Trump Promised Manned Spaceflights From the U.S. This Year. Will It Actually Happen?

Great news from President Trump’s State of the Union speech: America is back in the space game! As the President honored Apollo 11 moonwalker Buzz Aldrin, who was seated in the visitor’s gallery, he also had this important news to report: “This year, American astronauts will go back to space on American rockets.” It’s pretty hard to find any wiggle room in that promise — except that Presidents could have said the same thing in 2016, 2017 and 2018 too, and it didn’t happen. Don’t rule it out for 2019, but don’t rule it in, either. Especially since, less than 24 hours after Trump’s speech, NASA announced yet more delays in this year’s planned launches. The long-promised goal of NASA’s Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) program has been to move away from the era in which NASA would essentially order up precisely the rocket it wanted and then contract the job out to one of the major aerospace companies. Instead, the agency would offer various companies R&D money to design their own commercial vehicles, and then lease space on whatever they build. It’s like the difference between ordering a bespoke suit or buying off the rack—and the rack is always cheaper. Except when it’s not. The CCDev program began in 2010, one year before the space shuttle was retired, with the hope of bringing along next-generation vehicles quickly and limiting the time the U.S. would be dependent on Russia’...
Source: TIME: Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Uncategorized onetime space Source Type: news