I’ll be blogging Bush’s space speech (semi) live… updates to follow in a few minutes.
The President is speaking now. There are some very interesting concept art pieces behind him… intreguing…
Bush is talking about essentially "rebooting" NASA to change their mission from the inefficient space shuttle to more daring manned missions to the Moon and Mars. One of the largest criticisms of NASA is that it has been insufficiently bold – there’s a lot that we should have done a long time ago (lunar colonies) that we abandoned for the Space Shuttle.
Bush is now mentioning Lewis and Clark… an interesting analogy. He’s also talking about the tangible benefits of space exploration. Certainly without satellites and GPS our world would be dramatically worse off. He’s correct that the benefits of the space race have marketly improved all our lives – now will he be able to convince Congress and the American people of this?
"In the past 30 years, no human being has set foot on another world" or gone further into space than low Earth orbit… and that’s a shame.
This is rather bold – this goal is to put humans "across the solar system" by starting off with existing technology. Step one is to complete the Internationl Space Station by 2010… it seems that the Shuttle will be safe until then, no way could we come up with a replacement vehicle on that kind of timeline.
The shuttle will be returned to flight as soon as possible. The shuttle’s main goal will be to construct the ISS and will be retired from service in 2010.
President Bush wants a Crew Exploration Vehicle by 2008 and 2014 at the latest, capable of carrying humans beyond Earth orbit. This is going to be a bold technical challenge.
Bush wants a lunar outpoost by 2020, with robotic preparatory missions by 2008. Extended human missions on the moon would begin around 2015. This is very much doable with the current rate of technological change – if not a conservative estimate.
The Cernan quotation was a nice touch.
He’s pointing out (quite correctly) that the delta-v needed to escape lunar gravity is much less than that of Earth – basically a lunar base is a perfect place to launch large-scale missions elsewhere in the solar system. I agree that the moon is the logical place to launch further missions rather than attempting to go to Mars too soon. I like that he’s proposing an incremental approach – and I hope he gets these steps through, but this is going to be a very tough sell.
"We don’t know where this journey will end, but human beings are headed into the cosmos." – a nice line.
Good. He’s hitting on the fact that this program will inspire countless children to become scientists and engineers. He’s giving NAsA a mission, which is something they need. He’s asking NASA to focus in on those goals, as well as a publc/private commission that will report to the President within four months of first meeting. Air Force Secretary Pete Aldridge is to be the head of this commission.
He’s asking to reallocate $11 billion from the current $86 billion NASA budget towards this new task as well as asking Congress for another $1 billion over five years. That’s a rather small amount, but if NASA keeps focus and works with off-the-shelf techology it is doable. However, I they’re going to need more to develop the CEV by 2008 given that the amount of money it takes just to create a new aircraft can be in the billions.
ANALYSIS: Is this doable? Yes. The budget is going to be tight, but we can do it if we’re willing to hold the line on costs. The price is certainly small – redistributing NASA’s budget will theoretically be able to cover some of the development costs. However, keeping the Shuttle up until 2010 will be quite a cost – especially since we’re down to three Shuttles. (Atlantis, Endeavour, and Discovery) The tragic loss of Columbia actually doesn’t make much of a difference in terms of ISS construction. Columbia was an older spaceframe that was simply too heavy to reach the orbit of the ISS. This does mean that the Shuttle’s pure science missions are probably on hold. Of course, since Columbia was the only real pure-science orbiter due to its lower orbital capabilities that’s probably not a great change.
I think keeping NASA set on the goal of expanding a human presence in space is the right move. Robotic explorers are nice, but they’re not the same as having real live humans actually exploring the surface of another planet. Eventually we are going to have to go to space, and we might as well make it now. We have the technology, we just need the right push. The Space Shuttle was a step backwards, now we have the opportunity to put space exploration on the right track.
The White House has a detailed brief on the speech.
Rand Simberg of Transterrestrial Musings is less than impressed with Bush’s speech. I agree that government exploration should be supplemented with private endeavors. The X-Prize and others can be valuable sources of new insights in technologies that can help keep the government program on the ball. Certainly putting all our eggs in one basket is not a sound policy. I’d like to see the FAA and NASA work on making private space tourism and exploration easier for people like Dick Rutan or John Carmack’s attempts at a private space program.
