Venables: Please comment on the state of U.S. space exploration after the cancellation of the Constellation program.
FORBES: NASA, Got Space Exploration? Get Goals, Get Funding and Get Uhura.
The Operations and Checkout building will soon serve as the final assembly facility for the Orion capsule during NASA's next phase of space exploration, the Constellation program.
The most obvious one was the cancellation earlier this year of NASA's Constellation program, which was intended to provide a "man-rated" expendable rocket to replace the shuttle as America's means of putting humans into space.
In any case, now that the Space Shuttle has been scuttled and the proposed Ares I Constellation program rocket has been cancelled, NASA has little near-term choice but look to private ventures for Space Station access.
The SLS rocket will incorporate technological investments from the Space Shuttle program and the Constellation program in order to take advantage of proven hardware and cutting-edge tooling and manufacturing technology that will significantly reduce development and operations costs.
It will probably direct that development of a new heavy lift launch vehicle begin much sooner based on technology already in hand, and that the crew capsule being developed for the canceled Constellation program be retained for other purposes.
Let me be clear about what is happening at NASA. The Constellation program, which is over budget and behind schedule, was intended to do what we've already done, which is return a man or woman to the moon.
Yet now that the Shuttle has been scuttled and a proposed Ares I Constellation rocket program has been canceled, other than hitching Russian taxi rides, our astronauts currently have no way to get there and back.
Thompson seems to relish in going on about how SpaceX has missed its schedule, yet fails to acknowledge slips of major government developments like the now defunct Constellation moon program and the fact that it was costing NASA an order of magnitude more money for a program that was falling many years behind schedule before it was finally cancelled.
Likewise in the Senate, some veteran GOP lawmakers have spearheaded the fight to retain NASA's umbrella manned program, dubbed Constellation, which includes Orion as a major element.
Big power marketer Constellation New Energy has a demand-response program under way.
The key turning point came in February of this year, when the administration proposed cancellation of a program inherited from the Bush years called Constellation.
It should be noted that China has broken with Europe's Galileo navigation satellite program and will loft its own 30 satellite constellation to compete with the United States, Russian and European NavSat Systems.
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