Is it Obama’s space plan or its critics that are misunderstood?

"Space Plan", my asteroid!

The other day, an article on MSNBC discussed how Obama’s space plan was misunderstood…and therefore, unloved.

Here’s the alleged misunderstandings:

1. The Obama plan is killing the space program.

This is false. The budget for NASA is slightly increased, not cut, under the Obama budget. However, in real life this allegation is not quite what the critics are saying. The critics note that Obama is killing the Constellation program—which was a program to return people to the moon and send them on to Mars.

2. NASA is ending its human spaceflight program.

The article (and defenders of the new plan) note that plans to use private space vehicles to send astronauts into earth orbit may have contributed to this alleged misconception.

Well, as an actual critic (and not one of the imaginary ones addressed by the Obama plan defenders), I have to say: I’m very much in favor of having private companies build rockets to send astronauts into earth orbit.

But I also see, under this plan, the end of NASA’s human spaceflight program…except as a caretaker of private manned rockets.

The article suggests that we will experience a gap in manned flight by NASA, not its end. And that this gap is the result of earlier events, i.e. a successor to the shuttle won’t be available for some years after its looming retirement.

This is true—and again misses the point.

Everyone knows about the gap which will follow the shuttle’s retirement. But we HAD a successor in development. Obama’s NASA plan cancels it—thus ending NASA’s manned flight program with no successor even on the drawing board.

3. The new NASA plan was created in secret by some evil conspiracy.

I never heard this allegation and find it absurd. So, again—what critics are being addressed here?

The upshot is: Obama’s plan calls for development of a new heavy lift vehicle and studies to lead to a manned mission to an asteroid. Once we all realize this, the article suggests, we’ll all love the new plan. (Actually, NASA was considering a manned asteroid mission with the Constellation hardware.)

Except:

We are killing an actual, existing plan which had begun designing and building new spacecraft. And we are replacing it with a plan to develop something better and then—starting from scratch—get the manned space program going better than ever.

In other words, they are killing an actual program, throwing away research and hardware, and going back to square one. And the actual program is being replaced by a promise of a future one.

Here’s the thing: as a critic, I don’t believe these promises. I don’t see how moving backwards (back to the beginning with new research) gets us anywhere in the foreseeable future. I also don’t see money being budgeted by Obama’s successor to start a new manned program after the U.S. abandons the existing one.

I sure hope I’m wrong. But I doubt it.

Oh, and defenders of the Obama plan love to point out all the troubles and challenges that Constellation was experiencing. As if designing and building rockets should be easy and cheap. It’s not. Apollo had huge problems—but budgets and engineers and national will overcame them. Today, all we’ve got are the engineers.