The Future, If You Will

I have a lot of mixed emotions about today’s launch of the ARES-1X. I’m surely excited to see a new, and one of a kind, vehicle fly, but I’m also apprehensive. It’s not clear to me that the current Constellation Program is going to be robust enough to support a broad exploration regime, not to mention that currently it won’t be able to lift humans until we’ve retired the only place that they’d be able to go.

The state of affairs for the Human Spaceflight (HSF) program is dismal right now. All we know is that things are ending, that we as a nation are surrendering capabilities, leadership and access to space. We’re told that the “gap” between the Shuttle and Orion will be short, but public opinion isn’t really behind the program right now and so it seems like that gap could grow, which is unacceptable to space advocates.

Just the same, the team of NASA engineers, technicians, contractors and scientists did a fantastic job and despite the weather delays (the one thing NASA can’t control – yet) the launch was beautiful. They have done great work despite heavy criticism about the program.

It’s too soon to say what this launch means for viability of ARES-1, there’s tons of dertailed data to pour through, but I think we can feel confident that NASA has “proof of concept”. If they decide that it worked right and that this is the way we’re going to go, what we’ll need then is leadership. We’ll need someone forcefully saying where the program is going, why it’s important that we do this, and then make sure the money is there to make it happen.

Mr. President, I’m talking to you.