The recent announcements by the White House and the NASA administration were no surprise to insiders. The Ares/Constellation program is dead!

Size comparison between Saturn V, Space Shuttle, Ares I, IV and V

Privately, I’ve been contending this for many months: the solid fuel design based on Space Shuttle booster technology is rife with engineering problems, which is why the program was running late. NASA has been tight lipped about the scale of these problems, which is understandable. But enough has been leaked to call the technical and financial feasibility into question.

The other Ares-problems were weight issues, cost overruns, uncertain long-term funding and perhaps most importantly — given the allocated funds, everything was taking way too long.

So what does the end of Constellation mean?

First, without a man-rated heavy lift launcher (Ares V), NASA’s half-baked plans to return astronauts on the moon are suspended. Secondly, without a man-rated lifter in the arsenal (Ares I), NASA has no way to transport astronauts to the ISS after the Space Shuttle is finally retired. (The Shuttle’s retirement has been projected for this year).

If Congress confirms this course change, we are looking at the end of an era. From the beginnings of the space program, all major U.S. space transport system have been developed by either NASA or by the military. Specific tasks were farmed out to contractors, but everything was managed from the top. On the military side, independent contractors began to take on an increasingly autonomous and commercial role. This development was not mirrored on the civilian side, where the complex Space Shuttle system, which continues to cost half of NASA’s budget just to operate for a few flights per year, prevented any fundamental restructuring. Too many people had vested interests in keeping the Shuttle program going for 30 years.

It looks as though finally, the time has now come to get NASA out of building and managing launch systems. In the future, this may be left entirely to competing commercial contractors. Several players are ready to go, and they can possibly do what NASA’s bureaucracy could not achieve: faster, better, cheaper.

Even the military, which certainly cannot claim to have achieved efficient cost control when it comes to managing such huge and expensive programs, has done a better job encouraging lower launch costs than NASA has. And this point is crucial, because the most important and most expensive part of space missions has never been the actual operating costs in space, but the cost of development and launch.

We may be looking at a new beginning!

Reinhard Kargl

Journalist and media professional currently based in Los Angeles, California. Focusing on science and technology.