This week’s print edition of Space News (not available online) has a couple of interesting quotes from members of Congress about funding for the exploration program versus other projects both within and outside of NASA. Rep. John Larson (D-CT), member of the House Aerospace Caucus, had this to say about NASA’s support of exploration versus aeronautics:
NASA has got to be thinking less about going to the Moon and Mars and beyond, and more specifically about addressing our aeronautical concerns here at home. And that means greater investment in those areas.
The issue also included an interview with Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-CA). The interview focused primarily on missile defense issues (Sanchez is on the House Armed Services Committee), but she was also asked for her opinions on the exploration program:
I would love for us to figure out a way to get to Mars. I’ve met with astronauts, and I think it is really exciting stuff, but can’t we figure out Afghanistan and Iraq first? Because it’s become pretty apparent that we don’t have the resources in place to get that job done.
Sanchez was also asked what effect a President Kerry would have on exploration program:
I think John Kerry… is a smart guy. I don’t know enough about his record with respect to space exploration, but would hope he would recognize you need to take care of some things on Earth before you go on to that step.
I think that commentary from members of the majority party might be more indicative of the future.
As long as we keep them in the majority, and Bush in the White House, come November.
And 2008 and 2012 and 2016. Thats why it needs to be bi-partisan.
I believe that if Bush is re-elected and Congress approves his plans for the next four years, the program will have a chance of surviving future Presidents/Congress’s even if they are not 100% in favor of the program. But if Bush looses, I am afraid the plan will die before it has a chance to “take root”.
What exactly happens between 2004 and 2008 besides very modest spending on CEV design and viewgraphs? How much of NASA’s budget is devoted to shuttle orbiter return to flight and ISS completion?
CEV deployment and shuttle retirement are the key events and neither reach a “point of no return” until well after January 2009.
If President Bush called for standing down the orbiter today – – it never flies again – – then I could agree that the 2004 election had great relevance for the future of America’s space program.
Kerry’s anti-nuclear proliferation strategy kills spaceflight
Kerry has called for a worldwide ban on nuclear fuel enrichment as part of his policy for anti-nuclear weapons proliferation. But that is a backdoor method for killing all high energy uses of nuclear power including peaceful ones.
Without fuel enrichment you have to shut down existing nuclear power reactors. And you can forget about NASA’s Project Prometheus to develop nuclear power for spaceflight power and propulsion technologies. Kiss the JIMO nuclear powered mission to Jupiter goodbye and a whole new generation of deep space unmanned probes. And kiss goodbye any manned deep space exploration missions. Without nuclear power manned space exploration is impossibly expensive.
Brad, I agree that we need nuclear power in space.
Kerry and his supporters must be persusded otherwise, or at least enough other Democrats must be persuaded to support space nuclear power.
20 years of one-party rule in the White House, House and Senate is very unlikely, however desirable some may believe that to be.
“Without nuclear power manned space exploration is impossibly expensive.”
It will be impossibly expensive with or without the nuclear power, if exploration is all there is to it.
Space nuclear power is something that will _inevitably_ done only by govmnt agencies, which means more of the business as usual.
kert is wrong
The exploitation of nuclear reactors is far far from “business as usual” when it comes to spaceflight. Business as usual is being stuck in LEO. Sending men to Mars is not business as usual.
Is kert sugessting that manned deep space exploration can be done without nuclear power? Does kert have some magic technology up his sleeve? Is kert suggesting that NASA should not do space exploration because any government involvement in space is bad? Does it even occur to kert that if NASA focuses on deep space exploration, it is more likely to leave the LEO arena open to greater commercial exploitation? That the new NASA plan is more likely to open up space to private development?
errrgg, I apologize for the snarky tone of my last post.