Change in Command for the Commander in Chief

At the highest level, the Obama Administration is unlikely to make major changes in space policy. For the last five years NASA has been implementing the Vision for Space Exploration, the strategy announced by President Bush that calls for humans to return to the Moon by 2020 as a step towards eventual expeditions to Mars and elsewhere in the solar system, using a new generation of launch vehicles and spacecraft collectively known as Constellation. While Obama originally suggested delaying Constellation by five years to help pay for his early-education proposals, by last August the Obama campaign issued a detailed space policy document that explicitly supported the Vision.

However, there may be room for other changes within NASA. For example, there are indications Obama’s transition team is examining replacing the Ares 1, a new rocket under development to launch the Orion manned spacecraft, with versions of versions of existing rockets used to launch government and commercial satellites. There are also proposals to extend the life of the Space Shuttle beyond 2010 to address the five-year gap in human spaceflight between the Shuttle’s retirement and Constellation’s introduction. At the same time, there’s a broad expectation that the Obama Administration will seek to reverse cuts in NASA’s aeronautics and Earth sciences programs made in recent years.

In many cases these proposed changes come at a cost, while NASA today is struggling to carry out all its missions with its current budget. Will the Obama Administration seek to increase NASA’s budget to cover these initiatives, or take money from other parts of the agency? How the new president answers those questions will greatly determine whether the Vision for Space Exploration can become reality.

Jeff Foust is the editor and publisher of The Space Review - http://www.thespacereview.com - a weekly online journal of space issues, and blogs about space policy and related topics at Space Politics - http://www.spacepolitics.com

He works as a senior analyst at Futron Corporation, an aerospace and telecommunications consulting company headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland.