Because of the coming retiring of NASA's Space Shuttle in the year 2010, the program has been researching different vehicles to send our astronauts into space. There have been many possibilities introduced in the last twenty years in aerospace development. There are even some private investors learning how to send their own aircraft into space.
Regardless of any decisions made by NASA
on how to pursue their future transports, it will be at least five years before NASA sends its own
ships into space. For that time it will be necessary for our astronauts to rely on the Russians
to get to and from the Internation Space Station.
Criticism of the Space Shuttle: According to the director of NASA, who in 2005 testified before the Senate Appropriations Committee, the space shuttle is inherently flawed. The main concern within the scientific and political community is that the space shuttle does not have an escape system for its crew. Since it began flying, the space shuttle program has been criticized for failing to achieve its promised cost and utility goals, as well as design cost effective methods of transportation, and fix safety issues. After both the Challenger and Columbia disasters, investigation committees formed found serious problems with the program and NASA management.
Retirement: The shuttle program is scheduled for mandatory retirement in 2010. Before its retirement, the shuttle will be used primarily to finish assembling the space station. In October, President Bush signed the NASA Authorization Act of 2008 in October, which will give NASA funding for one additional mission to deliver science experiments to the station. The shuttle’s planned successor is Project Constellation with its Ares I and Ares V launch vehicles and the Orion Spacecraft, although these STS will most likely not be ready until 2014. If this is the case, for four years the US will have no way to launch crews into orbit, unless they purchase Russian launches for NASA crews, which may or may not be politically viable. Information on the last flights of the Space Shuttle can be found here.
The following is only a selection of the possibilities the United States has to rely on after the retirement of the Space Shuttle.
The new spacecraft is similar to the Apollo spacecrafts in materials and design, but is significantly larger, with more than 2.5 times the volume of the Apollo capsule in the interior. Orion will be able to accommodate four passengers to the moon, or six to the International Space Station. Orion will also have improved technologically from the Space Shuttle and Apollo, including improved launch vehicles and a launch abort system.
NASA’s new Ares I rocket will become America’s next-generation space transportation system to bring our astronauts into Earth Orbit. NASA wanted to create a safe, reliable, and cost effective launch system that will take crewed missions to the ISS, moon, and eventually deeper places into the solar system like Mars. While test launches will begin next year, the first crewed missions to the space station are scheduled for 2015 and finally the moon in 2020. The Ares I rocket will carry the Orion crew exploration vehicle with its 4 to 6 astronauts or cargo. The Ares I can be broken up into two stages. First stage is the main rocket booster and is 165 feet in length. The shuttle currently uses two, four segment reusable solid rocket boosters with motors but the Ares I will fire on a single five segment solid rocket booster including a parachute recovery system. During launch, the first stage burns for just over 2 minutes before it separates at a height of 36 miles above Earth at a speed of Mach 4.8. From there the reusable booster separates and the upper stage's J-2X engine ignites until a height of 80 miles. Finally the upper stage separates and Orion’s service module propulsion system completes the trip to a circular orbit of 185 miles above Earth.
More information about the Ares I rocket can be found on NASA's webpage on the Ares I.
NASA and the Russian Space Program are only two of many possible solutions to expand our accessability into space. Challenges have been proposed to many independent, private organizations to compete for the most efficient, cheapest, and most desirable space transport vehicles to use in the future.
With NASA’s space shuttle set to retire in 2010, positive diplomatic relations with Russia are at a premium. The flight plan will ground the United States from flying astronauts to the International Space Station until the new Orion project is completed in 2015. Russian supply ships will pick up the burden of taxiing astronauts of all nations to the International Space Station. Given the current state of Russian leadership and foreign policy which flashes signs of returning to Cold War politics, losing autonomy of mobility handcuffs American diplomatic efforts on other fronts.
After the shuttle retires in 2010, space travel for the United States will be in the hands of private companies if they do not want to use Russia as their sole transportation to the International Space Station. One of the major companies up for the challenge is Space Exploration Technologies, also known as SpaceX. They were awarded $278 million from the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services, created by NASA to encourage the development of an alternative way for the US to get to space at a lower cost. SpaceX has been using this money to create a spacecraft called the Dragon which will be used to transport cargo and/or passengers. This will be launched into space using a launch vehicle called the Falcon 9, which SpaceX has also been creating. Since the main mission of SpaceX is to provide maximum reliability, The Falcon 9 is comprised of 9 Merlin engines put together. That way if any engine fails at any point during the mission, the vehicle will still be able to run and complete what it started. Three cargo demonstrations are already scheduled to happen 2009 and early 2010. If they do not succeed, the US may very well have to depend on Russia as the sole transportation to the ISS.
For more information on the progress of SpaceX’s efforts, go to the SpaceX website.
Above is a picture of the Dragon space vehicle which astronauts will use to dock with the International Space Station as well as to return safely to Earth. Below is a picture of the Falcon 9 rocket, which will launch the astronauts and the Dragon into orbit around the Earth. 