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Senate Bill Adds Shuttle Flight, New Shuttle-Derived Vehicle
simonbp writes "The Senate Commerce Committee this morning marked up a compromise NASA Authorization Act that rolls back some of Obama's plans for NASA, while keeping others. The bill adds at least one more shuttle flight, keeps Obama's technology demonstrators and commercial access to ISS (albeit at reduced funding), restores the Orion crew capsule, and replaces the Ares rockets with a Shuttle-Derived 'Space Launch System' for going to the ISS and Beyond, which could be ready as soon as 2015."
Obama says, "Screw the moon, I'm setting up a 20 year project to go to Mars."
But that's not what he said. He said "I'm creating projects to develop technology that could enable a mission to Mars in 20 years", and that's a huge difference. He's talking about developing general technologies and capabilities that would be useful for a wide variety of missions outside of Mars, and if nobody wants to pull the trigger on the Mars mission in 20 years, we still have all the technology and capabilities. Mars was only mentioned to make the people who think we must have a specific mission happy (and it's not a bad policy to at least have a practical application in mind).
Whereas a definite "Mars in 20 years" would mean lots of development of tech designed for that mission and only that mission. 20 years to have enough technology in place that a Mars mission doesn't require that much specific development is a much more sensible, useful, and future-proof plan.
But hey, I guess having a giant expensive rocket that can't do anything rockets of 30 years ago couldn't do is nice too. :/
The enemies of Democracy are
Let me try, using your timeline as a base (feel free to modify/copy/reuse):
2003: Space Shuttle Columbia accident
2004: Bush announces Vision for Space Exploration for sustainable human presence on the Moon starting in 2020 as testbed for Mars exploration and expansion into the solar system, calls for shuttle retirement in 2010 and replacement crew capability in operation by 2014, calls for commercial cargo/crew to ISS and no new launch vehicles developed unless absolutely necessary, NASA solicits plans from industry for best ways to achieve these goals
2005: Sean O'Keefe resigns as NASA administrator, Bush appoints Michael Griffin and gives him free reign with NASA, Michael Griffin throws out industry studies and NASA releases ESAS study which has NASA design two rockets in-house instead of utilizing commercial rockets (The Ares I and V, coincidentally based on old designs Michael Griffin came up with), ostensibly because they're "safe, simple, and soon" compared to alternatives
2005-present: Ares I development slips in schedule a year for every year that it exists, costs balloon from a few billion dollars to tens of billions of dollars, 2020 lunar date becomes increasingly unachievable
2009: NASA and White House appoint Augustine Committee, consisting of best and brightest from aerospace and astronaut community, to evaluate Constellation's progress and come up with options for future of
human spaceflight at NASA; they release a report presenting a number of viable options for NASA's beyond-Earth exploration plans
February 2010: White House calls for boost to NASA's budget (but not as large as Augustine Committee presented) releases plan similar to Augustine Report's option 5B, calling for investments in commercial crew and long-neglected space technology and cancellation of Ares I, delays building of heavy-lift launcher until 2015 since it won't be needed until then; a lot of congressmen in space states freak out
March-July 2010: lots of back and forth discussion and congressional hearings, Armstrong and Cernan come out against White House Plans, Buzz Aldrin comes out in favor; NASA scales back Ares/Constellation program without congressional approval, ostensibly to comply with termination liability laws
June-July 2010: NASA announces a bunch of new space technology initiatives (contingent on White House funding plans coming through), including new Centennial Challenge prize competitions (Nanosatellite launch, night rover, and sample return robot challenge) , revived NIAC to research experimental concepts, in-space technology demonstrations/missions utilizing in-space refueling, inflatable modules, electric propulsion, and inflatable reentry shields, all launched on existing commercial rockets
Today (July 15): Senate comes out with compromise bill, adding 1+ shuttle flight using existing equipment (no backup rescue shuttle if there's a problem, though); immediate development of 75mt shuttle-derived rocket quite similar to the one proposed by the DIRECT project, more commercial crew, robotic precursor mission, and space technology funding than 2010 but much less than Obama requested (over three years $1.6B vs. $3.3B for commercial crew, $244M vs. $1.33B exploration robotic precursor missions, $2.1B vs. $8B space technology development/missions); White House and Congress potentially both support the compromise, though
Atlas and Delta could be, with relatively minor changes.
United Launch Alliance evaluation (pdf)