[FPSPACE] A very interesting story!

[Peter Pesavento]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/bloomberg/20090102/pl_bloomberg/aovrno0oj41g

 

It appears that the Obama Administration might want to return astronauts to
the Moon much sooner than the Chinese.

 

 

Obama Moves to Counter China With Pentagon-NASA Link

Demian McLean Demian Mclean Fri Jan 2, 3:58 pm ET 

Jan. 2 (Bloomberg) -- President-elect Barack Obama will probably tear down
long-standing barriers between the U.S.'s civilian and military space
programs to speed up a mission to the moon amid the prospect of a new space
race with China. 

Obama's transition team is considering a collaboration between the Defense
Department and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration because
military rockets may be cheaper and ready sooner than the space agency's
planned launch vehicle, which isn't slated to fly until 2015, according to
people who've discussed the idea with the Obama team. 

The potential change comes as Pentagon concerns are rising over China's
space ambitions because of what is perceived as an eventual threat to U.S.
defense satellites, the lofty battlefield eyes of the military. 

"The Obama administration will have all those issues on the table," said
Neal Lane, who served as President Bill Clinton's science adviser and wrote
recently that Obama must make early decisions critical to retaining U.S.
space dominance. "The foreign affairs and national security implications
have to be considered." 

China, which destroyed one of its aging satellites in a surprise missile
test in 2007, is making strides in its spaceflight program. The military-run
effort carried out a first spacewalk in September and aims to land a robotic
rover on the moon in 2012, with a human mission several years later. 

A Level of Proficiency 

"If China puts a man on the moon, that in itself isn't necessarily a threat
to the U.S.," said Dean Cheng, a senior Asia analyst with CNA Corp., an
Alexandria, Virginia-based national-security research firm. "But it would
suggest that China had reached a level of proficiency in space comparable to
that of the United States." 

Obama has said the Pentagon's space program -- which spent about $22 billion
in fiscal year 2008, almost a third more than NASA's budget -- could be
tapped to speed the civilian agency toward its goals as the recession
pressures federal spending. 

NASA faces a five-year gap between the retirement of the space shuttle in
2010 and the first launch of Orion, the six- person craft that will carry
astronauts to the International Space Station and eventually the moon. Obama
has said he would like to narrow that gap, during which the U.S. will pay
Russia to ferry astronauts to the station. 

NASA Resistance 

The Obama team has asked NASA officials about the costs and savings of
scrapping the agency's new Ares I rocket, which is being developed by
Chicago-based Boeing Co. and Minneapolis- based Alliant Techsystems Inc. 

NASA chief Michael Griffin opposes the idea and told Obama's transition team
leader, Lori Garver, that her colleagues lack the engineering background to
evaluate rocket options, agency spokesman Chris Shank said. 

"The NASA review team is just asking questions; no decisions have been
made," said Nick Shapiro, a transition spokesman for Obama. The team will
pass its finding on to presidential appointees, said Shapiro. 

At the Pentagon, there may be support for combining launch vehicles. While
NASA hasn't recently approached the Pentagon about using its Delta IV and
Atlas V rockets, building them for manned missions could allow for cost
sharing, said Steven Huybrechts, the director of space programs and policy
in the office of Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who is staying on into the
new administration. 

The Delta IV and Atlas V are built by United Launch Alliance, a joint
venture of Boeing and Bethesda, Maryland-based Lockheed Martin Corp., and
typically are used to carry satellites. 

Already Developed 

"No one really has a firm idea what NASA's cost savings might be, but the
military's launch vehicles are basically developed," said John Logsdon, a
policy expert at Washington's National Air and Space Museum who has
conferred with Obama's transition advisers. "You don't have to build them
from scratch." 

Meanwhile, Chinese state-owned companies already are assembling heavy-lift
rockets that could reach the moon, with a first launch scheduled for 2013.
All that would be left to build for a manned mission is an Apollo-style
lunar lander, said Griffin, who visited the Chinese space program in 2006. 

Moon Landing 

Griffin said in July that he believes China will be able to put people on
the moon before the U.S. goes back in 2020. The last Apollo mission left the
lunar surface in 1972. 

"The moon landing is an extremely challenging and sophisticated task, and it
is also a strategically important technological field," Wang Zhaoyao, a
spokesman for China's space program, said in September, according to the
state-run Xinhua news agency. 

China plans to dock two spacecraft in orbit in 2010, a skill required for a
lunar mission. 

"An automated rendezvous does all sorts of things for your missile accuracy
and anti-satellite programs," said John Sheldon, a visiting professor of
advanced air and space studies at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama. "The
manned effort is about prestige, but it's also a good way of testing
technologies that have defense applications." 

China's investments in anti-satellite warfare and in "cyberwarfare,"
ballistic missiles and other weaponry "could threaten the United States'
primary means to project its power and help its allies in the Pacific:
bases, air and sea assets, and the networks that support them," Gates wrote
in the current issue of Foreign Affairs magazine. 

Anti-Satellite Warfare 

China is designing satellites that, once launched, could catch up with and
destroy U.S. spy and communication satellites, said a Nov. 20 report to
Congress from the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.
China's State Council Information Office declined to comment on the nation's
anti- satellite or manned programs. 

To boost cooperation between NASA and the Pentagon, Obama has promised to
revive the National Aeronautics and Space Council, which oversaw the entire
space arena for four presidents, most actively from 1958 to 1973. 

The move would build ties between agencies with different cultures and
agendas. 

"Whether such cooperation would succeed remains to be seen," said Scott
Pace, a former NASA official who heads the Washington-based Space Policy
Institute. "But the questions are exactly the ones the Obama team needs to
ask." 

 

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