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Obama Team Considers Cancellation of Ares, Orion

Posted by Soulskill on from the to-infinity-and-maybe-not dept.

HanzoSpam sends us this story from Space News, which begins: "US President-elect Barack Obama's NASA transition team is asking US space agency officials to quantify how much money could be saved by canceling the Ares 1 rocket and scaling back the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle next year. ... The questionnaire, 'NASA Presidential Transition Team Requests for Information,' asks agency officials to provide the latest information on Ares 1, Orion and the planned Ares 5 heavy-lift cargo launcher, and to calculate the near-term close-out costs and longer-term savings associated with canceling those programs. The questionnaire also contemplates a scenario where Ares 1 would be canceled but development of the Ares 5 would continue. While the questionnaire, a copy of which was obtained by Space News, also asks NASA to provide a cost estimate for accelerating the first operational flight of Ares 1 and Orion from the current target date of March 2015 to as soon as 2013, NASA was not asked to study the cost implications of canceling any of its other programs, including the significantly overbudget 2009 Mars Science Laboratory or the James Webb Space Telescope."

1 of 870 comments (clear)

  1. Re:I'm not suprised by Antony-Kyre · · Score: 1, Redundant

    No one thinks anymore. For example...

    Instead of throwing money at healthcare, figure out why health care is expensive.

    As for taxes, tax cuts seem, for lack of a better term, "silly", in a time of recession. Shouldn't we focus on getting the national debt down before we cut anyone's taxes? (Unless there are some harmful taxes going on right now. Are the poor really that taxed heavily right now?) Of course, I feel eliminating the national debt can be good for the economy.

    I'd like to see if anything can be cut from the DoD budget. How much of it is really necessary? And, is Obama for the current wars going on? Does he plan on keeping the current occupations going strong for years to come? Because we've heard about change, but I am not sure if I remember anything about him being an anti-war candidate.

    And as for NASA, I don't know what to feel. On the one hand, space exploration brings technological advances, in medicine and other sciences, does it not? However, it's not like it's an absolute necessity. Thankfully, there is the House of Representatives. Perhaps we should voice our concerns to them, and let them decide what to do based on our input. After all, it's not necessarily the President's job to make the laws now, is it? (Maybe Bush changed things. Who knows?)