Satellite Rockets May Be Used to Transport Astronauts Into Space

At a recent U.S. Senate hearing on space and aeronautics, many representatives demonstrated concern over what Russia may charge the United States for transportation of astronauts to the International Space Station, once the shuttle fleet is retired in 2010. Additionally, they are concerned about the difficult relationship that is already present between the two countries.

Alternatively, the United States is thinking about flying their astronauts on rockets that are normally used to carry their satellites, placing them in the gap between the end of the 2010 shuttle retirement and the beginning of the Ares rocket and Orion crew capsule in 2015. Otherwise, NASA’s plan is to buy Soyuz flights from Russia for the transportation of their astronauts to the ISS at an extremely high price. And a third option would be to inject thousands of dollars into NASA and speed up the Ares/Orion projects in order to shorten the gap, thousands of dollars which will be spent anyway by paying Russia to do our taxi-cab work.

The advantage of injecting money into our own system is that at least we would have something to show for it, other than fattening Russia’s pocket book. But the Atlas V and Delta IV rockets are the choice for certain individuals, such as Robert S. Dickman, retired Air Force general and executive director of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics who feels the two rockets could be made human-related at a much less price than joining hands with Russia.

Senator Bill Nelson is charge of the Senate hearing said he knows the rocket preparation will be between $500 million and $1 billion, and is quoted as saying, “The question is, where are we going to get the money?” but Dickman quickly responded by saying the same problem would be in question by accelerating Constellation. However, Eugene Kranz, ex-top NASA official for the Gemini and Apollo programs, does not seem to approve of the human rocket preparation, saying it was going to be much harder than it sounded—it is attractive on paper but requiring larger modifications than expected.

An article from New Scientist on May 9, 2008, said, “They were expensive programs that took about a year-and-a-half each to accomplish their objectives,” he said. The simplest crew capsules that NASA has used were the Mercury capsules, he said, and even those took three years to design, build, and prepare for flight.

“So I don’t see that this helps close [the] gap,” he said. “I see it as a diversion from the basic plan that you’ve got,” he said, namely having Orion and Ares replace the space shuttle and eventually also provide transportation to the Moon.