Can Ares 1 be saved?

September 6, 1:47 PMHouston Space News ExaminerMark Whittington

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Ares 1 Launch Conception Courtesy NASA

The Augustine Committee has not officially presented its findings to the White House, but already a push back is starting to occur over the possibility that the Ares 1 rocket will be canceled after three billion dollars and over four years of development. According to a story in the Orlando Sentinel contractors involved in the development of the Ares 1 have started a quiet, but persistent public relations campaign to save the Ares 1, criticized in some quarters because of cost and technical problems.

As part of a campaign, a YouTube video has hit the Internet which uses some members of the Augustine Committee’s own words to suggest that any alternative that involves scrapping the Ares 1 is unwise and potentially costly and dangerous. The video has gone viral throughout the aerospace community.

A group of former astronauts now working for Ares 1 contractors has published an op-ed urging a stay the course decision. Ares 1 supporters are also quietly lobbying members of Congress in whose hands the ultimate decisions are about the future of the space exploration program.

Some might suggest that since the potential cancellation of the Ares 1 would involve a loss of contracts to some of the people involved in the Save Ares 1 Campaign the effort is a little self serving. That may be true, but it also does not mean that the argument does not have merit.

Norm Augustine himself has been quoted as saying that there is nothing technically wrong with the current exploration concept, despite stories of thrust oscillation and other problems. Other members of the Augustine Committee have pointed out the truism that an actual rocket development program always costs more than a rocket development program on paper.

Costs, however, are the big issue. The current space exploration program has been short changed by both the Bush and Obama administrations. The Augustine Committee suggests that an additional fifty billion dollars will be required over the next ten years to put the current exploration program on track for a lunar return in 2020. An effort to find that money may be politically difficult.

On the other hand, a sudden, wrenching change of direction may be even more difficult. Don Beattie, in his study of the development of the International Space Station, ISScapades, points out that one big factor in the explosion of the cost and the constant slippage of schedule for the space station was the constant changes of direction and design the project underwent. Changes of administration, changes of Congresses, even changes of committee chairman would bring new mandates for the space station, cost cutting, changes of design. These ultimately cost time and money, on top of the well documented management problems the space station suffered from.

A sudden change of direction for the current exploration program is likely to cause similar problems. Already NASA managers are claiming that scrapping the Ares 1 would cost two years and billions of dollars in the development of the Orion space craft, which is being designed to fly on the Ares 1.

All of the recommendations of the Augustine Committee, even those involving the “cheaper” option of foregoing a lunar landing to a visit to an asteroid, pushes important milestones of the exploration program at least a decade into the future. Ten more years of development time is very likely to result in more opportunities for unexpected cost overruns, attempts to cancel the program, and changes of direction at political whim that will cost even more time and money.

Even worse, news reports suggest that the Obama administration is not contemplating adding as much money as even the Augustine Committee suggests is vital for its alternate space exploration options. One proposal being floated would be to take two and a half billion dollars out of the exploration program and use it to develop commercial launch services to take people and supplies into low Earth orbit.

The development of a commercial launch industry is an excellent idea as it will lower the cost of taking the first step into low Earth orbit. Trying to fund that development at the expense of the exploration program is likely to set the Obama administration into a fight with NASA supporters in the Congress that it cannot win.

Supporters of the Ares 1 believe that the path of least resistance for an administration, now beset with problems involving a contracting economy and controversies over health care reform, will be to stay the course. Finding the money to do so will, as suggested, be a challenge. President Obama would have to fund the current program, keep ISS flying until 2020, develop a commercial option for low Earth orbit, and start a space technology development program. A tall order to be sure.

Of course, as many point out, most of the stimulus money has not been spent. Spending on space exploration has been found in studies dating back to the one done on the Apollo program in the 1970s to have a simulative effect.

Perhaps President Obama can kill two birds with one stone. He could revive the exploration program and try a new course in the long term revival of the economy. Considering the problems the Obama administration now finds itself, actually paying for a space program worthy of the name may just be worth a try.