Give Space a Chance, Says Phil Plait

The Bad Astronomer writes "A lot of pundits, scientists, and people who should know better are decrying the demise of NASA, saying that the President's budget cutting the Constellation program and the Ares rockets will sound the death knell of manned space exploration. This simply is not true. The budget will call for a new rocket design, and a lot of money will go toward private space companies, who may be able to launch people into orbit years ahead of Ares being ready anyway."

Comments

Losing Constellation is a set back

[physburn]

Years of work have gone in Ares I,5 and the capsules. Yes is was just a bigger Apollo with more modern components, but if its cancelled and NASA have to restart then those years and dollars are gone, any moon or mars mission is setback at least 5 years. But as Phil said, these are just rumours, we don't yet know what will happen to NASA.

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Space Craft Feed @ Feed Distiller

Re:Yeah, orbit!

[FleaPlus]

The private industry is decades away from what NASA can do today.

This is a common meme, but unfortunately quite false. Private industry has been successfully designing and building new orbital rockets for years (Delta IV, Delta IV Heavy, Atlas V, Falcon 1, Pegasus, etc.). In contrast, NASA hasn't successfully designed a new orbital rocket in ~30 years, although they've had several severe management-related failures (X-33, X-34, NLS, etc.).

Also, keep in mind that NASA already uses commercial rockets for all of its unmanned launches -- craft like the Spirit and Opportunity rovers weren't launched on NASA rockets, but on commercial Boeing Delta II Heavies.

They're never going to get us into mars, because there's simply no profit in it.

Which is precisely the reason the proposed plan is better. By letting private rockets handle the routine problem of accessing low-Earth orbit, NASA can use its limited funds to focus on actual exploration instead of rocket-building.