Constellation vs. The World

I hope everyone has had an awesome holiday season and a great New Year.  If you’ve been keeping up with NASA-related news lately, you’ll know there’s a brewing issue surrounding current NASA Administrator Mike Griffin and his Ares rockets (aka Constellation).  Like many government programs, Constellation is over-budget and behind schedule.  Why this particular program is cause for such scrutiny from people outside of the program (and outside of NASA entirely) I don’t fully understand; however, as a tax payer, I do understand that we should responsible for, and held accountable for, how we spend the money that’s handed to us.

However, this is not the point of this post.

The point of this is to take a look, all allegiances aside, at the issue of Constellation and current alternatives.  The list of potential, and even viable (in my book at lest) options is sizable and growing all the time.  The list includes, but isn’t limited to

1. Giving the Constellation program a monetary shot in the arm to speed up testing and development and decrease the amount of time the U.S. will be without a launch vehicle.
2. Giving the Constellation program a smaller monetary shot while simultaneously extending the shuttle program to cover the “gap”
3. Just extending the shuttle program
4. Contracting with private space industry (i.e. Space -X) for launch services
5. Using current military/military-funded rockets to replace Ares all together.

While some of these are more viable than others (as far as I know, no private industry space program has orbited, or docked with another space vehicle yet), all are pretty good alternatives to at least investigate, if not actively pursue in some manner.  Each option listed above (and those not listed) have their advantages and disadvantages:  Throwing money at a problem generally doesn’t work very well, except for wasting someone’s money; in this case that “someone” happens to be U.S. tax payers and as a member of this population, I’d say that probably isn’t the way to go.  The shuttle is, well, old.  Extending it is probably the most technically feasible option at this point, but it doesn’t come without some measurable risks to the astronauts who fly it.  There is also the issue of learning exactly how much of the supporting architecture has been destroyed or dismantled per the 2010 retirement date.  This last point affects both shuttle options, obviously, and could wind up costing more money and being more difficult technically than is currently known.

Speaking of technical difficulty, that is what the private space industry option affords us, in  my own humble opinion.  It is exciting, it can be more cost – effective, but has any private industry space venture orbited yet?  Straight shots up to approximately 300,000 feet and landing safely is one thing.  Orbiting the earth and docking with another orbiting spacecraft is something different entirely. So is launching large payloads.  The point is, private space industry, as it stands right now, isn’t quite up to par with what NASA needs in the next few years.  I, for one, would be overjoyed at the news of a privately owned spacecraft orbiting the earth, conducting science experiments for long durations of time…but they aren’t there yet.  I will admit that I’m not up to speed on the latest developments in the private space industry, but I do know that what NASA needs and what the private space sector can offer right now are a bit disjoint.  Also, we’d have to consider what government involvement would do to private space ventures.  Anyone who works in or with the government knows about the dreaded red tape that comes with, well, everything the government does.  I recall a personal memory I had while I was still a wet-eared co-op here at JSC that involved a certain test chamber, torque settings for a torque wrench and having to do two-days worth of paper work to include torque “ranges” instead of torque “values”.  I’ll spare the details, but suffice it to say it was quite infuriating.  I say this to make the point that private space industry is able to take more risks than government run space ventures due to the reduction, or total lack of, red tape.

The final item on the aforementioned list is using current military-spec hardware to launch crew and cargo into space.  Somehow this sounds very familiar…oh yes! Redstone rockets, the Mercury program…the glory days of hardcore test pilots riding (very) unstable rockets all while smoking a pack a day.  Talk about risk takers, these guys had guts to voluntarily ride a rocket with a near 60% failure rating…(source: astronautx).  They say history repeats itself, and in this case, it very well may.  Using current mil-spec EELVs for launching crew and cargo definitely isn’t a new idea, and could be a smaller time-hit than waiting on the full development of Constellation.

With so many options out there against Constellation, it’s easy to see how one can wonder what NASA (aka Mike Griffin) is doing sticking with Constellation.  I’m not going to venture a guess, as I don’t know everything that goes on with a decision like that.  All I do know is that the Constellation program, in it’s current incarnation, has some rather stiff competition.  Not to mention an increasingly (it would seem) defiant NASA administrator and a new president who is likely to change multiple things in multiple agencies, NASA included.  Whatever happens, no one can argue that NASA is definitely in a crossroads in its existence.