Goodbye Constellation, Hello...Nothing

This week, US President Barack Obama announced that he was cancelling NASA's Constellation project. Publicised under the George Bush Jr. administration, the Constellation project included the Orion programme, which was intended to replace the Space Shuttle. The reasons given for the cancellation were the significant investment yet lack of innovation. On the one hand, one can appreciate the frustration of the Obama administration; billions of dollars have been spent only for plans which echo 1960s technology and concepts. However, on the other hand, there is the argument that the technology and concepts employed in the 1960s were successful; they landed man on the moon after all.

After the lunar landings and the cancellation of the Apollo programme by the Reagan administration in the 1970s, further lunar exploration or settlement appeared to have been removed from the political agenda. Instead, the idea of recyclable spacecraft became popular, albeit spacecraft that could only travel within a certain distance of the earth. The Space Shuttle was never designed to travel to the Moon, let alone Mars. The Obama administration may complain that the Constellation programme was based on 1960s technology but nevertheless that technology was designed to travel to celestial bodies (specifically the Moon) and return safely, which is surely a more appropriate foundation for future programmes than recyclable spacecraft which are restricted to the Lower Earth Orbit (LEO). The concept of the Space Shuttle was ideal for the political ambitions of the time; the Moon had been 'conquered', insofar as it had been visited by man, ending the 'Space Race' and thus leaving no particular goals to be accomplished. Suggestions for Moon settlements proved too expensive to be worthwhile, hence there was little need for a spacecraft designed to facilitate travel to celestial bodies. From this, the Space Shuttle was born, allowing recyclable travel to LEO and back for the flexible deployment of orbital satellites.

With the cancellation of the Constellation programme, the Obama administration has confused matters slightly. On the one hand, it has increased NASA's budget by $6 billion per year, an increase which has been sorely needed ever since George Bush Jr. announced his desire for a manned mission to Mars, while on the other, one questions the message transmitted by the cancellation of a programme in which billions of dollars and thousands of man-hours have been invested. Orion may well have not been the most original programme ever but it was based on a functioning formula.

It is understandable that ventures to the Moon and Mars may not appear cost-effective to the Obama administration, though there is an argument that national pride and the spirit of scientific exploration are sufficient to justify such missions. Certainly these arguments appear to have been put forward by critics in the US Senate. The absence of a mission to the Moon aside, there is a significant issue with the cancellation of the Constellation programme in that nothing has been proposed to replace the Space Shuttle. Those behind proposed budget appear to hope that commercial interests in space exploration will be enough to help the development of future manned spacecraft. That is all very well but currently, the most advanced commercial spacecraft are those belonging to Virgin Galactic and are based on a similar concept to the Space Shuttle; short hops into orbit and back. Unless there is a significant incentive offered for commercial investors to work on developing future spacecraft, it seems doubtful that manned US spacecraft designed to travel past Higher Earth Orbit (HEO) will be seen any time soon. Celestial bodies are exempt from national appropriation under the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, meaning that the commercial exploitation of those bodies is also debatable, therefore restricting the prospect of significant financial return for investors.

While the reasons for the cancellation of the Constellation programme may be understandable, NASA has been left in limbo. It has an increased budget but the Space Shuttle remains due to be replaced by the end of 2010, leaving NASA and the US without a spacecraft on the horizon, forcing them to rely on other countries for missions to the International Space Station for years to come, a dependence which some critics will undoubtedly perceive to be a national humiliation.