The cancelling of Project Constellation — NASA’s plan to return astronauts to the moon — by President Obama wasn’t a surprise. With the US strapped for cash following the bail-outs of last year and the continuing economic slowdown, the legacy project from the Bush adminsitration was always going to be a target for cuts.
Obama’s comments on the project are a stinging rebuke for NASA’s engineers, though — never mind behind schedule and over budget, but lacking in innovation? That’s got to hurt.
The cut isn’t quite what it seems, though. Obama commissioned a report last year into NASA’s strategy, and was advised to let the private sector find more cost-effective ways of launching astronauts into low Earth orbit, while NASA itself concentrated on developing more efficient propulsion systems for future manned missions to Mars. The lack of emphasis on the moon will probably please such luminaries as Apollo 11’s Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, who have been calling for missions to Mars, rather than retracing their steps, for the past few years (the reclusive Neil Armstrong is characteristically silent on the subject).
This might even represent an opportunity for Europe, whose space researchers have a good record for innovation on a tighter budget than NASA’s. Although the European Union members’ coffers are as empty as America’s, the Ariane project is thriving, and the satellite launching business doing well; plans to crew-rate the new ‘space truck’, developed to supply the International Space Station, could be accelerated, with the heavy-lift Ariane 5 as the launcher. After relying on NASA for a lift in the Shuttle for years, maybe it’s about time the tables were turned.
There’s even a UK outside bet: Reaction Engines, the company founded by veterans of Rolls-Royce’s HOTOL spaceplane project and Britain’s Black Knight rocketry effort, is developing hybrid rocket/SCRAMjet engines for a new spaceplane, called Skylon. Although it’s some way from use – the team is still building functional models of the crucial fuel-cooling system – it could form the basis for a new generation of European launchers.
The moon is, of course, still on the manned spaceflight agenda. It’s highly unlikely that China will abandon its plans for a moon mission; it’s probably the only country that can still afford it, and the symbolic value of men on the moon has lost none of its potency. India, with its policy of developing its own launchers to avoid being dependent on other nations, may also still be in the running.
Of course, if Obama is looking for a low-cost flight provider, maybe he could have a chat to Virgin Galactic. Or perhaps RyanAir might consider branching out. But charging the astronauts extra for lunch and to go to the loo might put a crimp on the budget.
Stuart Nathan
Special Projects Editor
RyanAir operating spaceflights to the Moon – that’s an amusing prospect. If they adopted the same strategy as they have for taking passengers to leading European destinations (i.e. dropping you off at the ‘nearest’ airport), passengers could find themselves being dropped off on the ISS and having to spacewalk the rest of the way….
Poor British Engineers! With the proper funding we could have developed the Skylon hybrid rocket/SCRAMjet years ago. In the 1980’s the ‘design team’ people were working with a few Sinclair computers networked together! Every government has failed us. WHY CANNOT we support our technologists. That is the way forward to create real wealth for GB plc.
Yes, the USA did land a man on the moon, but saying that we should not do it again as part of reconfirming our ability to implement the technology appropriately is very short sighted.
I work for NASA as a student intern at the end of the Apollo era. I did not stay with NASA because at the time the average age of the employees at Marshal Space Flight Center was 47 years old.
MSFC was were the original Apollo boosters were developed. As a result all that technical knowledge has left NASA.
Before we can go to Mars we MUST reconfirm our understanding of the technology. It is a long way to “walk” back to the nearest service and repair station if you are going to Mars.
Although it is exciting to read about the technical advancements on this issue, at this time the efforts of scientists and engineers can be put to best use on solving Earths problems with global warming, certainly the budget should be pulled on travelling to other planets, whilst we are poisoning our own planet with travel!
Years ago, while working in the USA, I remember reading an artical about the actual cost to the Nation of the space program. It pointed out that for each dollar spent, a high percentage found its way back as the money circulated through the economy.
It went on to point out how the local infrasructure benifited from NASA, schools, hospitals, employment etc.
It was a brilliant rebuke of the “waste of money argument”. The USA continue to this day to enjoy the technolagical and other benifits of the 60’s and 70’s space race. I suspect that China is about to find this out for themselves. Could this be the start of a new race?
To state the obvious for a second – despite what some pressure groups would have us believe, money spent on space isn’t hermetically sealed into spacecraft and sent into LEO and beyond, it’s spent here on Earth to create jobs, specialist skills and novel materials. Whether we know it or not, we all use space-derived technologies all the time.
I’ve never been a big fan of effectively reproducing the Apollo Moon landings with modern technology, but the cancellation of the Constellation programme is a terrible blow to all the aerospace and systems workers who were relying on it for their livelihoods.
However the elephant has not left the room and we have to acknowledge that fact: we desperately need to find a way of getting into LEO at sensible cost. It won’t be an easy task, but it has to be done.
Now that the distraction of the Moon-return is out of the way, I for one hope that funding will now focus on building that Space Truck – it’s way overdue and much needed.. Skylon still looks like a near-term and do-able contender for that role.
David Windle
The Skylon’s SABRE engine is NOT a scramjet!!!
It’s just an unconventional ‘subsonic’ jet engine.
Reaction Engines have a paper you can download from their website which explains why scramjets don’t work at all well for space launch.
Their SABRE engine is about twice as good as a Scramjet; you get twice as much payload for the same vehicle mass, and there’s numerous other benefits (like they can and have tested a prototype of their engine just sitting there in a shed, try doing *that* with a hypersonic scramjet!!! Scramjets need ridiculously expensive windtunnels to even start to test them.)
The Apollo missions were in no way a waste of money, sending men to another body in space is perhaps the greatest achievement of mankind, and it brought the world together, if only for a short time. Without this kind of advancement and without this spirit of adventure and bravery mankind would still be living in caves.