It is actually worse than this article makes it seem. Congress actually decided the program was in danger of a schedule slip, so they cut the funds so as to guarantee a schedule slip.
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The reason is solidly rooted in politics. Marshall Flight Center has traditionally run the rocketry program for NASA. With the retirement of the Shuttle, Marshall is not left with much. Starting in the 1980s, Marshall tried to come up with a shuttle replacement. Most never made it off the drawing board. Those that did, faced schedule slips until they were killed. Some were killed for baffling reasons, like DC-X and Aerostar. Now both of those ran into problems, but the problems were fixable and were even fixed shortly after getting the axe.
Marshall then developed the Constellation program, which was supposed to re-use as much shuttle technology as possible, reducing risk. Despite that, its schedule was slipping. Slipping to the point where man-rated launches wouldn't occur until 2020. Or later. By this time, SpaceX had a successful launch and a reasonable schedule to get to man-rated launches and even a heavy lifter before that time. ULA, working with Boeing, had a schedule for man-rated launches before then, too. Constellation did have one thing the others hadn't talked about, deep space capability. So Constellation was killed but the Orion capsule, which is supposed to be deep space capable, was kept.
So Marshall cobbled together yet another shuttle-derived program, space launch system or SLS. Which started late and, predictably, has had schedule slips. Since it is abundantly clear that this is Marshall's last hurrah, Alabama congress-critters have been doing all they can to stall SpaceX and ULA/Boeing from man-rated launches. Even if it means shoveling more billions at the Russians.
There were mis-steps along the way. Congress' reluctance to fund NASA has always been a problem. I still believe that Constellation's real goal was to finally get NASA shut down. It was overly ambitious, didn't really have a defined mission and was front-loaded with a lot of studies and designs that produced a lot of contracts and nothing in the way of hardware until after Bush was to leave office.
I still think Aerostar should be revisited. It was killed because they had trouble fabricating one of the tanks. Using carbon fiber for such an application was in its infancy at the time. It is much more mature now. And, in fact, a tank has been fabricated and tested. Much of the rest of the craft had been fabricated and tested by the time they killed it. Because the Aerostar is a single-stage to orbit and is completely re-usable. None of the SLS is re-usable. In the real world, SLS is going to have to compete with SpaceX, which is very close to partial re-usability, and ULA, which plans on recovering engine clusters by parachute, which is the high dollar part of a rocket stage. |
