Constellation and NASA's future - 2010-02-01 07:49:48 So many people have asked me my opinion of the apparent cancellation of the Constellation Program which was to take the USA back to the moon, I'm writing this short blog.
One of the new proposals is the concept of letting commercial companies design and build the machines necessary to carry Americans into low earth orbit. This means the end of the Ares 1 rocket which was a NASA designed launcher (although still built by private corporations). I have no argument with the concept of utilizing American-built and designed commercial launchers to supply the International Space Station and to carry humans into low earth orbit. For some time, I have been an interested observer of SpaceX's development of its Falcon series of rockets. I've even visited their test facility near Waco, Texas, and came away impressed with their approach to building rockets. The engineers of SpaceX cut metal nearly every day and test to failure, the way Wernher von Braun and his team used to do it. I think it's just fine if SpaceX and other commercial companies are allowed into the space game for orbital operations. It seems to me that history almost demands it.
My problem is canceling NASA's clear goal of going back to the moon. For engineers, there is no substitute for clarity in what we are tasked to do. I do not consider the so-called "flexible path" to be viable. How can hardware be built for something that has no clear purpose? In effect, such vague concepts never amount to much.
Our space policy should consist of tough national self-interest, not dreams and hopes. It seems to me that the case for the moon is overwhelmingly simple. We should go to the moon for the same reason we have outposts in Antarctica. We are the leading nation in the world in science and technology and want to remain in that position. To fall away from what we as a nation have worked so hard to achieve is to invite disaster in many overt and subtle ways.
To cancel American human spaceflight beyond earth orbit, I believe is to leave this nation not only technologically stranded but philosophically and morally stranded, too. It is a risky move, eerily reminiscent of the ancient Chinese burning their ships to isolate themselves from the rest of the world. Just as that didn't work out very well for them, I don't think it will work out very well for us.
If funding is the issue, we should still not take away the goal of going to the moon and building a station there. Within the budgetary constraints, real or imagined, let NASA build a little, test a little, and then build some more but always for the purpose of producing the machines to gain the moon.
As to specifics, if Ares I and V (the latter the heavy payload booster which would have carried the moon landers) are canceled, I think the first order of business is to fight with everything we have to continue full development at Marshall Space Flight Center of the J-2X rocket engine which was to be used as an upper stage for these launchers. It is a superb machine and will be useful in nearly every application one can think of for future space operations. But we also need to fight like furies to keep the strategic goal of the moon from being dropped as a national priority. We must hone our arguments, convinced of the rightness of our position and our firm belief that the very survival of our nation is at stake.
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