, Florida & Alabama vowed to find ways to keep the tens of thousands of jobs in their states; and they can be counted on to provide suggestions for programs that keep their constituents employed. At the other extreme, some Congressmen and Senators agreed with the President’s assessment that there is no political will – and little public support – for another decade-long government program similar to Apollo in the 1960s.

Others in the space community wondered if the President and Congress would actually go through with plans that cost America its pre-eminence in space. It is well-known that China, Japan, and the European Union all have lunar exploration missions planned.

In an internal memo to NASA employees, new administrator Charlie Bolden tried to paint a picture of a new role for NASA as an engine of innovation, fueling private sector firms building near earth and orbiting spacecraft to carry payloads and astronauts to the ISS and unmanned observing stations.  In the only mention of a long range goal for NASA, Bolden asked employees to “Imagine trips to Mars that take weeks instead of nearly a year; people fanning out across the inner solar system, exploring the Moon, asteroids and Mars nearly simultaneously in a steady stream of “firsts;” and imagine all of this being done collaboratively with nations around the world.”

He highlighted the ISS as an international cooperation that would serve as a model for future manned space flights. However, neither he nor Obama laid out any definite plan or timetable to accomplish manned flights to the moon or Mars.

The President was being realistic in his assessment of the country’s unwillingness to support another massive public space program as well as the growing capabilities of private commercial space flight firms, according to Elon Musk, founder and CEO of SpaceX, a company that could bid on contracts to build vehicles for near earth and orbital missions.

NASA would continue its robotic explorations of the solar system as well as its aeronautics program aimed at producing more efficient aircraft. Both of these missions are seen as producing more “bang for the buck” in terms of actually advancing space science and using NASA expertise for more immediate impact of science on aviation problems.

Huge government deficits and waning public support for more government spending on space, coupled with innovations such as Virgin Galactic’s near earth space craft the VSS Enterprise, could spell the end of the US government’s traditional role as the leader in space design and activity