![]() “Pete” Aldridge, made clear that the only way NASA could achieve success with President George W. Bush’s Vision for Space Exploration was to expand the space enterprise with greater use of commercial assets. Most recently, the Augustine Commission, headed by Norman R. Augustine, former chief executive of Lockheed Martin, made clear that commercial providers of space-launch services were a necessary part of maintaining space leadership for the United States. With the new NASA budget, the leadership of the agency is attempting to refocus the manned space program along the lines that successive panels of experts have recommended. The space shuttle program, which was scheduled to end, largely for safety reasons, will be terminated as scheduled. The Constellation program also will be terminated, mostly because its ongoing costs cannot by absorbed within projected NASA budget limits. The International Space Station will have its life extended to at least 2020, thereby preserving a $100 billion laboratory asset that otherwise was due to be dumped in the Pacific Ocean by middecade. The budget also sets forth an aggressive program for having cargo and astronaut crews delivered to the space station by commercial providers. The use of commercial launch companies to carry cargo and crews into low earth orbit will be controversial, but it should not be. The launch-vehicle portion of the Constellation program was so far behind schedule that the United States was not going to have independent access for humans into space for at least five years after the shutdown of the shuttle. We were going to rely upon the Russians to deliver our astronaut personnel to orbit. We have long had a cooperative arrangement with the Russians for space transportation but always have possessed our own capability. The use of commercial carriers in the years ahead will preserve that kind of independent American access. Reliance on commercial launch services will provide many other benefits. It will open the doors to more people having the opportunity to go to space. It has the potential of creating thousands of new jobs, largely the kind of high-tech work to which our nation should aspire. It is the first glimmerings of what many hope will be a sustained campaign of human space exploration.In the same way the railroads opened the American West, commercial access can open vast new opportunities in space. “I’m not saying it wasn’t important, but this time we want to do it in a way that’s sustainable and that leads to next steps.” In other words, this isn’t just about going back to the moon. “Apollo was awesome, but a lot of it was to just prove that we could do it,” says NASA’s Steve Creech. ![]() The launches of the Artemis missions that the US hopes will soon return people to the moon will look very similar to the Apollo launches of the 1960s. This scene could be from six decades ago – or it could be from just a few years in the future. The astronauts within watch the countryside shrink below them as they begin their journey to the moon. Jets of steam and fire ricochet off the concrete, and suddenly the rocket is blasting skyward. ![]() The vibrations first travel through the soles of the watchers’ feet and then hit their bodies like an ocean wave. Over an intercom, crowds of onlookers listen to the countdown – “4, 3, 2…” – and then the bottom of the rocket begins to rumble. The most powerful rocket ever built sits on a launchpad in Florida.
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