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CONSTELLATION WAS BROKEN. IT WAS EXPENSIVE, LACKED INFRASTRUCTURE AND EVEN LANDERS-Bolden ‘11
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- THE FOCUS ON MEETING CONSTELLATION REQUIREMENTS MADE CONSTELLATION IMPRACTICAL-Huntress ‘09
- CONSTELLATION WAS OVER BUDGET AND WRAPPED IN ILLUSION. IT COULDN’T EVEN MEET THE GOAL OF REACHING THE MOON-Pelton ‘10
- CONSTELLATION WOULD NOT HAVE RETURNED THE US TO THE MOON-Kugler ‘11
- CONTINUING THE CONSTELLATION PROGRAM WOULD HAVE MEANT THE END OF HUMAN SPACE FLIGHT FOR NASA-Kugler ‘11
- CONSTELLATION WENT WITH A FAILED APOLLO ON STEROIDS APPROACH-Kugler ‘11
- SOLVENCY: CONSTELLATION HAD NO INNOVATION CONSTELLATION WAS JUST REPEATING APOLLO. IT SERVED NO PURPOSE-Spencer ‘10
- NASA MUST END THE ERA OF APOLLO AND MOVE FORWARD WITH A NEW VISION OF SPACE-Logsdon ‘10
- NASA NEEDS TO WRENCH ITSELF AWAY FROM APOLLO-ERA PLANNING-Logsdon ‘10
- THE US NEEDS TO FOCUS ON A DEEP SPACE EXPLORATION VEHICLE-Huntress ‘09
- THE CONSTELLATION PLAN WAS UNDERFUNDED AND POORLY PLANNED FROM THE OUTSET-Zak ‘10
- CONSTELLATION LACKED INNOVATION-Plait ‘10
- SOLVENCY: CONSTELLATION WILL NOT CAUSE US LEADERSHIP CONSTELLATION WILL NOT LEAD TO AMERICAN LEADERSHIP IN SPACE-Friedman ‘10
- CONSTELLATION CANNOT BE THE PATH TOWARDS VISIONARY AMERICAN LEADERSHIP IN SPACE-Friedman ‘10
- ENDING CONSTELLATION WILL NOT END AMERICAN SPACE LEADERSHIP BUT OFFERS A NEW PATH FOR REAL EXPLORATION-Pelton ‘10
- THE ONLY WAY TO RE-ESTABLISH AMERICAN SPACE LEADERSHIP IS TO CUT BUDGETS AND START NEW INITIATIVES-Albrecht ‘11
- OBAMA’S VISION WOULD LEAD THE UNITED STATES IN MORE INTERNATIONAL EFFORTS-WHNT News ‘10
- Lunar Bases/Colonization Negative
- THERE IS NO SCIENTIFIC RATIONALE FOR MOON EXPLORATION-Easterbrook ‘06
CONSTELLATION WAS BROKEN. IT WAS EXPENSIVE, LACKED INFRASTRUCTURE AND EVEN LANDERS-Bolden ‘11 [Americans Will Go To Deep Space; ABC News; 17 May 2011; http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/nasas-charles-bolden-americans-deep-space/story?id=13620479; retrieved 13 Jul 2011] I would counter initially that to say that Constellation wasn't broken is not accurate. Constellation, if you look at where we were, it was a deep space exploration program that failed to get funding from the administration and Congress for many years, and my predecessor, Mike Griffin, found himself having to take money from NASA's science and aeronautics budgets, having to de-scope what Constellation was supposed to do. If you talk to anybody who is knowledgeable on where Constellation was at the time that President Obama made the decision to terminate the program, it was a poor lunar exploration enterprise at best, because we didn't have landers. We didn't have any way to provide the infrastructure once you got to the surface of the Moon, and in fact, when I say we didn't have landers, we didn't have a way to get astronauts from lunar orbit to the surface. So that is not being critical of the people in the Constellation program. That is saying that the assets that were provided to us through the previous administration and the Congress were insufficient to carry out the vision, if you will.
[Wesley; Former NASA Associate Administrator for Space Science; Lessons for the Future of Human Space Flight; 21 Jun 2009; http://www.planetary.org/programs/projects/space_advocacy/lessons_for_future.pdf; retrieved 12 Jul 2011] For Apollo cost was no object. This “build it and the money will come” culture has carried over into Space Shuttle, Space Station and lingers on in Constellation. NASA seems unable to approach human space flight from a cost-limited perspective. NASA’s strong focus on setting and meeting engineering requirements for Constellation without an equal focus on cost of development and operations is the program’s Achilles Heel. The directive to land on the Moon by 2020 is not achievable given the agency’s current limited out-year budget, costs for Constellation development, and the looming requirement to support the Space Station beyond 2015. The best approach to lower cost and sustained development is to leverage existing space transportation infrastructure to the maximum. CONSTELLATION WAS OVER BUDGET AND WRAPPED IN ILLUSION. IT COULDN’T EVEN MEET THE GOAL OF REACHING THE MOON-Pelton ‘10 [Joseph; Space & Advanced Communications Research Institute, George Washington University; A new space vision for NASA—And for space entrepreneurs too?; Space Policy; May 2010; pgs. 78-80] Project Constellation, with a projected cost of over $100 billion until its recent cancellation by President Obama, seemed to loom as an eerie repetition of the ISS – another mega-project always over budget, always late, and with constantly lowered expectations. Henry Spencer, writing for the New Scientist, has characterized Project Constellation as an “Illusion, Wrapped in Denial.” His specific observations about the NASA Moon/Mars program were as follows: First, it probably wasn't going to work. Even so early in its life, the programme was already deep into a death spiral of “solving” every problem by reducing expectation of what the systems would do. Actually reaching the moon would probably have required a major redesign, which wasn't going to be funded . CONSTELLATION WOULD NOT HAVE RETURNED THE US TO THE MOON-Kugler ‘11 [Justin; works at NASA Johnson Space Center in the International Space Station National Laboratory Office; Avoiding the End of NASA; The Space Review; http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1901/1; 08 Aug 2011; retrieved 09 Aug 2011] The sad consequence is that Constellation would not have returned America to the Moon simply because neither the Bush Administration nor Congress ever provided NASA with the funds it estimated it needed to make the initial schedule. The program’s inability to close its business case, as assessed by both the Government Accountability Office and Congressional Budget Office, threatened the entire enterprise. The Constellation Program was well on the road to ruin even before President Obama was elected, despite the tendency of some to lay everything that ails NASA at his feet. It was so far behind schedule that we weren’t even going to be doing flags-and-footprints missions for another two decades, much less build a lunar outpost, even with the billions of taxpayer dollars already spent. CONTINUING THE CONSTELLATION PROGRAM WOULD HAVE MEANT THE END OF HUMAN SPACE FLIGHT FOR NASA-Kugler ‘11 [Justin; works at NASA Johnson Space Center in the International Space Station National Laboratory Office; Avoiding the End of NASA; The Space Review; http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1901/1; 08 Aug 2011; retrieved 09 Aug 2011] That is why anyone who was paying attention to space policy over the past few years should not have been surprised when the Constellation Program was canceled. The Augustine Committee made it abundantly clear that the status quo was unaffordable and unsustainable. Continuing with the Constellation plan would have put the ISS in the Pacific Ocean in 2016 and left an increasingly expensive Orion/Ares 1 stack with nowhere to go for decades. They found that the Ares 5 rocket would not have been ready until the mid-2020s and a new lunar lander would not have been available until the 2030s. Unequivocally, I think that would have been the end of the NASA manned space program. What President or Congress would have continued with a program that could do nothing but fly four people at a time in LEO for 20 (or more) years? Constellation was not only underfunded and behind schedule, it would have torn down the entire rest of the manned space program just to keep chugging along. CONSTELLATION WENT WITH A FAILED APOLLO ON STEROIDS APPROACH-Kugler ‘11 [Justin; works at NASA Johnson Space Center in the International Space Station National Laboratory Office; Avoiding the End of NASA; The Space Review; http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1901/1; 08 Aug 2011; retrieved 09 Aug 2011] We in the technical world share some of the blame for this, though. The Vision for Space Exploration and the 2004 Aldridge Commission were explicitly clear that NASA should not build new booster rockets unless it was absolutely necessary to do so. Instead, NASA under Administrator Mike Griffin went with the “Apollo on steroids” approach that would have given us—eventually—the Ares 1 and 5 rockets. We allowed ourselves to focus more on building rockets to get to space than developing the systems to do actual work when we get there. We failed to manage all of our stakeholder relationships and their expectations, in terms of cost, schedule, scope, and politics. Mike Griffin had a grand strategy to make Constellation too painful to cancel, gambled big, and lost. SOLVENCY: CONSTELLATION HAD NO INNOVATION
[Henry; space engineer;NASA Moon Plan Was an Illusion, Wrapped in Denial; New Scientist; 11 Feb 2011; http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18515-nasa-moon-plan-was-an-illusion-wrapped-in-denial.html; retrieved 22 Jul 2011] Finally, and most important, even if Constellation was funded and worked ... so what? The programme was far too tightly focused on repeating Apollo, which was pointless: we already did Apollo! Early ideas of quickly establishing a permanent lunar base had already been forgotten. Constellation was going to deliver exactly what Apollo did: expensive, brief, infrequent visits to the moon. That was all it was good for. Sure, there were hopes that Constellation's systems could later be adapted to support more ambitious goals. But Apollo had those hopes too. It didn't work in 1970, and it wasn't going to work in 2020. The demise of Constellation is not the death of a dream. It's just the end of an illusion.
[John; Professor Emeritus of Political Science and International Affairs at The George Washington University; The End of the Apollo Era—Finally?; 30 Jun 2010; http://www.spacenews.com/commentaries/100630-blog-end-apollo-era-finally.html; retrieved 22 Jul 2011] It is really too bad that the announcement, and since then the defense, of a fundamental paradigm shift in the way the United States carries out human space exploration, and human spaceflight overall, have been so poorly articulated. The White House and NASA dug a rather deep hole in mismanaging the rollout of the new strategy, and the president really did not improve matters much by announcing a quickly conceived resuscitation of Orion, blowing off the Moon as a valuable destination, and setting an ambiguous target for a heavy-lift vehicle. NASA seems unable to provide clear or convincing answers to the congressional critics of the new strategy, and those of us who support it are having difficulty in getting our views heard. Going back to the drawing board and starting over on a modified strategy as the next budget is announced does not seem to me to be an option. Forcing NASA to continue to move grudgingly forward on Constellation while it is planning its replacement is untenable. There is a pressing need for a sensible outcome. The time is now for ending the era of Apollo. When it began, John Kennedy was clear in purpose and consistent in explaining his reasons for going to the Moon. Now we need JFK-like leadership to be equally clear in purpose and equally convincing in arguing for moving to a new era in U.S. human spaceflight. NASA NEEDS TO WRENCH ITSELF AWAY FROM APOLLO-ERA PLANNING-Logsdon ‘10 [John; Professor Emeritus of Political Science and International Affairs at The George Washington University; The End of the Apollo Era—Finally?; 30 Jun 2010; http://www.spacenews.com/commentaries/100630-blog-end-apollo-era-finally.html; retrieved 22 Jul 2011] Introducing “new ways of thinking, new people, and new means” into the NASA approach to human spaceflight has not happened in the two decades since Brewer made his observations. That was the conclusion of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board in 2003, and despite the positive steps taken since then to operate the shuttle as safely as possible, much of the Apollo-era human spaceflight culture remains intact. Trying to change that culture and thereby close out the half century of Apollo-style human spaceflight seems to me the essence of the new space strategy. There is no way of achieving that objective without wrenching dislocations; change is indeed hard. Gaining acceptance of that change will require more White House and congressional leadership and honesty about the consequences of the new strategy than has been evident to date. THE US NEEDS TO FOCUS ON A DEEP SPACE EXPLORATION VEHICLE-Huntress ‘09 [Wesley; Former NASA Associate Administrator for Space Science; Lessons for the Future of Human Space Flight; 21 Jun 2009; http://www.planetary.org/programs/projects/space_advocacy/lessons_for_future.pdf; retrieved 12 Jul 2011] First, the US needs to develop its next deep space transportation system to go to the Moon and beyond. We have only this one chance to develop a new post-Shuttle space transportation system; the next won’t come for many decades. The US needs to demonstrate to itself as much as to others that it remains the leader in space exploration and is the partner of choice for international space enterprises. To do thatthe US must show its clear intention to go beyond where it has been before. Even while reestablishing the capability to do what it did before, the US must have its sights set squarely on going beyond the Moon to deeper space destinations. Establishing this goal will demonstrate that the US intends to remain in front of any nation now considering duplicating what NASA did 40 years ago. Missions to near-Earth asteroids or Sun-Earth libration points can be done before the need to develop lunar landing and support hardware. Any new transportation system should be readily capable of flights to destinations beyond the Moon. The ultimate long-term driver should be to send humans to Mars sometime in the next 50 years and this feature of the original 2004 Vision for Space Exploration needs to be reemphasized. THE CONSTELLATION PLAN WAS UNDERFUNDED AND POORLY PLANNED FROM THE OUTSET-Zak ‘10 [Anatoly; space historian and journalist; End of Constellation: It Is Not All Doom and Gloom; Russian Space Web; 04 Feb 2010; http://www.russianspaceweb.com/sei_end.html; retrieved 10 Jul 2011] Even before the White House made a proposal on Feb. 1, 2010, to eliminate funding for the Constellation program, a political hurricane had started brewing in Washington, D.C. Critics alleged that the end of the project, which aimed to return the American astronauts to the Moon, would undermine US space efforts and would even mark the end of the nation’s leadership in space, giving the upper hand to evil powers like China and Russia. The criticism is probably leveled by the same people, who six years ago were blindly cheerleading the Bush administration’s shortsighted decision to start this project in the first place, without any solid fiscal or technical foundation. With a minimum foresight and the knowledge of space exploration history, it was clear from the get go that the Bush plan was underfunded, poorly designed and would have to be scrapped sooner or later. It is just unfortunate that it took six years, nine billion dollars and the change of occupant in the Oval Office to come to this realization. CONSTELLATION LACKED INNOVATION-Plait ‘10 [Phil; President Obama’s NASA budget unveiled; Discover Magazine’s Bad Astronomy Blog; 1 February 2010; http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/02/01/president-obamas-nasa-budget-unveiled/; retrieved 13 August 2011] Now to the other aspects of this budget. As I have written before, this new budget axes Constellation: NASA’s Constellation program – based largely on existing technologies – was based on a vision of returning astronauts back to the Moon by 2020. However, the program was over budget, behind schedule, and lacking in innovation due to a failure to invest in critical new technologies. Using a broad range of criteria an independent review panel determined that even if fully funded, NASA’s program to repeat many of the achievements of the Apollo era, 50 years later, was the least attractive approach to space exploration as compared to potential alternatives. Furthermore, NASA’s attempts to pursue its moon goals, while inadequate to that task, had drawn funding away from other NASA programs, including robotic space exploration, science, and Earth observations. The President’s Budget cancels Constellation and replaces it with a bold new approach that invests in the building blocks of a more capable approach to space exploration… SOLVENCY: CONSTELLATION WILL NOT CAUSE US LEADERSHIP CONSTELLATION WILL NOT LEAD TO AMERICAN LEADERSHIP IN SPACE-Friedman ‘10 [Louis; Hang Together or Hang Separately; 26 May 2010; http://www.planetary.org/action/opinions/blog_spacenews_20100526.html; retrieved 14 Jul 2011] I assumed that when everyone recovered from the shock of seeing the reset button hit, the positive aspects of the plan would become apparent. Instead, the shock spread too quickly, and the notion that the U.S. was giving up on human space exploration reverberated through both the space community and the general public. What this public reaction proves is that the American people care deeply about NASA and human space exploration. Despite a few editorials and some op-eds proposing that we save even more money by letting robots do all our exploring, the overwhelming popular sentiment expressed over the past several weeks is for the United States to lead the world in space exploration: human and robotic. Constellation will not provide that leadership. It has become a jobs program to do Apollo over again in a mock-space race, this time to “beat” China or India. If the program were to continue, we would find ourselves a decade hence with a new rocket able to reach Earth orbit, but with no activity for humans to conduct since the international space station is scheduled to have been de-orbited. The Moon would still be another decade away (or — at best — eight years farther down the road, in 2028).
[Louis; Hang Together or Hang Separately; 26 May 2010; http://www.planetary.org/action/opinions/blog_spacenews_20100526.html; retrieved 14 Jul 2011] In retrospect, all of us — the administration and the broader space community — should have been more honest about the situation that has been brewing for the last few years. We should not have glossed over the lost Vision for Space Exploration and pretended that it could be fixed by a new vision. Even The Planetary Society report, “Beyond the Moon: A Roadmap to Space,” carried nary a word of criticism about Constellation. We should have learned from history: President Nixon initiated the space shuttle program and then cut back its funding and its goals. That downgraded American human spaceflight capability for decades. Similarly President Bush initiated the Vision for Space Exploration and then cut back its funding and its goals. The new NASA plan provides more funding and more ambitious goals: human exploration beyond the Moon. Whatever may happen in the next decade as program realties bump into budget constraints, the space community needs to recognize that the Vision for Space Exploration was lost a couple of years ago. Constellation can be resurrected as a jobs program, but it cannot be resurrected as a visionary exploration program for America or the world. Yes, we might reach the Moon again by 2028 or a few years later, but is retracing our footsteps on that time scale a visionary goal? ENDING CONSTELLATION WILL NOT END AMERICAN SPACE LEADERSHIP BUT OFFERS A NEW PATH FOR REAL EXPLORATION-Pelton ‘10 [Joseph; Space & Advanced Communications Research Institute, George Washington University; A new space vision for NASA—And for space entrepreneurs too?; Space Policy; May 2010; pgs. 78-80] Some have suggested that President Barack Obama's cancellation of the unwieldy and expensive Project Constellation to send astronauts back to the Moon for a few exploratory missions was a blow to NASA and the start of the end of the US space program. The truth is just the reverse. Project Constellation, accurately described by former NASA Administrator Michael Griffin as “Apollo on Steroids” provided little new technology or innovation and had an astronomical price tag. It was clearly too much for too little. If the opportunity costs of Project Constellation are examined (i.e. if we think what could have been done with an extra $100 billion of space funds), dumping it defies argument. With much less invested in a questionable Project Constellation enterprise we can do much more in space astronomy. We can invest more wisely in space science to learn more about the Sun, the Earth and threats from Near Earth Objects. David Thompson, Chairman and CEO of Orbital Sciences said the following in a speech that endorsed the new commercial thrust of the NASA space policies on Nine February 2010: “Let us, the commercial space industry, develop the space taxis we need to get our Astronauts into orbit and to ferry those wanting to go into space to get to where they want to go. We are in danger of falling behind in many critical areas of space unless we shift our priorities”
[Mark; America's space program is crashing; Final shuttle launch symbol of bloated, disorganized agency; Washington Times; 07 Jul 2011; pg. B03] For decades, America introduced inventions to the world, such as high-speed and personal computers, robotics, satellite telecommunications, lasers, solar panels, laparoscopic surgery, nanomachines and nuclear medicine, and built industries and high- tech jobs around each of them in a seemingly unending cavalcade of spinoff technologies developed by our space programs. Will space remain an economic and technological catalyst for America in the coming decades, or is our future in innovations like Facebook and Twitter? The conventional wisdom in the federal bureaucracy is that you can reduce spending or you can restructure, reprioritize and reorganize. You can cut programs or start new programs. But you can't do both. Now, our backs are to the wall. To re-establish our leadership in space, we must defy conventional wisdom and cut spending, start new initiatives and radically restructure a mature agency - all at the same time. It won't be pleasant, and it won't be easy, but neither was putting a man on the moon. OBAMA’S VISION WOULD LEAD THE UNITED STATES IN MORE INTERNATIONAL EFFORTS-WHNT News ‘10 [President Issues New National Space Policy; WHNT News; 28 June 2010; http://www.whnt.com/news/whnt-ap-us-president-obama-space-policy-062810,0,6499736.story; retrieved 13 August 2011] President Barack Obama is calling for greater international cooperation in exploring space. The President said in a statement Monday that the United States is no longer "racing against an adversary" in space. He also issued the new National Space Policy. Meanwhile, Congress has yet to vote on the President's proposed budget, which would cut the Constellation program and hundreds of jobs in north Alabama. Many of those layoffs have hit already. Congressman Robert Aderholt, who represents Alabama's Fourth District, is proposing a bill designed to stop the losses until Congress votes on the 2011 budget. Lunar Bases/Colonization Negative SOLVENCY: THERE IS NO REASON TO DO IT THE PRICE OF A LUNAR BASE WILL BE INCREDIBLY HIGH AND THE VALUE INCREDIBLY LOW-Easterbrook ‘06 [Gregg; senior editor of The New Republic; Moon Baseless;Slate; 08 Dec 2006; http://www.slate.com/id/2155164/; retrieved 01 Aug 2011] The United States will have a permanent base on the moon by the year 2024, NASA officials said on Monday. What does the space agency hope to discover on the moon? The reason it built the base. Coming under a presidency whose slogan might be "No Price Too High To Accomplish Nothing," the idea of a permanent, crewed moon base nevertheless takes the cake for preposterousness. Although, of course, the base could yield a great discovery, its scientific value is likely to be small while its price is extremely high. Worse, moon-base nonsense may for decades divert NASA resources from the agency's legitimate missions, draining funding from real needs in order to construct human history's silliest white elephant. THERE IS NO SCIENTIFIC RATIONALE FOR MOON EXPLORATION-Easterbrook ‘06 [Gregg; senior editor of The New Republic; Moon Baseless;Slate; 08 Dec 2006; http://www.slate.com/id/2155164/; retrieved 01 Aug 2011] What's it for? Good luck answering that question. There is scientific research to be done on the moon, but this could be accomplished by automatic probes or occasional astronaut visits at a minute fraction of the cost of a permanent, crewed facility. Astronauts at a moon base will spend almost all their time keeping themselves alive and monitoring automated equipment, the latter task doable from an office building in Houston. In deadpan style, the New York Times story on the NASA announcement declared, "The lunar base is part of a larger effort to develop an international exploration strategy, one that explains why and how humans are returning to the moon and what they plan to do when they get there." Oh–so we'll build the moon base first, and then try to figure out why we built it. Directory: file -> fetch fetch -> 11 th Lit Semester 1 Final Study Guide!!! fetch -> Industrial Revolution Inventors fetch -> Analysis for Galveston Hurricane of 1900 fetch -> The Illuminators (Team 2) 1900 Galveston Hurricane Cycle a team Assignment fetch -> Team csi-utb ruth Reyes Jose Ferrer fetch -> Galveston Hurricane of 1900 Cycle a-teacher as a Problem Solver fetch -> Is Climate Change Starting a New Dust Bowl? Cycle A fetch -> What makes a storm a hurricane fetch -> The 1950s were the "Happy Days" because it was a time of economic prosperity, technology development, new entertainment, new fashion and family growth. The 1950s was a great time fetch -> Sputnik and The Dawn of the Space Age Download 1.49 Mb. Share with your friends:
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