Having curtailed its lunar program, the United States announced to the world: it is too early for man to strive for other planets
The creator of the first Vostok spacecraft, Konstantin Feoktistov, has come a long way from an ardent enthusiast of manned flights to their implacable adversary. His final thoughts to the proponents of progress might seem seditious. “Man's place is on Earth. There is no sense in his presence in space, - said the famous designer in an interview with Newsweek several years ago. "Only automatic probes should be sent there." Feoktistov died last November. And just two months later, his unpopular idea suddenly found very strong allies.
“We do not know where this great journey will end,” said President Bush Jr. in 2004 as he unveiled an ambitious space exploration program. He really could not have imagined that the journey would end where it began, in the White House, and that it would happen in six years. In early February, President Obama struck the Constellation program from NASA's budget, burying plans to return to the moon and conquer Mars. All developments, on which the space agency has already spent $ 9 billion, will be discontinued. Another $ 2 billion will be paid as penalties to corporations that participated in the project. Shame, disaster - Obama's opponents in Congress are indignant. “If Constellation is closed, human space travel is likely to end,” says Congressman Pete Olson. He and his supporters are trying to argue with the president, but their chances are slim.
On the other hand, Russia seems to have been looking forward to Obama's decision. Roscosmos immediately announced that Washington's decision is in full agreement with the "Russian vision of the prospects for space activities." Prospects actually look vague: both the United States and Russia are going to return to the issue of flights to the Moon and Mars in 20 years. The International Space Station remains an outpost of man in space, which may stop working in 10 years. Now shuttles and "Soyuz" fly there, but very soon the shuttles will go to museums as planned, and there will be nothing to replace them. Obama is calling for help from private companies - they say, let them build ships for flights to the ISS, and then take money for the "taxi".
In order to maintain the rhythm of the space race and fly farther and farther, a political incentive is needed. It seems that it is no longer there, and manned astronautics are doomed to become part of the market. This market is unlikely to accept distant expeditions with human participation - it is simply unprofitable. If the space powers do not return to their not always justified ambitions, man will not stick his nose out of the Earth's orbit for a very long time. Someone will say that this is a tragedy. In the market, this is called disposal of non-core assets.
SOFTWARE FAILURE
Back in 2004, when George W. Bush announced his "space initiative", it was clear that the White House chose not the easiest way to raise the president's rating. NASA was set to re-send astronauts to the moon and do so 15 years later. To solve this problem, they began to develop the "Constellation" program. The project involved the creation of two devices at once. The Orion spacecraft was supposed to deliver astronauts to the moon, and the Altair lander was supposed to ensure their landing on the satellite's surface. The agency planned to launch all these devices into space with the help of two new launch vehicles - the heavy Ares I and the super-heavy Ares V.
The troubles with the developers of "Constellation" began long before Barack Obama. The budget for the program grew before our eyes, and the dates of the first tests were constantly pushed back. For all the punctures, the previous head of NASA, physicist Michael Griffin, had to take the rap, who defended the project until the very end of his powers. However, under George W. Bush it was not difficult. But he was soon replaced by a real skeptic.
First of all, Barack Obama requested a report that would summarize all the developers' failures. A special commission published it in September last year, and these conclusions did not please the supporters of "Constellation" at all. Experts did not deny the very possibility of flying to the Moon with the help of new spacecraft, but they pointed out that the program would require a sharp increase in costs. A month after the report, the first test of the prototype of the Ares I rocket took place. It was completed successfully, but it no longer mattered. Rumors began to circulate in NASA: the project would be put under the knife anyway. In February, these rumors were confirmed.
Obama has not only economic claims to the ambitious project. The presidential administration is irritated by the very concept of reviving the old lunar program. Technically, Constellation really resembles the legendary Apollo project. Obama has enough like-minded people inside NASA itself. "Such a lunar program was not needed from the very beginning," says Vyacheslav Turishchev, senior researcher at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). "Setting the same goal for designers twice is at least strange."
For about the same thing, Sozvezdiye is criticized in Russia. “I have argued more than once with the past head of NASA Griffin about the goals of the American project,” recalls RSC Energia Deputy General Designer Alexander Derechin. Returning to the moon has no scientific meaning. The next goal - a flight to Mars - will still require completely different technologies."
He cites radiation protection as an example - it was not given special attention in the "Constellation". The flight to the Red Planet will take at least 500 days, most of the time the ship will be outside the Earth's magnetic field, which means it will become very vulnerable to radiation. Derechin did not manage to argue with Griffin. All the arguments only irritated the past head of NASA. He himself believed that the new space program would allow solving a variety of tasks in the future. For example, he said, it would be possible to land not only on the moon, but also on some asteroid. This man has never done before.
“The lunar program was a well thought out and feasible project,” Scott Pace, director of the Space Policy Institute, told Newsweek. "And the developers did not rely on new technologies in order to finish everything as early as possible." Pace was head of NASA's analytics department a few years ago. Now his former colleagues will have a hard time - the agency has lost not only the lunar program. The Orion spacecraft was also supposed to deliver cargo and crews to the ISS. The aging shuttles are ending their flights this year, and now there is nothing to replace them. However, Obama is not very embarrassed by this. He is confident that private companies will be able to solve the problem.
GLORY TO THE ROBOTS
The idea to attract "private traders" was proposed by NASA managers themselves. Four years ago, the agency announced a competition among companies. Its winners received the right to full participation in space programs. They had to build their own spaceships and lease them to NASA. Michael Griffin thought this would free up resources to work on Project Constellation. He did not even suspect that he was preparing a replacement for his brainchild with his own hands.
There was no end to those wishing to participate in the competition. SpaceX reached the final with the Dragon spacecraft project and Orbital Sciences corporation with its Cygnus cargo ship. At the same time, they pledged to develop their own launch vehicles. The approximate date for the start of flights is known with certainty only in SpaceX. The founder of the company Elon Musk promises that his Dragon will begin making the first commercial flights into orbit in three years. This spacecraft will be able to deliver to the ISS not only cargo, but also the crew. And quite inexpensively - SpaceX promises to send astronauts to the station at a price of $ 20 million per person. This is 2.5 times cheaper than the Russian "tariff" for the delivery of NASA astronauts on "Soyuz".
Scott Pace considers Musk to be a great optimist. “I'm not sure the company will meet it in three years,” says the former NASA deputy director. "It is not enough to develop a spacecraft for manned flights, it is necessary to go through a complex procedure for its certification - it can easily take several more years." Alexander Derechin is also suspicious of the developments of small private companies: "So far, these are only games in space." Probably, Barack Obama also had such a thought. Immediately after the closure of the project, NASA insured itself and connected a new player to the commercial flights program - United Launch Alliance.
This venture was formed by two aerospace giants - Boeing and Lockheed Martin. Such an alliance is quite capable of creating a manned vehicle, but it still cannot replace Orion in everything. All of the spaceships that Obama has staked on will not fly beyond near-earth orbit. And this is quite logical, says Andrey Ionin, an expert at the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies. “We are talking about a serious revision of the attitude towards astronautics,” he says. "NASA is deliberately relegating manned programs to the background." In America, the expert suggests, they have finally stopped considering space as a political resource. From now on, NASA will be engaged in pure science. And here you can do just fine without people in spacesuits.
“Now there is nothing for humans to do in space,” agrees Vyacheslav Turischev from JPL. - No, for the tourists for the money - for God's sake, but from the point of view of science, this is a waste of money. Soon, most people associated with astronautics will think so, Andrei Ionin is sure. “America accounts for 75-80% of the world's space budget. When a player of this magnitude changes his plans, it cannot but affect the behavior of all other market participants,”he says.
Corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Cosmonautics Alexander Zheleznyakov fears that other space powers will also begin to wind down their manned projects, and mankind will be left with only the ISS. A few years ago, Roskosmos proudly announced the upcoming flights to Mars and the Moon. Now they prefer not to remember this.
India and China, which have not yet been ill with manned flights, is a completely different matter. “For these countries, the issue of national prestige is acute,” says Ionin. This is not the first time China has announced its views of the moon, and it is quite possible that the flag of this particular country will be planted next on its surface. If the Chinese, of course, are not overtaken by the iron astronaut. General Motors is currently working with NASA on a prototype of such a robot. “Robots are an inevitable way of developing astronautics,” Konstantin Feoktistov told Newsweek. It seems that here he was again right.
