"I suppose the end of human spaceflight does represent change, but it is certainly not the change I believe in," says Sen. Richard Shelby, R

Ares isn't in briefing on Obama's proposed NASA budget
[link to blog.al.com]
HUNTSVILLE, AL -- With the Obama administration ready to push commercial rockets as the next thing in spaceflight, NASA-watchers in Huntsville still have a big question: Is that all there is?

"Are we going to build a heavy-lift vehicle?" former Marshall Space Flight Center Director Dave King asked Thursday afternoon.

That's the question for NASA's long-term future in Huntsville, he said.

"What we've heard elicits more questions than answers," King said. "What's the mission? What does commercial mean? Eighty-eight percent of NASA spending today is through contracts."

King, who left NASA last year to take a private research job at Dynetics, spoke as more details emerged about the budget President Barack Obama will propose to Congress on Monday.

Central to the plan, an administration official said Thursday, is developing commercial rockets.

Published reports have put the cost of that commercial effort at $6 billion, which is how much the administration wants to add to NASA's budget over the next five years.

None of this becomes reality without congressional approval, and Alabama's delegation is already firing back.

"I suppose the end of human spaceflight does represent change, but it is certainly not the change I believe in," U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Tuscaloosa, said Thursday in a biting reference to the president's campaign slogan.

An administration official speaking on background said the budget will propose:

* Extending the space station until 2020 or beyond.
* Making commercial rockets - often called "space taxis" - the main means of travel between Earth and the station.
* Making the last five planned shuttle flights, extending the program into 2011 if necessary.
* Helping start a commercial spaceflight industry to provide 1,700 jobs in Florida and more elsewhere.
* Refurbishing Kennedy Space Center to assure its future as a commercial and government spaceport.

Nothing in the briefing mentioned the Constellation program or the Ares rocket under development at Marshall Space Flight Center. About 2,200 government and contractor employees work on Ares.

But a chorus of private voices in recent days have said Constellation is a budget target. Space policy scholar John Logsdon, for example, told the Associated Press Thursday that "what kills the moon mission is the decision to extend the space station." Logsdon said Constellation, the rocket program to get to the moon, "is dead."

Other published reports have said that the administration will instruct NASA to develop a new heavy-lift vehicle - a Saturn V-class rocket - for missions beyond Earth orbit.

Word on that will have to wait on the budget briefings next week, officials say.

Also Thursday, NASA supporters voiced another line of attack: national security. Retired four-star Gen. John Abizaid, keynote speaker for the Huntsville-Madison County Chamber of Commerce annual meeting Thursday, linked space and defense.

"We should not retreat from the need for healthy research and development spending to stay strong and capable in space, missile defense and other areas," Abizaid said in a press briefing. "The safety of the country, the advancement of the rest of the world, is going to depend on American technology. I think we should be very careful before we walk away from that."

"If we have an accident while we're privatizing," U.S. Rep. Parker Griffith, R-Huntsville, added Thursday, "and the only product that this company has that we've put this enormous amount of money in their trust ... and that company goes away, where are we then in space exploration? Where are we then in our national security?"