THE SPACE PROGRAM SETBACK

The Augustine Commission has in my opinion delivered a blow to the US space program. The new plan adopted by Obama based on the commission's report (but not yet approved by Congress) cut the Constellation Program. The Constellation Program would have allowed manned spaceflight returning to the moon and eventually to Mars and allowed the exploration of other parts of the solar system. Many people were employed on this program at NASA. Most of them are highly skilled technicians and engineers. Most of them will now lose their jobs and become part of our jobless community. The new "Augustine Program" sets us back to smaller rockets made by small companies that will not have the capability to build heavy lift rockets for many years, if ever, thus causing a delay in our earlier manned space flight schedule. Meanwhile, our NASA experts will lose their jobs. NASA remnant managers will have to spend many hours, days, and even years teaching commercial rocket companies the space flight trade. There may be poor results and possibly unintended consequences, such as safety problems, financial problems, and incompatible goals of commercial companies with our national goals. Also we will have to depend on Russia to get us to the ISS (International Space Station.) Expect other countries such as China and Japan to pass us in space flight capability while we struggle with small contractors to build something that is usable for space flight. By the way the ISS is now only of scientific use as its original purpose of helping to launch large rockets into space has been dropped. The ISS itself will be abandoned in another 5 to 10 years and become just another piece of space junk floating in orbit.