0.15 The first obama months  (Page 7/8)

Space policy: the augustine committee review

In 2004, the Bush administration approved a plan for NASA to build a base on the moon by 2020 at latest, to be used as a platform for launching humans to Mars. Andrew Lawler, “Obama Facing Tough Decision on Whether to Keep Aiming for the Moon,” Science (Sept. 25, 2009), 1616-07. Although considerable skepticism was voiced at that time and since, the first phases of the plan were at least sufficiently concrete to permit a reasonable estimate of its cost. For that reason, many in Congress oppose major deviations from the plan. The plan also envisions retiring the Space Shuttle in 2010 in favor of a new launcher called Constellation, which would be used for constructing the proposed moon base.

During the spring of 2009, President Obama appointed a Committee to Review U.S. Human Space Flight Plans, chaired by Norman Augustine, retired CEO of the Lockheed Martin Corporation. A summary of the resulting Augustine committee report was released early in September, in time for hearings before the House Science and Technology Committee on September 15-16. The complete 115-page report was released on October 22.

The committee report made no recommendations, but suggested several options that NASA should consider. American Institute of Physics Bulletin , op. cit . (Sept. 11, 2009). These included:

• That the administration’s fiscal year 2010 budget request be increased by $3 million, with comparable increases in future years if human space exploration were to continue “in any meaningful way.”
• The committee determined that shuttle flights will likely “stretch into the second quarter of 2011,” beyond the vehicle’s scheduled retirement in 2010. The committee also predicted it “will be at least seven years” before a replacement will provide a U.S. human launch capability.
• The committee found that the return on investment of International Space Station (ISS) to both the United States and the international partners would be significantly enhanced by an extension of ISS life from 2015 to 2020. “It seems unwise to de-orbit the Station after 25 years of assembly and only five years of operational life. Not to extend its operation would significantly impair U.S. ability to develop and lead future international spaceflight partnerships.”
• The schedule has slipped for the development of the Constellation program’s two launch vehicles, an astronaut capsule and lunar lander. The committee suggested that “a lighter capsule may reduce operational costs,” but cautions that a redesign would lead to additional delays and a “significant increase in cost.”
• The committee also stated that “it is an appropriate time to consider turning this transport service over to the commercial sector. This approach is not without technical and programmatic risks, but it creates the possibility of lower operating costs for the system and potentially accelerates the availability of U.S. access to low-Earth orbit by about a year, to 2016.”

One significant option suggested by the Augustine committee review appeared on the first page of its summary: “Space exploration has become a global enterprise.” Noting that the total of other nations’ funding for space programs is comparable to that of NASA, the committee recommended that the United States consider partnering with other nations “to chart a path for human expansion into the solar system.”