President Obama's Space Legacy: Mars, Private Spaceflight and More
Trump, riding Obama's coattails into space has he had been riding Obama's economy, stock market rise and declining unemployment, until recently.
By Mike Wall 20 January 2017
https://www.space.com/35394-president-obama-s...egacy.html
President Obama at KSC
President Barack Obama waves farewell after speaking at the NASA Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. on April 15, 2010.
(Image: © NASA/Bill Ingalls)
A lot has changed in the fields of spaceflight and exploration since President Barack Obama came to power eight years ago.
The moon is no longer an official destination for NASA astronauts, for example, and the commercial spaceflight industry has boomed to the point that multiple private spaceships are flying cargo to the International Space Station (ISS) — and two should soon start ferrying crew to and from the station as well.
President Obama doesn't deserve all the credit (or blame, depending on your viewpoint) for such shifts, of course, but they will be part of his legacy. Here's Space.com's admittedly premature look at how space fans may remember the 44th president. [Gallery: President Obama and NASA]
Don't fly me to the moon
When President Obama took office in January 2009, NASA was working to get astronauts to the moon by 2020, as part of George W. Bush's Constellation program. Constellation envisioned using the moon as a stepping stone to Mars, though the program didn't map out any crewed Red Planet missions in detail.
In May 2009, the Obama administration ordered an independent review of the agency's human-spaceflight plans, which came to be known as the Augustine Commission (after the review committee's chairman, former Lockheed Martin CEO Norm Augustine). The commission's final report, published in October 2009, deemed Constellation to be significantly over budget and behind schedule.
As a result, in 2010, President Obama cancelled the five-year-old program, instructing NASA to instead get astronauts to a near-Earth asteroid by 2025, and then on to the vicinity of Mars by the mid-2030s.
To make all this happen, the agency is developing the Orion crew capsule (a Constellation holdover) and a gigantic new rocket called the Space Launch System (SLS). NASA has also devised the Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM), which aims to pluck a boulder off of an asteroid using a robotic probe. This spacecraft will then haul the boulder to lunar orbit, where astronauts can visit the space rock.
Orion flew for the first time in December 2014, launching atop a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket on an uncrewed mission to Earth orbit and back. SLS should be ready to fly in 2018; the rocket's maiden launch is scheduled for that year and will send an uncrewed Orion on a mission around the moon. [Photos: NASA's 1st Orion Spacecraft Test Flight]
Astronauts will fly on an Orion/SLS mission for the first time in 2021, if all goes according to plan. A crewed mission to visit the captured asteroid boulder will follow in the mid-2020s, NASA officials have said.
The decision to shift from the moon to an asteroid (and, ultimately, to an asteroid boulder) as the near-term destination for NASA astronauts has been controversial. Last year, for example, the U.S. House of Representatives' Appropriations Committee proposed denying funding to ARM.
The change has also made collaboration with commercial and international partners more difficult, said Scott Pace, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University. NASA officials have stressed that such collaboration is a key priority of the larger "Journey to Mars" project.
"Mars is so difficult and so challenging that it wasn't really possible for people to feel they could do something" in cooperation with NASA, Pace told Space.com. "You could talk about commercial cargo delivery to the moon. You couldn't really talk about commercial cargo delivery to Mars."
The rise of private spaceflight
Commercial spaceflight has taken off during the Obama presidency. For example, two different American companies, SpaceX and Orbital ATK, are now flying uncrewed resupply missions to the ISS for NASA.
In addition, SpaceX and Boeing hold multibillion-dollar contracts to fly NASA astronauts to and from the orbiting lab, and both companies should start doing so in the next year or two, NASA officials have said. (NASA has been dependent on Russia to provide such taxi services since the retirement of the space shuttle fleet in July 2011, a move set in motion by President George W. Bush in 2004.)
Such public-private cooperation kicked off with the announcement of NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program in January 2006. But it was "turbocharged" under the Obama administration, which made the development of private crew-carrying vehicles a priority, said Casey Dreier, director of space policy at the nonprofit Planetary Society.
"That, to me, is the biggest legacy [of the Obama administration] — fully embracing the potential of commercial launch capabilities, and really, really making that a priority, and fighting for it against a lot of opposition from Congress," Dreier told Space.com. "I don't think commercial crew was fully funded at NASA until 2015."
Other developments under Obama's watch have been key as well, said Eric Stallmer, president of the nonprofit Commercial Spaceflight Federation. He cited extending the life of the International Space Station through at least 2024 and the confirmation that U.S. companies can own the resources they mine from asteroids and other celestial objects.
Both of these provisions are part of the Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act, which the House of Representatives passed and President Obama signed in late 2015.
Lots of things are happening in private spaceflight beyond NASA-funded ISS cargo and crew missions. Blue Origin, the company founded by Amazon.com chief Jeff Bezos, has said it's nearly ready to fly paying customers to and from suborbital space, for example. Virgin Galactic is making strides toward the same goal.
Some of these developments would probably have occurred no matter who was in the White House, because private spaceflight was already on the rise, Stallmer said. (More venture-capital money was invested in commercial spaceflight in 2015 than in the previous 10 years combined, he said.) But the Obama administration deserves credit for creating an environment in which such advances can take place, Stallmer added.
"I think it's safe to say that Obama did foster a burgeoning private space sector," he said. "I think they were very cooperative with the private and commercial space entities that are out there." [The Biggest Space Missions to Watch in 2017]
Trump, riding Obama's coattails into space has he had been riding Obama's economy, stock market rise and declining unemployment, until recently.
By Mike Wall 20 January 2017
https://www.space.com/35394-president-obama-s...egacy.html
President Obama at KSC
President Barack Obama waves farewell after speaking at the NASA Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. on April 15, 2010.
(Image: © NASA/Bill Ingalls)
A lot has changed in the fields of spaceflight and exploration since President Barack Obama came to power eight years ago.
The moon is no longer an official destination for NASA astronauts, for example, and the commercial spaceflight industry has boomed to the point that multiple private spaceships are flying cargo to the International Space Station (ISS) — and two should soon start ferrying crew to and from the station as well.
President Obama doesn't deserve all the credit (or blame, depending on your viewpoint) for such shifts, of course, but they will be part of his legacy. Here's Space.com's admittedly premature look at how space fans may remember the 44th president. [Gallery: President Obama and NASA]
Don't fly me to the moon
When President Obama took office in January 2009, NASA was working to get astronauts to the moon by 2020, as part of George W. Bush's Constellation program. Constellation envisioned using the moon as a stepping stone to Mars, though the program didn't map out any crewed Red Planet missions in detail.
In May 2009, the Obama administration ordered an independent review of the agency's human-spaceflight plans, which came to be known as the Augustine Commission (after the review committee's chairman, former Lockheed Martin CEO Norm Augustine). The commission's final report, published in October 2009, deemed Constellation to be significantly over budget and behind schedule.
As a result, in 2010, President Obama cancelled the five-year-old program, instructing NASA to instead get astronauts to a near-Earth asteroid by 2025, and then on to the vicinity of Mars by the mid-2030s.
To make all this happen, the agency is developing the Orion crew capsule (a Constellation holdover) and a gigantic new rocket called the Space Launch System (SLS). NASA has also devised the Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM), which aims to pluck a boulder off of an asteroid using a robotic probe. This spacecraft will then haul the boulder to lunar orbit, where astronauts can visit the space rock.
Orion flew for the first time in December 2014, launching atop a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket on an uncrewed mission to Earth orbit and back. SLS should be ready to fly in 2018; the rocket's maiden launch is scheduled for that year and will send an uncrewed Orion on a mission around the moon. [Photos: NASA's 1st Orion Spacecraft Test Flight]
Astronauts will fly on an Orion/SLS mission for the first time in 2021, if all goes according to plan. A crewed mission to visit the captured asteroid boulder will follow in the mid-2020s, NASA officials have said.
The decision to shift from the moon to an asteroid (and, ultimately, to an asteroid boulder) as the near-term destination for NASA astronauts has been controversial. Last year, for example, the U.S. House of Representatives' Appropriations Committee proposed denying funding to ARM.
The change has also made collaboration with commercial and international partners more difficult, said Scott Pace, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University. NASA officials have stressed that such collaboration is a key priority of the larger "Journey to Mars" project.
"Mars is so difficult and so challenging that it wasn't really possible for people to feel they could do something" in cooperation with NASA, Pace told Space.com. "You could talk about commercial cargo delivery to the moon. You couldn't really talk about commercial cargo delivery to Mars."
The rise of private spaceflight
Commercial spaceflight has taken off during the Obama presidency. For example, two different American companies, SpaceX and Orbital ATK, are now flying uncrewed resupply missions to the ISS for NASA.
In addition, SpaceX and Boeing hold multibillion-dollar contracts to fly NASA astronauts to and from the orbiting lab, and both companies should start doing so in the next year or two, NASA officials have said. (NASA has been dependent on Russia to provide such taxi services since the retirement of the space shuttle fleet in July 2011, a move set in motion by President George W. Bush in 2004.)
Such public-private cooperation kicked off with the announcement of NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program in January 2006. But it was "turbocharged" under the Obama administration, which made the development of private crew-carrying vehicles a priority, said Casey Dreier, director of space policy at the nonprofit Planetary Society.
"That, to me, is the biggest legacy [of the Obama administration] — fully embracing the potential of commercial launch capabilities, and really, really making that a priority, and fighting for it against a lot of opposition from Congress," Dreier told Space.com. "I don't think commercial crew was fully funded at NASA until 2015."
Other developments under Obama's watch have been key as well, said Eric Stallmer, president of the nonprofit Commercial Spaceflight Federation. He cited extending the life of the International Space Station through at least 2024 and the confirmation that U.S. companies can own the resources they mine from asteroids and other celestial objects.
Both of these provisions are part of the Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act, which the House of Representatives passed and President Obama signed in late 2015.
Lots of things are happening in private spaceflight beyond NASA-funded ISS cargo and crew missions. Blue Origin, the company founded by Amazon.com chief Jeff Bezos, has said it's nearly ready to fly paying customers to and from suborbital space, for example. Virgin Galactic is making strides toward the same goal.
Some of these developments would probably have occurred no matter who was in the White House, because private spaceflight was already on the rise, Stallmer said. (More venture-capital money was invested in commercial spaceflight in 2015 than in the previous 10 years combined, he said.) But the Obama administration deserves credit for creating an environment in which such advances can take place, Stallmer added.
"I think it's safe to say that Obama did foster a burgeoning private space sector," he said. "I think they were very cooperative with the private and commercial space entities that are out there." [The Biggest Space Missions to Watch in 2017]
