The End Of An Era For NASA

Part of the problem for NASA has been shifting priorities. George W. Bush called for a return to the moon by 2020, but the Obama administration cancelled the Constellation program, even after calling for the U.S. to be ready for deep space exploration by 2025. NASA's budget for the fiscal year 2011 is $19 billion and the agency says it is getting a 5% increase, and $100 billion over five years. But estimates were that Constellation would have used up $97 billion of that, and the program was deemed far behind schedule. The administration has called for adapting some technologies developed via Contellation for ISS use.

But the upshot - no pun intended - is that for a while, perhaps years, the United States and the rest of the world will be depending on the Russians to send crew to the International Space Station. If the Shuttle stops flying before the commercial crewed space vehicles are ready, they will be the only nation with the ability to get humans into low earth orbit. China is developing manned spaceflight, and launched its first manned rocket in 2003, with two more crewed missions since then. But the Chinese have yet to develop a spacecraft capable of regular flights to the International Space Station. Other launch commercial launch companies that have heavy-lift capacity -- such as Arianespace of France -- aren't designed to carry astronauts.

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While there are a number of highly-publicized efforts to achieve sub-orbital flight -- Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic being one - in order to get to the ISS a craft needs to reach low earth orbit. NASA is soliciting designs via the Commercial Crew Development program (CCDev). The idea is to stimulate private industry to come up with designs. Thus far the program has disbursed $50 million in the first phase, and another $200 million is slated for the second.

SpaceX, the commercial space transport company started by PayPal co-founder Elon Musk, launched its Falcon 9 rocket in December, and successfully recovered from orbit its Dragon spacecraft. The Dragon and its launcher are part of NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program, which is designed to replace the aging Space Shuttle fleet. The company is further developing the Dragon craft to include an escape system, though Musk said at the time that it could have handled a crew. SpaceX is probably the closest to actually testing a vehicle that is space-ready. Musk has said that a crew could be flying on the Dragon within two to three years.

Boeing, which received $18 million from CCDev, has its design, called the CST-100, for taking up to seven people into orbit. The crew capsule is designed to be launched from a conventional heavy-lift rocket and be reused up to 10 times. Keith Riley, program manager at Boeing, said the idea is to use off-the-shelf technologies rather than developing anything radically new, because that way the system can be cheaper and more reliable. The CST-100 is being tested, but it is not clear what its future is as much of the business case depends on NASA following through with funding for a commercial resupply program.

Sierra Nevada corporation received $20 million for development of its Dream Chaser spaceplane, which is similar to the Space Shuttle in that it is launched lie a rocket and lands like a plane. But that vehicle is still in the development stage.

Then there are the more speculative designs. Jeff Bezos, the man who gave the world Amazon.com, founded Blue Origin, a company working on an orbital vehicle, which it has tested. The company received $3.7 million from the CCDev program. But it, too, is at least several years away from a working model.

Though NASA says it won't be able to deliver on a vehicle by the assigned date, it depends in part on the funding priorities in Congress. Those could change with the next elections. If that seems too speculative, there's also the possibility that one or more of the private efforts to achieve crewed space flight will succeed sooner than they thought.

NASA has also continued development of the heavy-lift rockets and the next generation of launch systems. The report to Congress says the agency will continue to build on proposed designs for the Ares program, which was to provide heavy-lift capacity for future manned and cargo flights. The Ares rockets have been undergoing flight and engine tests, and that seems slated to continue.

But as it stands it looks like the day may soon come when we close the books on NASA's manned flights. For those that waited for a return to the moon, or missions to other planets, it will be a sad one.