Results of the final public meeting

Matt — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 06:50:55 +0000

The final public meeting of the Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee was today, and it looks like they did their job extraordinarily well. They really kept their focus on the goal of extending human civilization beyond Earth, and this was reflected in all of the options they are considering. To summarize, their recommended options are: maintain ISS and give up on NASA exploration, spend a little more to explore free space, and spend a little more to explore the moon. All of these options included some common recommendations. First, they called Ares I unaffordable and redundant, and recommended dumping it. Given their findings, support for this program in the White House will undoubtedly evaporate. This is a major change from business as usual, and has stunning repercussions for NASA. Ares I was NASA’s last chance to hold on to their own crew launch capability. With its cancellation, NASA will have no alternative but to pursue commercial crew launch services to the best of their ability, which was another committee recommendation in all the options. Finally, the committee recommended a new advanced technology development program. These three recommendations together will substantially improve our ability to launch humans into space, keep them there, and send them to destinations throughout the Solar System. This was exactly the redirection I was hoping to see from this committee.

On top of the common recommendations, the Deep Space option remains on the table, which I think would further accelerate our expansion into the Solar System. Propellant depots also will appear in their report in some fashion. This, however, is not as critical. I have no confidence that NASA can develop a new heavy-lift launch vehicle, although side-mount comes close to credibility. Non-essentials such as propellant depots, landers, and in-situ resource utilization will be dropped eventually as NASA and Congress neuter the program like they did to the ISS.

Sadly, I think the option to upgrade EELVs to heavy-lift capacity is politically infeasible. President Obama might be willing to expend some political capital to increase the budget and succeed where Bush failed. There is no way he would put his neck out far enough to dismantle KSC. However, it was a welcome validation of the arguments I and many others have made over the past decade to hear that the fastest way into space is to get NASA out of the way.

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Results of the final public meeting