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Obama plots a shift to private-sector space travel
Ferbruary 01, 2010

Washington is expected to announce billions of dollars in space program funding Monday, but instead of going directly to NASA, the funds will likely flow to the private sector. In what is being called a major policy shift, the Obama administration hopes that the funding boost will spur private companies into building a new generation of space craft.

The funding allocations suggest that Washington will lean more heavily on private companies to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station and beyond in the years to come.

Given that NASA has been flying to space for nearly five decades, the Obama administration believes that the space agency needs to expand its repertoire and begin operating outside its comfort zone. Thus, by getting private companies to take care of what's considered the grunt work of space travel, NASA will then be freed up to concentrate on long-haul voyages and extraterrestrial exploration.

According to some reports, U.S. President Barack Obama will request a funding boost of US$5.9 billion over the next five years, much of which is intended for private companies. The shift represents a drastic realignment from President George W. Bush's ambitious goals to take the U.S. back to the moon and even Mars.

The shift also suggests that Obama intends to cancel a plan to build new Orion crew capsules and their Ares rocket vehicles, which were intended to replace the shuttle program, which is ending this year. The Ares plan is still several years off, but it has already cost about $9 billion. While the private sector plan would be guided by NASA, the agency would also be the main customer, making the plan resemble a type of interplanetary taxi service.

The U.S. used a similar approach when it outsourced astronaut transport to Russia after the Space Shuttle Columbia broke up as it descended back to earth in 2003. However, Columbia's crash underlined the continued difficulty of space travel, and some critics are concerned that outsourcing could have dire consequences.

"Asking the private sector to go from nothing to being the principal ferrying agent into low earth orbit in very small span of years just doesn't strike me as a good plan," said Paul Delaney, an astronomer at Toronto's York University.

Source :- http://www.ctv.ca