NASA unveils heavy-lift rocket
By Ledyard King and Todd Halvorson, Gannett
WASHINGTON – Key lawmakers who had criticized the Obama administration's handling of NASA's new super-sized rocket were all smiles Wednesday as the agency unveiled the project's design.
They also predicted Congress will come up with the $30 billion it will cost over the next decade or so to continue deep space exploration.
"This is a day that we have been looking forward to for a long time," Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Tex., said at a Capitol Hill news conference as she stood in front of an artist's rendering of the heavy-lift rocket. "It's really a new beginning. That's what we've been looking for since our last shuttle came down."
The Space Launch System rocket NASA unveiled Wednesday will propel astronauts to an asteroid by 2025 and to Mars the following decade, senior Obama administration officials told FLORIDA TODAY.
More than 30 stories tall, it will be the most powerful American rocket since the Saturn V that took Apollo astronauts to the moon in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Riding atop the rocket will be NASA's Orion crew capsule.
An initial unmanned test flight is slated for 2017. A first piloted shakedown cruise would follow in 2021.
Astronauts then would make preparatory voyages about once a year before heading to an asteroid in 2025.
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, who joined lawmakers at Wednesday's news conference, called the project "the cornerstone of our deep space human exploration program."
"President Obama has challenged us at NASA to be bold and dream big, and that's exactly what we're doing," he said.
But lawmakers, notably Hutchison and Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Orlando, say the administration has been too slow to release details of the heavy-
WASHINGTON — NASA previewed the next chapter in deep-space exploration Wednesday: a $30 billion rocket longer than a football field and capable of carrying astronauts to an asteroid and eventually to Mars.
It's billed as the most powerful American rocket since the Saturn V that took Apollo astronauts to the moon in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
The spaceship is slated for an unmanned test flight in 2017. A first piloted shakedown cruise would follow in 2021.
Astronauts then would make preparatory voyages about once a year before heading to an asteroid in 2025.
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, who joined lawmakers at a Capitol Hill news conference to unveil the rocket's design, called it "the cornerstone of our deep space human exploration program."
"President Obama has challenged us at NASA to be bold and dream big, and that's exactly what we're doing," he said.
The announcement comes at a pivotal time for the nation's space agency. Since the shuttle made its last flight in July, NASA has been trying to maintain its prominence as the world's leading space exploration program
Wednesday's press conference featured an artist's renderings of the rocket as it would appear on the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
"This is a day that we have been looking forward to for a long time," said Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Tex., a longtime NASA proponent whose home state includes Johnson Space Center in Houston. "It's really a new beginning."
The upbeat news conference belied recent acrimony between the administration and key lawmakers, including Hutchison, over the announcement and its timing.
Members of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, frustrated that details of the rocket's design weren't revealed earlier, subpoenaed NASA to get those details.
And Hutchison said Wednesday there are concerns that administration officials have tried to "sabotage" the project by floating cost projections close to twice the true estimates.
"We wanted this announcement months ago," said Sen. Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat who has flown aboard a shuttle. "If we could have gotten this a lot earlier, it would have given people a sense of security that we have a human space program going on."
Despite the friction, both Hutchison and Nelson said bipartisan support for NASA runs deep in Congress, Last year, lawmakers overwhelmingly adopted a law spelling out policies NASA should pursue, including the rocket unveiled Wednesday.
The heavy-lift rocket, which will launch from Kennedy Space Center, will leverage billions of dollars in investments already made in the shuttle program and the canceled Constellation return-to-the-moon project.
The White House considers the heavy-lift rocket and Orion crew capsule programs crucial parts of an affordable program that calls for:
•Extending International Space Station operations to at least 2020.
•Investing in the development of commercial spacecraft to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station and other low-Earth-orbit destinations.
"It really is critical that we pair this with the commercial crew program," a senior administration official said. "That is the way that NASA is going to have sustainable resources in the long run to be able to focus on deep space."
The plan for a heavy-lift rocket emerged in Congress last year with the bipartisan NASA Authorization Act of 2010. It called on NASA to develop a rocket that initially could carry at least 70 to 100 metric tons into orbit — about three to four times the capacity of the retired space shuttle.
The vehicle would evolve into a rocket that could haul 130 metric tons — roughly five times the capability of the shuttle and about the equivalent of the Saturn V moon rocket.
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