Ares rocket boosted in the spending bill, for now
The Ares/Constellation blunt instrument space program gets funded with a boost. Good news? Partially. Mixed blessing if you’d like to see primal rethinking of the launch system and innovation in the technology. At least we’re still looking skyward; but we don’t suppose you can expect the supergeniuses in the US Congress to think anywhere beyond well inside the interior of The Box, let alone outside it.
Richard Shelby (R-AL) is pushing it, fine, but would he be if the Marshall Space Flight Center wasn’t in his state? Being lashed electorally (in other words, addicted) to protecting taxpayer-funded obsolete job descriptions is as stifling in a space program as in any other facet of an economy.
Plenty of other mixed blessings in here too. Some bad news that sounds like good news, etc. For instance: Administration makes free enterprise noises about turning over hauling to the ISS to private companies. Sounds good, and they’d make much PR hay about that to counter other massive anti-commerce moves. But that would be a small price to pay for getting what they really want, a law to make NASA one part of some international space exploration effort. In other words, turn NASA over to the UN so it becomes a handy conduit for funneling US advanced aerospace technology to our international “partners.” Not too much between-the-lines-reading needed there. Well we suppose it might be slightly more space-oriented of a change than making it officially subsidiary to the EPA, which parts of it already seem to have become.
Meanwhile: “As it stands, the U.S. must rely on Russia to ferry its astronauts to the International Space Station for most of the next decade.”
No mixed blessing there. That the US needs to rely on Russia for anything…well, since it’s too late to be unacceptable, we suppose it must be accepted. This would put the US officially behind them again in the space race for the first time in more than 40 years.
