Sailor Moon еп 167

The President has decided: the future that there will be.

The news is not official yet, but it is almost certain that Obama has chosen to cancel the Constellation project. Constellation the project was built by W. Bush in 2004 to bring the man on the moon and "beyond."

After 5 billion dollars spent on proposals and projects, the program was woefully lagging behind forecasts. The Ares I launcher , able to replace the now aging fleet Space Shuttle, would have to make the first flight in 2011. That date would have allowed in 2010 for mothballing the shuttle, allowing you to divert substantial resources from the costly fleet maintenance programs and return to the moon (maybe) Mars.

The sad truth is that finance is more anemic than expected, technical problems, were not sufficient to launch the first Ares I before 2014. And who would take astronauts to the ISS in the period 2010 to 2014? NASA would have been to rent some step by the Russians?

the end seems to come the uninvolved ( article of Orlando Sentinel) that many expected: Constellation program canceled, a few more years' flight of the Shuttle, so as to permit the maintenance of the ISS, and finally, incentives for private to "outsource" transferring astronauts to the ISS.

The decision as expected, is stirring a vepaio of concern and controversy. Concerns (for example here) about the fate of the workforce and contractors who work and have worked on projects canceled. The controversies are unfortunately inevitable in a program that for years has absorbed considerable resources and ultimately is likely to show the political vacuum at the rear of a vision for space exploration that seems to belong more than a century ago. The reactions of the supporters of manned space, are quite shocked .

Just between us, is not so automatic that the decision is a disaster for the human exploration of space. According to most of the disaster was already in the premise of the program ESAS, behind Constellation, launched by W. Bush. Too ambitious a target for the funds that would have received but little contemporaeamente too ambitious in terms of technology. Many people have called it, after 50 years, only a blank riprosizione the Apollo program. Someone wrote that the only moon lost in this round, it's just a moon paper.

more lucid analysis of the possible implications of Obama's decision is analyzed here, on Space Politics .