Three weeks after Obama told an audience at Kennedy Space Center that he wants to land astronauts on an asteroid by 2025, Congress, NASA, and the American public remains unconvinced. Under the Bush administration, NASA was scheduled to return to the moon to test new equipment before going to Mars. After canceling the space shuttle and new rocket designs, the Obama administration has decided to go for somewhat different goals: An Asteroid. Recently, the administration called for the cancellation of the constellation program, which would have wasted billions of dollars of tax player money. The government has famously canceled multi-billion dollar research projects more than three quarters completed, including a nuclear power plant that would have trans-mutated nuclear waste into usable fuel.
The moon has been visited, but why not anymore? The new goal appears to be an asteroid that is orbiting earth. (Remember the movie Armageddon?) The update of plan comes with a push for private industries to compete for contracts. Â The space capsule, a part of the Ares rocket program, would now be used as an emergency escape module for the International Space Station. Â After an asteroid, landing people in Mars will become a priority.
So much for the George W. Bush administration’s goal to visit the moon and build a permanent lunar base there.
The most controversial part of the president’s policy is the cancellation of the Constellation program, which was aimed at developing a new generation of Ares rockets and Orion spacecraft to send astronauts into Earth orbit and beyond. NASA itself also appears to be hedging its bets that the president’s vision might not pass muster with Congress. KSC officials and contractors, under direction from Johnson Space Center and NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden, are pressing ahead with plans for test flights of a multibillion-dollar Ares I rocket that Obama wants to cancel.
