Bush's space plan eyes new generation (developing rockets)

Boston GLobe ^ | January 21, 2004 | Bryan Bender

[Cincinatus' Wife]

WASHINGTON -- When President Bush needed to know whether it would be feasible to create a permanent base on the moon as the first step to send humans to Mars, administration officials turned for analytical help to an institution that has a long history with the space program: the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

[farmfriend]

bttt

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Jan. 21, 2004, 1:17PM

NASA budget for '05 to be $16.2 billion
Reuters News Service

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration's proposed NASA budget for fiscal 2005 will be $16.2 billion, a 5.6 percent increase over the previous year, the U.S. space agency's chief said today.

"It's about a 5.6 percent (increase), so the number is $16.2 billion, is what you'll see in the budget that the president will request for the budget year of fiscal '05," NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe told reporters.

The increase was meant to see the return to flight of the shuttle fleet, grounded since the Feb. 1 Columbia disaster, and to begin work on long-range plans for a human mission to the moon and eventually to Mars.

President Bush has already pledged an added $1 billion over the next five years for his moon-Mars initiative, and $11 billion will be channeled from other NASA programs over that same period to give a total of $12 billion to the space exploration program, O'Keefe said.

Since Bush announced the plan last week, NASA has begun reorganizing some of its managers to focus on the initiative, and last Friday said it would not send a previously scheduled servicing mission to the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope, effectively dooming the orbiting observatory.

[Professional Engineer]

The work force "is a huge issue for NASA, but also an opportunity," said Claude Canizares, associate provost of MIT and a space scientist who served for 10 years on the NASA Advisory Council. "If you are going to have a long-range plan, you want to have a lot of young people involved."

I know an aerospace guy who'd love the chance to get back into aerospace again.

[Diogenesis]

Bump for this, Cincinatus' Wife, and thank you for posting these.

BUMP for XVI, an excellent Dept at MIT.

These are great people. Three cheers.

[steve8714]

People need to realize we are losing high tech jobs, and losing the initiative to improve our tech industries. The revitalized space program will increase invention and innovation, and make jobs for high tech folks.
I say this as rebuttal to the Luddites who want to "spend this money on our pressing needs here on Earth".
Such as, welfare...

[farmfriend]

I'm all for increasing space exploration in all it's forms.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

The best!

[Cincinatus' Wife]

And excite students to learn math and science and STUDY and work hard. Even if they never work in the space program they will have an education and better lives. The can-do, right-stuff fever is infectious.

[Dead Dog]

The Luddites need to ask themselves how long this Nation will retain it's sovereignty once we no longer field a credible ICBM fleet. At the the current state of decline, we have less then 20 years.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Too many scientists and engineers have evolved into carping, back-stabbing, budget hording (or coveting) beings. Hopefully, they'll stop, think and join in this great American effort.

[RightWhale]

"We are educating students to work for NASA, run these programs, and solve these problems."

If anybody can churn out the engineers NASA should need, it is MIT. They are not alone, however.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

A Proton booster rocket is assembled at the Khrunichev State Research and Production Center in Moscow, in this Tuesday, Feb. 4, 2003 file photo. Khrunichev and other Russian space companies are counting on winning a share of the future U.S. manned missions to the moon and Mars announced by President George W. Bush. (AP Photo/Misha Japaridze)

[RightWhale]

Too many scientists and engineers have evolved into carping, back-stabbing, budget hording (or coveting) beings.

Probably inevitable during lean years. Competition for new program money is also intense and experts appear out of the woodwork.

[ambrose]

NASA budget for '05 to be $16.2 billion

Wasn't it 18 billion for AIDS in Africa alone? This is just a drop in the bucket.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Space efforts aid Earth technology

New Moon: Planning the Return to Space

[Cobra64]

People need to realize we are losing high tech jobs, and losing the initiative to improve our tech industries. The revitalized space program will increase invention and innovation, and make jobs for high tech folks. I say this as rebuttal to the Luddites who want to "spend this money on our pressing needs here on Earth".

Yup. And there so many folks who do NOT understand the long term effects in the private/commercial sector as the developing technologies trickle down to companies producing goods for consumers , etc.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Bush's space initiative has put the spotlight on a real need. I guess Congress can sit on their royal butt and let us buy hardware from Russia and launch using Arianne but you'd think it would have dawned on them by now, that the U.S. needs to build its own capability. It's times like these Americans live for. As soon as the Presidential Commision reports back to Bush, I expect there will be a lot of ideas on the table.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

http://www.space.com/news/nasa_budget_040121.html

WASHINGTON -- In the months preceding U.S. President George W. Bush’s decision to chart a new course for the U.S. space program, NASA -- like nearly all U.S. federal agencies -- found itself facing flat budgets “as far as they eye could see,” NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe said today.

The president’s forthcoming plan for cutting the growing national deficit by half within five years would entail some serious belt tightening for all federal agencies with two exceptions: the Defense Department and the Department of Homeland Security. NASA, O’Keefe said, would have seen its spending power decline by about $11 billion between 2005 and 2009 when accounting for inflation.


But as a result of the president’s decision to back a new vision and direction for NASA, the space agency not only avoided what would have amounted to an $11 billion cut, it also became one of the few federal agencies to secure a presidential promise of increasing funding in the years ahead.

Bush, in submitting his 2005 budget request to Congress on Feb. 2, will ask for a $1 billion increase in NASA’s budget between 2005 and 2009.

NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe told reporters Wednesday that in real terms, the agency would see its $15.4 billion budget grow to $16.2 billion in 2005 -- an increase of 5.6 percent. A planned 4.8 percent increase for 2006 would grow NASA’s budget to $16.9 billion and a 4.7 percent increase planned for 2007 would push NASA’s budget well above the $17 billion mark to $17.7 billion. After that, the raises would slow down, O’Keefe said, with only a 1.5 percent increase planned for 2008.

Over roughly the same period, NASA plans to redirect about $11 billion of its budget towards the new space exploration goals outlined by the president. The bulk of that money -- about $6 billion, according to O’Keefe -- will come from NASA’s now obsolete Orbital Space Plane and Next Generation Launch Technology programs.

“The single largest offset is the Orbital Space Plane and Space Launch Initiative,” O’Keefe said. Most of that money, he said, would be put toward a new project, the Crew Exploration Vehicle.

Prior to the rollout of the president’s vision, NASA had hoped to accelerate the development of its planned Orbital Space Plane, which was supposed to be a replacement for the space shuttle. The goal of that program was to have a vehicle by 2008 that would be capable of transporting crews to and from the International Space Station. The idea was to eliminate the need for the shuttle or Russian-built Soyuz rockets to service the space station.

By 2010, under the old plan, NASA had hoped to be ready to use the Orbital Space Plane as a rocket-launched crew taxi and thus dramatically cut back on the number of astronauts that would have to fly on the shuttle.

But that plan would have been costly, requiring about $7 billion more than NASA had in its five-year budget for the program.

In charting a new course for NASA, Bush pledged the agency to build a Crew Exploration Vehicle that will someday ferry astronauts beyond Earth’s orbit. It is in some ways a more ambitious goal, but NASA has more time to meet it -- about six years more. The president’s vision does not call for putting humans aboard the Crew Exploration Vehicle until 2014. Under the old plan, astronauts would have flown on the Orbital Space Plane for the first time in 2008.

Two aerospace contractors, Boeing and Lockheed Martin, had been competing since 2002 for the prime contract to build the Orbital Space Plane. That competition is now on hold as NASA plots its next moves. But O’Keefe said the work the two companies have done to date on Orbital Space Plane designs -- some $334 million worth -- would not be wasted.

“We’re not going to start with a clean sheet of paper,” O’Keefe said of shifting its focus from the Orbital Space Plane to the Crew Exploration Vehicle. “It’s not a matter of Orbital Space Plane being cancelled, it’s a question of how do we evolve it to the Crew Exploration Vehicle.”

[cwb]

I agree...and unlike our liberal conspirators who see Haliburton profiting from oil on Mars, it is exploration like this that can lead to the discovery and development of new sources of energy. And not just by what we may find in space, but because of the brain-power that is brought to bear in overcoming some of these obstacles, that could lead to new ideas.