Free Republic

WASHINGTON — Congress has again failed to rid a temporary spending bill of language forcing NASA to waste $1.4 million a day on its defunct Constellation moon program. Though Congress passed a new stopgap spending bill last week, the measure retained a leftover provision from the 2010 budget that bars the agency from shutting down Constellation, which Congress and the White House agreed to cancel last October. This so-called "Shelby provision" — named for U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Alabama, who inserted it into the 2010 budget — is expected to cost NASA roughly $29 million during the three-week budget extension...

Constellation Energy has pulled out of negotiations on a $7.5 billion federal loan guarantee to build a nuclear reactor in Maryland with its French partner Electricite de France (EDF). In an Oct. 8 letter to Dan Poneman, deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy, Constellation Energy said the “significant and ongoing uncertainty created by the Office of Management and Budget’s inability to address significant problems with its methodology for determining the projects credit subsidy cost and the unreasonable burdensome conditions a loan guarantee would require” is why Constellation Energy does not see a “timely path” to reach a set...

Charles Bolden, Nasa administrator, in conversation with Al Jazeera's Imran Garda, about Obama's reach to the Muslim world, international contribution to the space mission, the constellation project...

NASA is pushing ahead with work on its new Orion space capsule and Ares rockets despite their ambiguous status as lawmakers discuss the agency's 2011 budget request.  Orion and Ares are part of Constellation, a NASA program designed to take astronauts back to the moon. Under his 2011 budget proposal, President Barack Obama called for canceling Constellation and urged NASA to work toward sending humans to an asteroid and then on to Mars. The outlook for Constellation's fledgling rocket and capsule spacecraft is not clear. Obama did recommend continuing development of Orion -- but only as an escape ship that...

One thing everyone can agree on with respect to the Obama Administration’s intention to cancel the Constellation program: it has triggered a vigorous debate about the future of NASA and the role that organization will play in humanity’s next steps into the solar system. Numerous articles posted in The Space Review have illuminated the scope of this debate, from its fundamental assumptions about the value of space exploration for the United States and its people, to the variety of ways in which a post-shuttle program of human exploration beyond LEO might be carried out.

Return to the Moon, Lost and Redeemed? When will the next Moon Landing take place, and how will it be undertaken? Up until last February, the answer would have been sometime in 2019, and aboard space craft being developed by Project Constellation, started by President George W. Bush. But President Obama lobbed a hand grenade into Constellation, proposing its cancellation.

This is a truly remarkable video found at Powerline of NASA administrator Charles Bolden telling al-Jazeera that NASA is now tasked "to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with predominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering." The agency that sent a man to the moon has been enlisted to improve the self-esteem of Muslims.

Congressional backers of NASA's existing space program are about to find out whether they have enough support on Capitol Hill to overturn President Obama's plan to abandon a return to the moon. Two milestones in the protracted congressional budget process are expected to provide NASA supporters their first concrete evidence next week that lawmakers from states without major NASA facilities are willing to defy the president and support the campaign to salvage parts of the $108 billion back-to-the-moon program. After four months of word wars, news conferences and letter writing challenging Obama's new direction for the space agency, lawmakers will...

Any surprise that Obama's mediocrity rears its ugly head once again. This time by moving to kill the Constellation program, the program to get man on the moon...permanently, and then to mars.....how does he do it? As his Chicago upbringing has taught him Constellation aimed to build upon what was arguably America’s greatest technological achievement, the first lunar landing of 1969, by launching new expeditions to the Moon and to Mars and worlds beyond. Mr Obama proposed in February that it should be scrapped because it was “over budget, behind schedule and lacking in innovation”, but he has met opposition...

This memo was just received by NASA Houston space workers, from the center director, ex-astronaut Mike Coats, who is now in Russia. It underscores the grim realities of near-term major layoffs, as described in my advisory earlier today. "Replanning" is the new NASA jargon for "slash to the bone", it seems. _____________________________________________ From: Coats, Michael {Jsc-Center-Director}(JSC-AA111) Sent: Thursday, June 10, 2010 1:45 PM To: JSC-DL-JSC-Civil-Servants; JSC-DL-JSC-Contractors Subject: Constellation Program FY2010 Replanning Update I am writing from Russia, awaiting the next ISS crew launch from Baikonur, Kazakhstan, which is currently scheduled next Tuesday. Yesterday, NASA management directed Constellation Program management to...

The Obama administration may have found a back door way to kill the Constellation space exploration program, even while Congress is mulling over ways to continue it. The move to kill Constellation involves the 120-year-old Anti-Deficiency Act.

The proposed cancellation of NASA’s Constellation manned spacecraft program could foster a stronger bond between the civilian space agency and the Air Force, a senior service official said this week. “This is going to drive us to work together,” Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Howie Chandler at an April 28 Air Force Association breakfast in Arlington, VA, when asked if cancellation of Constellation could impact the Air Force. “I think you’ll see us start to do that even more than we have in the past.” To that end, the Air Force is participating in a forum to discuss...

The so-called “Great Debate” at the National Space Society’s (NSS) International Space and Development Conference (ISDC) in Chicago on Saturday afternoon featuring Mars Society founder Robert Zubrin and former Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweickart was something of a dud, in part because it wasn’t that much of a debate: after ten-minute opening statements by Zubrin (who opposes the agency’s proposed plans) and Schweickart (who supports them), the floor was turned over to the audience, some of whom asked questions of the two, and others who simply expressed their opinions. Conference organizers explained that the event wasn’t intended to be a debate...

U.S. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-West Virginia, has joined the call for an investigation. U.S. Sen. George LeMieux, R-Florida, today asked that NASA’s inspector general investigate the recent reassignment of Jeff Hanley, who on Wednesday lost his position as head of NASA’s Constellation moon program (earlier story here). Hanley has defended Constellation, even as the White House wants to cancel key parts of the program to make way for a new strategy that would replace the space shuttle with commercial rockets to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station. “This is yet another example of NASA taking actions to cancel the...

Sen. Russ Feingold is trying to sneak into legislation that would expand the definition of "children" under a program called CHAMPVA from people age 23 or below to age 26 and below a ban on spending money to return astronauts to the Moon. The text of the legislation can be found in S. 3356, which has been referred to the Committee on Veterans Affairs and has no cosponsors as of this moment:

WASHINGTON — Backers of NASA's Constellation program scored a significant victory Thursday by winning the Senate Appropriations Committee's support to block the Obama administration from terminating any part of the $108 billion back-to-the-moon program before October. And they did it by piggy-backing the restriction onto a must-pass wartime supplemental budget package involving combat dollars for Afghanistan. Up until Thursday, the battle over NASA has largely been a political war of words — and this is the first time that a congressional committee has responded directly to President Barack Obama's NASA proposal since February, when the president declared the Constellation program...

There are two pro-NASA rallies scheduled for tonight in League City. The county Democratic Party and labor union groups host one, while the other is put together by a coalition of conservative groups including members of the local Tea Party groups and Glenn Beck 912 Project members. The subject is a hot button issue because of President Barack Obama’s proposed budget that includes the dismantling of the Constellation program and its return to the moon before trips to Mars missions. At first blush you would think it’s great that two groups with differing political views would come together for a...

Competitiveness: The president spent Tax Day reassuring Florida voters that money will keep flowing to NASA. But in space as well as on Earth, we'll be an unexceptional nation. In space, no one can hear you scheme. President Obama's speech at the Kennedy Space Center will never be confused with President Kennedy's clarion call in 1961 to send an American to the moon within a decade. Rather it was an admission that we will now boldly go where no one wants to go.

Every spring, for over two decades, the Space Access Society has been sponsoring an annual conference in Phoenix, Ariz., providing a venue for those trying to reduce the cost of getting into space to meet, discuss, and plan prospects for achieving that to-date-unattainable goal. It's one of the most interesting space conferences of the year, and perhaps unique in its mix of mainstream industry professionals, representatives from the newer industry upstarts, amateur rocket builders, and interested lay people, in a casual atmosphere designed to promote interaction among all these communities. In the early years, it primarily featured view graphs of...

Keith Yost, writing in the MIT Tech, has perhaps inadvertently revealed the real motivation behind the Obama space plan. Keith Yost likes the Obama new approach to space, but not for the reasons that most supporters articulate. Most supporters of Obamaspace maintain that the cancellation of the Constellation space exploration program will actually lead to more, better, and cheaper space exploration at some indeterminate time in the future. The idea is that the research and development program proposed under Obamaspace will lead to "game changing" technology that will open up new ways to explore space that some future President will...

During World War II in the Pacific, many native tribes were astounded by their first contact with an advanced technological civilization, when the Americans would come in, clear a strip in the jungle, set up a control tower and loud giant silver birds would appear from the sky bearing canned food, trinkets, fuel and other supplies. After the war, the Americans went away for the most part, but the memories remained. Many of the natives, changed forever by the experience, decided to replicate it. They cleared their own strips, built control towers of thatch and palm, and waited for the...

Former Apollo astronauts have expressed dismay at President Barack Obama's decision to cancel the Nasa programme that was intended to return mankind to the Moon. Eugene Cernan, the last man to set foot on the Moon, and Jim Lovell, commander of the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission said they were disappointed by the decision to cancel Nasa's Constellation Moon programme. Mr Lovell warned the decision would have "catastrophic consequences" for US space exploration. The pair spoke to the BBC at a private event held at the Royal Soceity in London on Friday evening. They were joined by the first man on...

When the Obama administration first announced that there would be a Space Summit in Florida, the purpose of which was to explain the new Obama space policy, it was met with some degree of skepticism and even cynicism.

Recently President Obama canceled Project Constellation that would return Americans to the Moon by 2020. Some maintain that Constellation was over budget, behind schedule and needed cancellation. What if we had approached another project the same way? Amalgamated Press. January 26th, 1944. General George C. Marshall today announced that the planned invasion of Europe has been canceled. There have long been rumors of cost overruns and other problems plaguing the planned invasion, which was designated 'Operation Overlord', which General Marshall referred to in his announcement and subsequent press conference.

The Economist has a story upon the lofty theme of how Americans can still get to the Moon before the Chinese even if President Obama succeeds in canceling the Constellation return to the Moon program

NASA, in response to President Obama's proposal to cancel the Constellation space exploration program, may be moving to wind down Constellation related work and cancel some contracts. NASA may be in violation of federal law by doing so.

Industry advocates are voicing concern with U.S. President Barack Obama’s decision to cancel NASA’s Moon-bound Constellation program and the threat it poses to America’s aerospace work force and U.S. strategic missile arsenals, but Defense Department officials said the two agencies are forging a plan to sustain the nation’s solid-rocket motor industrial base. Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah) is among those railing against Obama’s proposal to scrap NASA’s plan to replace its space shuttle fleet with new rockets and spacecraft in favor of relying on commercial crew taxis to get astronauts to the international space station and back. “This is not money-saving....

The Obama space proposal, which seeks to enable a commercial space industry for transportation to and from low Earth orbit while it cancels space exploration beyond LEO, has sparked a kind of civil war among conservatives. Some conservatives hate the proposal because of the retreat from the high frontier and even go so far as to cast doubt on the commercial space aspects. Other conservatives like the commercial space part of the Obama policy and tend to gloss over the cancellation of space exploration or even denigrate the Constellation program as "unworkable" or "unsustainable."

NASA's Constellation programme, which was going to fly manned capsules to the International Space Station in (maybe) 2015, to the moon in (maybe) 2020, and to Mars someday, is dead. Some people are mourning it. I'm not.

Opposition to President Obama's bid to cancel the Constellation return to the Moon program has started to manifest itself among purveyors of popular culture. It has even inspired its first work of literature.

During World War II in the Pacific, many native tribes were astounded by their first contact with an advanced technological civilization, when the Americans would come in, clear a strip in the jungle, set up a control tower and loud giant silver birds would appear from the sky bearing canned food, trinkets, fuel and other supplies. After the war, the Americans went away for the most part, but the memories remained. Many of the natives, changed forever by the experience, decided to replicate it. They cleared their own strips, built control towers of thatch and palm, and waited for the...

The Pentagon is participating in an interagency integrated team convened to explore how best to sustain the rocket motor industrial base — a mandate made all the more urgent given NASA’s planned cancellation of the Constellation program, according to Brett Lambert, the Defense Dept.’s industrial policy director. Each of NASA’s Ares V launchers would have required six RS-68 engines, which are common to the U.S. Air Force’s Delta IV Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV). Already, Air Force officials are seeing an uptick in the per-unit price of each EELV because procurement has slowed to keep pace with delayed satellite programs....

NASA administrator Charles Bolden met with the media in advanced of the flight of the space shuttle Endeavour STS 130, now planned for Monday morning. Bolden offered some astonishing admissions about the Obama space plan.

NASA administrator Charles Bolden traveled to the Kennedy Space Center for the occasion of the launch of the space shuttle Endeavour STS 130. But he was also in Florida to confront the consequences of the new Obama administration space policy.

Achievement: The nation that put the first man on the moon may have put its last as budget cuts slash NASA's plans to return. Men will return to the moon, but they will likely speak Chinese. On May 25, 1961, President Kennedy announced in front of a joint session of Congress the dramatic and ambitious goal of sending an American to the moon by the end of that decade. It was a clarion call to the American spirit and technology to rise up and prove that America's best days were still ahead. Forty-one years after Neil Armstrong set foot on...

Former U.S. Senator Harrison H. "Jack" Schmitt (R-NM) was the twelfth and last man to set foot on the Moon, as lunar module pilot for Apollo 17 in December 1972. The Administration finally has announced its formal retreat on American Space Policy after a year of morale destroying clouds of uncertainty. The lengthy delay, the abandonment of human exploration, and the wimpy, un-American thrust of the proposed budget indicates that the Administration does not understand, or want to acknowledge, the essential role space plays in the future of the United States and liberty. This continuation of other apologies and retreats...

Having faced pointed and even hostile questioning about its new space policy in the Senate and now in the House, the Obama administration and NASA officials are starting to realize that perhaps the rollout of that policy was flawed.

SALT LAKE CITY -- This week's decision by the Obama administration to end the Constellation space program, which has strong Top of Utah ties, is a "really dumb idea," U.S. Sen. Bob Bennett said Thursday, and he hopes the state's congressional delegation can help save the program.

The manned space program is important to everyone! Write your congressmen and tell them President Obama is wrong! We must push forward beyond low earth orbit, continue America's leadership in space, and not sacrifice thousands of jobs across the country! Save NASA's Constellation Program! 0:00 What are the political issues? 1:23 What is Constellation? 2:09 What has been built so far? 4:11 Has any rocket engine testing been done? 5:17 Has an actual rocket been built, tested or launched? 5:53 Who did all this work? 7:01 Whats at stake? 7:54 What can be done to help

WASHINGTON – Everyone in Washington wants fiscal restraint these days – except when it comes to their priorities. Case in point: NASA. Texas lawmakers in both parties are girding for battle with the Obama administration over the future of human spaceflight. Many of the same lawmakers routinely accuse the president of sending deficits into the stratosphere. "It's a matter of priorities," said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. "We can find that money in other parts of the budget." President Barack Obama unveils his annual budget Monday, and reports last week indicated that he wants to abandon the Constellation program that George...

HUNTSVILLE, AL - Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle is also sounding off about the president's plans for Constellation. Mayor Battle mailed a two-page letter addressed to President Barack Obama telling him to keep the Constellation program on schedule. Mayor Battle walked into a room with confidence to speak to the media. In his hand, was a two-page letter written to the attention President Obama. The mayor takes issue with the president's proposal to cut NASA's Constellation program. "This is not just about Huntsville. This is about the United States of America having a space program that goes forward," said Mayor Battle....

12:17 a.m. EST, January 27, 2010 E-mail Print Share Text Size NASA's plans to return astronauts to the moon are dead. So are the rockets being designed to take them there — that is, if President Barack Obama gets his way. When the White House releases his budget proposal Monday, there will be no money for the Constellation program that was supposed to return humans to the moon by 2020. The troubled and expensive Ares I rocket that was to replace the space shuttle to ferry humans to space will be gone, along with money for its bigger brother, the...

Investigators are trying to determine whether a San Diego sailor passed Navy secrets about security weaknesses and warship movements to a British man accused of having terrorist links, according to court documents unsealed yesterday. E-mail messages from the unnamed sailor, sent in late 2000 and 2001 before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, were found in December in computer files belonging to Babar Ahmad, who was detained Wednesday in London, according to the 31-page arrest affidavit. The computer files contained details about security arrangements and movements of the San Diego-based Constellation carrier battle group, which included the destroyer Benfold, on which...

A National Aeronautics and Space Administration study warns that budget and technical hurdles will likely delay development of the replacement program for the space shuttle fleet beyond the agency's internal 2014 timetable. The report is the agency's most pessimistic public assessment yet of its ability to meet its own deadline for delivering the new system of rockets and exploration vehicles, called Constellation. It identifies a $1.9 billion "shortfall between the available funding" and the amount needed to achieve initial launch by September 2014. Tooling for parts of Constellation, ground tests and wind-tunnel tests have been deferred or reduced in scope...

WASHINGTON - U.S. President-elect Barack Obama has asked retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Scott Gration, one of his top foreign policy and military advisers during his campaign, to take the helm of NASA, according to a source informed of the selection.

Toledo, New Castille. March 1492. Today Don Miguel de Grifo, the head of the Royal Transatlantic Exploring Administration made the eagerly-awaited announcement as to how the Administration would pursue Their Majesties’ Vision for Transatlantic Exploration. To the disappointment of some, he turned down the suggestion of the Italian explorer Columbus that the program utilize already-existing, commercially-available caravels staged from the Canary Islands. “The Administration has no means of Atlantic-rating these craft safely. Spanish lives are too precious to be wasted in this endeavor.” Furthermore, he added, “The idea of staging the voyages in the Canary Islands is too complicated, and...

NASA Administrator Mike Griffin is not cooperating with President-elect Barack Obama's transition team, is obstructing its efforts to get information and has told its leader that she is "not qualified" to judge his rocket program, the Orlando Sentinel has learned. In a heated 40-minute conversation last week with Lori Garver, a former NASA associate administrator who heads the space transition team, a red-faced Griffin demanded to speak directly to Obama, according to four witnesses. In addition, Griffin is scripting NASA employees and civilian contractors on what they can tell the transition team and has warned aerospace executives not to criticize...

WASHINGTON — U.S. President-elect Barack Obama's NASA transition team is asking U.S. 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. Obama pledged during his campaign to inject an additional $2 billion into NASA aimed in part at narrowing the gap between the space shuttle's retirement and the introduction of a successor system. While NASA Administrator Mike Griffin and his senior managers are adamant that Ares and Orion are the right vehicles to fill that role, Obama did not endorse either system...

An airworthy example of the ultimate piston-powered airliner will survive, thanks to the efforts of our German friends. The most advanced version of the most beautiful passenger airliner ever built, the Lockheed Constellation L-1649, is being restored to airworthy condition in Maine by a coalition of organizations connected with Lufthansa German Airlines. As an aviation buff, I am grateful for this effort. L-049 (the first Constellation) public domain image (hat tip: Wikimedia) The original Constellation model, the L-049 was commissioned in the late 1930s by Trans World Airlines, then under the control of Howard Hughes, as a pressurized transcontinental airliner....

A former chairman of the House science committee told Brevard County leaders Monday that NASA’s next rocket is “on the chopping block” and that a new administration may abandon the Ares I as successor to the space shuttle. The next president may look instead to use military rockets to launch NASA astronauts, said Robert Walker, a former Republican congressman from Pennsylvania who, as a Washington-based lobbyist, represents Brevard County. Walker told county commissioners; U.S. Reps. Tom Feeney, R-Oviedo, and Dave Weldon, R-Indialantic; and representatives of the local aerospace community that the word in Washington and at recent space conferences was...