The NY Times on NASA’s Future

Today’s “Science Times” section of the NY Times has two articles about space: one about NASA’s future and another about private space companies.

New Boosters Compared

The first article nicely explains quite a bit about the Constellation program (the successor to the shuttle) and the booster (Ares I and Ares V)—and how they differ. The Ares one uses a single SRB as the main booster. The Ares V uses 2 SRBs (each about the size of the ONE used by Ares I) to support the main engines.

The Next Lunar Lander

The new lunar lander (Altair) looks exceedingly ugly…but if it gets the job done, great! (It may end up looking very different; Orion’s just in the planning stage.) The old LM is stunningly beautiful, by comparison.

One interesting note. On Constellation moonlandings, all 4 astronauts will take Altair to the surface. The (now unmanned) Ares would continue to orbit above.

Question: What Will the Future Bring?

Of course, the big question is—will the new Constellation program go forward? Or be cancelled? Or altered? And if it’s altered, how?

Earlier reports suggest disagreements, and even screaming arguments between representative of the incoming Obama administration and NASA’s administrator Michael Griffin. Still, we don’t know where this will lead.

There have also been reports of serious problems with the Constellation project. But we don’t know if these are normal problems (this IS rocket science, after all!) or really deadly ones that could result in failure of the program. These disputes could also be political disputes—people wanting THEIR pet projects being funded, and feeling threatened by the costs soaked up by Constellation.

SpaceX: Can They Do Manned Flight?

Meanwhile, the article on private space flight discusses the possibility of SpaceX’s Falcon launcher and Dragon spacecraft being used to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station during the gap between the shuttle’s demise and the first manned flights of Constellation. NASA’s not ready to make that commitment—understandably. But I wonder if SpaceX might not be able to work out the technical problems and do the job. It certainly is a simpler spacecraft than Orion-Ares and should take less time to work out the bugs.

Stay tuned. This is getting interesting…