Ares I-X lifts off from the Cape.

NASA order may force shutdown of Constellation moon-rocket program
Orlando Sentinel

In a surprise move, NASA has told the major contractors working on its troubled Constellation moon rocket program that they are in violation of federal spending rules — and must immediately cut back work by nearly $1 billion to get into compliance. As many as 5,000 jobs from Utah to Florida are expected to be lost over the next month.

The effect of the directive, which went out to contractors earlier this week and which Congress was told about on Wednesday, may accomplish something that President Barack Obama has sought since February: killing Constellation’s system of rockets, capsules and lunar landers that has already cost at least $9 billion to date….

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Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center

The Houston Chronicle reports that the White House and Congress are beginning to get down the hard business of negotiations on NASA’s new budget:

The political potshots have subsided and the serious horse-trading lies ahead as the White House and Congress grind toward a compromise to salvage parts of the NASA moon program crucial to Houston’s Johnson Space Center. The legislative end-game is up in the air, as is any clear date to declare success or defeat. But the mood surrounding the space program in the nation’s capital has shifted from seizing partisan advantage to pursuing at least some political pragmatism….

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Space shuttle Atlantis lands at Edwards Air Force Base in California, completing the final servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. Image Credit: NASA/Carla Thomas

Help sought for NASA workers: Officials request millions to help staff who could lose jobs in cutbacks of programs
Houston Chronicle

Job transition assistance is on its way to Houston-area aerospace workers facing potential job losses from the retirement of NASA’s shuttle fleet and threatened cancellation of the moon program, the Texas Workforce Commission said on Friday.

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Bob Zubrin is from Mars and Paul Spudis is from Luna, but there’s one thing they both agree on: NASA’s new human spaceflight policy sucks.

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Delivering ISDC’s luncheon speech on Friday, XCOR CEO and Augustine Committee member Jeff Greason expressed his exasperation over the policy debate going on in Congress, his hope that Congress would kill an unaffordable Constellation program, and gave some prescriptions for how the United States should move ahead in exploring the cosmos.

A compilation of Tweets from Jeff Foust (@jeff_foust) and the FAA’s Ken Davidian (@cswicki):

Augustine Committee & Congressional Debate

• Greason, talking about Augustine Cmte: to my surprise some people paid attention to the report this time. (@jeff_foust)
• Greason: utterly dismayed by space policy debate so far. Need discussion based on facts, but that is not happening in Congress. (@jeff_foust)
• The discussion to date is “baby wants his rattle back.” The budget for Constellation was just made up. (@cswiki)
  

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NASA's Jeff Hanley (Photo Credit: NASA)

SENATE COMMERCE, SCIENCE AND TRANSPORTATION COMMITTEE
PRESS RELEASE

Leaders of the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, Chairman John D. (Jay) Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) and Ranking Member Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), today called for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Inspector General to launch an investigation into the sudden removal of the Constellation program manager.

The full text of the May 27 letter to NASA Inspector General Paul Martin from Senators Hutchison and Rockefeller is below.

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Nearly four months after it was unveiled, President Obama’s plan for NASA continues to befuddle and bewilder key members of Congress, including representatives of his own party.

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Ares I-X lifts off from the Cape.

Ambitious Ares test flight plan proposed for HLV demonstrations
NASASpaceflight.com

A plan has been created for the continued use of Ares via a series of test flights, ultimately leading up to a Heavy Lift Vehicle (HLV) program in the second half of this decade. Appearing to bank on major changes being negotiated by Congress in NASA’s FY2011 budget proposal, the plan would result in three Ares I test flights being conducted by the end of 2014…

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During a hearing this morning in Washington, Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby fired a blast at the White House and NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, who appeared in person to testify. In it, the Republican senator accuses the White House of surrendering America’s lead in space to the Chinese, Russians and Indians by canceling the Constellation program and trying to squander money on an unproven commercial market that will fail to deliver.

“The proposed NASA budget abandons most of Constellation in favor of an unproven commercial option that will devastate any goal the United States has in exploring beyond low earth orbit. The President’s announcement of his new plan last week merely replaced one visionless plan with another. It is clear that the Administration, and more specifically you, Mr. Administrator, do not believe that American leadership in human space flight is a priority worth fighting for,” Shelby said.

The Senator has been fiercely protective of NASA Marshal Space Flight Center, which is located in Alabama and has a lead role in the Ares rocket programs that the Obama Administration wants to cancel.

You can read his full remarks after the break.

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NASA Administrator Charles Bolden spoke to the Washington Business Roundtable on Tuesday. He gave a strong defense of the Obama Administration’s proposed human spaceflight policy. Some highlights:

At the highest level, the President and his staff as well as my NASA senior leadership team closely reviewed the Augustine Committee report, and they came to the same realization the Committee concluded: The Constellation program was on an unsustainable trajectory. If we continued on our current course, at best we would have ended up flying a handful of astronauts to the moon sometime after 2030. But to accomplish even that limited task, we would have had to make even deeper cuts to the other parts of NASA’s budget, terminating support of the ISS early and decimating our science and aeronautics efforts. Further, we would have had no money to advance the state of the art in any of the technology areas that we need to enable us to do new things in space – no money to lower the cost of access to space, no money for closed-loop life support, no money for advanced propulsion technology, no money for radiation protection. The President recognized that what was truly needed for beyond LEO exploration was game-changing technologies; making the fundamental investments that will provide the foundation for the next half-century of American leadership in space exploration. In doing so, the President put forward what I believe to be the most authentically visionary policy for real human space exploration that we have ever had.

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