Obama, NASA, private space ventures: Steady the course?

William Atkins
Monday, 15 February 2010 00:30

Opinion and Analysis

The Obama Administration has recommended commercial ventures to ferry astronauts back and forth between Earth and low-Earth orbit. Can it work? Will it succeed? What if this course of action fails?



NASA is entering a new era of manned space exploration after the Bush Administration's Constellation program was canceled in favor of another course of action for manned space exploration within the United States.

Involved in this new federal plan is a large initiative, proposed by the Obama White House, that allows private companies to provide the spacecraft to send astronauts into space and then return them safely back to Earth.

Read about the basics of the plan in the February 1, 2010 ABC News article 'Obama Budget: NASA Would Have Private Companies Launch Astronauts.'

Within the article, it states, 'If the Obama administration has its way, something like this may happen as NASA changes course under its proposed new budget. The Constellation project -- ordered by President Bush in 2004 to return astronauts to the moon and eventually send them to Mars -- would be canceled. The Obama administration says it was too expensive -- $9.1 billion so far -- and relied on old technology. '

One presidential administration's plan (the Bush plan) is scrapped by the next administration's plan (the Obama plan). In four or eight years, what prevents the next administration's plan (whomever's plan) to override this administration's plan?

The Wall Street Journal has two articles professing the Pros and Cons of the privatization of space exploration.

Page two continues with the case "against" and "for" the privatization of space as proposed by the Obama Administration.