Are Orion and HLV Budgets and Schedules Realistic?
NASA's Orion spacecraft
Senate compromise may be setting up NASA for another failure
Orlando Sentinel
But even as members of the Senate Appropriations Committee congratulated one another, top NASA officials and space analysts warned that the government rocket created by the compromise eventually could end up in NASA’s scrap heap alongside other abandoned replacements for the space shuttle.
The plan orders NASA to build a heavy-lift rocket and capsule capable of reaching the International Space Station by 2016. But it budgets less money for the new spacecraft — about $11 billion during three years, with $3 billion next year — than what the troubled Constellation program would have received. That — plus the short deadline — has set off alarms.
Days before the compromise was announced, NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden and Deputy Administrator Lori Garver told its two champions — U.S. Sens. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., and Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas — that NASA could not finish the proposed new rocket before 2020, according to three sources present at the meetings.
When asked about the conversation, Nelson spokesman Dan McLaughlin said the NASA officials were responding to lower dollar figures than what Congress ultimately approved. NASA spokesman Michael Cabbage said it “would not be appropriate to discuss private conversations between NASA and members of Congress.”
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