Agency Already Planning What To Do With Extra $2 Billion

President-elect Barack Obama put a scare into residents of Florida's Space Coast early in his presidential campaign, when he talked of a five-year delay in NASA's Constellation project to allow increased federal funding for education. By the end of the campaign, he'd done a 180-degree turn, and promised an extra $2 billion to shorten the gap between the retirement of the US shuttle fleet and mission-readiness for the Ares I rocket and Orion crew capsule.

Now -- while the Obama transition team faces a seemingly impossible balancing act between declining tax revenues on one side, and the costs of new programs and industry bailouts on the other -- NASA appears to be planning based on Obama's campaign promise.

Florida Today quotes sources at NASA in reporting the extra money would allow an extra Ares 1 test flight and accelerate a crucial engine-development project, enabling NASA to debut Constellation in early 2014 -- a year ahead of schedule. That would help calm strategic concerns of many in Congress who are uncomfortable with relying on the Russians for all transportation of crews and supplies to the International Space Station, a $100 billion outpost paid for largely by the US.

"We are ready to tackle head-on the task of narrowing the gap between shuttle retirement and Ares-Orion deployment -- if the newly elected nation's policymakers want us to do that, NASA Administrator Mike Griffin told the paper.

Among the mileposts NASA projects during an accelerated development program could be adding an Ares I high-altitude abort test in 2012, combined with a test of a five-segment solid rocket booster in the first stage; and a quicker development pace for the J2X engine, which will power the second stage of the Ares I.

NASA could also start earlier procurement of long lead-time parts.

At least one program supplier says it's ready for the fast-track. ATK builds the primary rocket motor for the Orion escape system. Company VP and former astronaut Charlie Precourt notes, "It's going to be funding-dependent, but it's a reasonable approach."

"Funding dependent." Be prepared to hear that phrase a bunch during 2009.

FMI: www.nasa.gov