Held hostage by more earthly considerations

Published on Thursday 21 July 2011 16:23

WITH the retirement of the space shuttle fleet, Nasa is facing one of the biggest challenges in its 53-year history.

It no longer has a spacecraft proved capable of lifting its own astronauts into orbit and will be paying Russia for seats aboard Soyuz flights to the international space station for the next three years at least.

However, a bigger question for the agency is the future direction of space exploration.

As accomplished a vehicle as the shuttle orbiters were, they were only ever designed to fly in lower earth orbit, leading to criticism that Nasa was moving backwards after the highs of the Apollo-era moon landings.

While Charlie Bolden, the Nasa administrator, was in defiant mood yesterday, promising to send post-shuttle American astronauts "where we've never been before", the reality is that he has no rocket to do it with, and there is seemingly little will in the US Congress to give him the funds he needs to get one built.

Earlier this month, the House appropriations committee announced it was seeking to slash Nasa's annual budget by $1.9 billion, more than 10 per cent, and President Barack Obama has been accused of holding up approval for the agency to build a heavy-lift rocket, the so-called Space Launch System (SLS).

One high profile critic is Michael Griffin, Major Bolden's immediate predecessor, who believes America's space ambitions are being held to ransom by politics.

"In my opinion, Nasa's SLS programme is stalled because the White House doesn't really want to do it," he told the Huntsville Times, which serves the Alabama town where Nasa rockets are constructed. "They will do everything possible to prevent it from occurring."

The go-ahead for the SLS will be crucial to whether the US can retain its 50-year reputation as the undisputed leader in human spaceflight or surrender to another space-faring nation with lunar ambitions of its own, particularly China, which has sent two unmanned orbiters to the moon.

Already, up to 10,000 skilled workers have been lost to redundancy at the Kennedy Space Center.

On the plus side, Nasa is moving ahead in a partnership with Boeing to build a multi-purpose crew vehicle, designed to be capable of deep space voyages. Formerly known as Orion, the capsule would utilise a heavy-lift rocket to sustain a crew of four for up to 21 days.