Obama At KSC

President Obama went to the Kennedy Space Center yesterday to make the case for his new space policy. While returns are not yet fully in, and changes and compromises are presumably still possible, the President did fill in some details, especially regarding the future of NASA manned spaceflight, which seemed to be the major bone of contention.

He said, for example, that the Orion capsule will be developed as a crew rescue vehicle to be attached to ISS, but also with the capability to evolve into a moonship. He also said a heavy lift launcher will be pursued, to be ready to be built by 2015. Whether it would be built would depend on circumstances.

The President's critics often focused on the lack of a goal in his approach, so he gave them a few. He envisioned a manned flight to an asteroid relatively soon, for example-- an intriguing, exciting foray into deep space. He also said he expected to see American astronauts going to Mars in the 2030s, with a landing on Mars sometime later. While that sequence worked during Apollo with the Moon, it's not clear that sending a crew all the way to Mars and not attempting a landing makes much sense. After perhaps dozens of unmanned landings on Mars by then, we will know how to do it. So, if we risk a crew on a flight to Mars at all, going all the way probably makes more sense. An alternative might be establishing a manned base on one of the Martian moons, but that call is for the future.