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Feb. 1 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama proposed scrapping a Bush administration plan to return astronauts to the moon by 2020 in a budget for NASA that would instead farm out some space operations to companies for missions closer to Earth.
The lunar program, known as Constellation, “was over budget, behind schedule and lacking in innovation due to a failure to invest in critical new technologies” according to the budget plan Obama issued today.
Obama’s budget would increase fiscal year 2011 funds for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration by 1.5 percent and support the development of rocket systems that eventually might take U.S. astronauts back into deep space. In preparation for those trips, Obama envisions using robotic ships to find locations for future landings and test out new technology.
The plan to drop the moon strategy already has drawn opposition from lawmakers such as Senator Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat, who said they feared the changes could risk U.S. leadership in space. NASA’s space shuttles are launched from Kennedy Space Center on Florida’s Atlantic coast.
The Obama proposal “begins the death march for the future of U.S. human space flight,” Senator Richard Shelby, the senior Republican on the subcommittee that determines NASA’s budget, said in a statement. If the budget is enacted, NASA “will be the agency of pipe dreams and fairy tales,” he said.
Companies won’t have the capability to safely transport astronauts in the next few years, the Alabama lawmaker said. Details of the budget began coming out last week.
Shelby, whose state is home to NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, was behind legislation that requires the administration to work with Congress on any changes to the human spaceflight program.
In a preview of how NASA officials may try to persuade lawmakers to back their approach, Charles Bolden, the agency’s administrator, said the budget proposal will create jobs.
“While there will no doubt be challenges as a result of cancelling Constellation, the funding for NASA is increasing,” he said on a conference call with reporters. “We expect to support as many if not more jobs with the 2011 budget.”
NASA officials declined to give specific destinations or a timeline for missions beyond low Earth orbit, the area within a few hundred miles of our planet that been the limit for astronauts since the Apollo moon program ended in the 1970s.
Lori Garver, NASA’s deputy administrator, said a differently conceived moon mission was possible and the ultimate goal is a Mars landing. Officials also mentioned flights to asteroids or to a moon of Mars as possibilities.
The budget proposal “opens up more people to be going more places in a way that is not on the back of the taxpayer,” Garver said.
Skepticism about Constellation deepened after a presidential commission concluded last year that NASA would need $3 billion more a year for the program and wouldn’t get back to the moon until 2028.
Under the administration’s proposal, the space agency’s budget would rise to $19 billion from $18.7 billion this year. The plan would boost NASA’s funding $6 billion over five years.
Rockets made by companies would be used to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station, whose life under the budget would be extended five years to 2020, according to the administration’s plan. The outpost, which orbits about 250 miles above Earth, is being developed in partnership with Russia, Canada, Japan and other nations.
