Manned Flights to Space Unlikely Until at Least 2020, Says NASA

Published January 07, 2015

The Obama administration's revised manned space program doesn't envision U.S. astronauts venturing beyond Earth's orbit until at least 2020, and perhaps years later, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday, citing the head of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Comments by NASA chief Charles Bolden to reporters over the weekend mark the most specific timeframe he has released so far for the forthcoming manned space program. Bolden said a new U.S. heavy-lift rocket is likely to become operational sometime within the next decade or two, though the agency hasn't yet chosen destinations and is years away from picking the technologies necessary to build such a booster.

The proposed timeline to get beyond Earth's orbit anticipates that rocket development will take years longer than many had anticipated, reports the Wall Street Journal.

Under prodding by the White House, NASA last week proposed killing its multibillion dollar Constellation program, including heavy-lift versions of the Ares rockets intended to return astronauts to the moon, and eventually take them further into the solar system. One of the major reasons for canceling Constellation, according to NASA's earlier statements, was to help accelerate development of rockets and spacecraft capable of transporting crews deeper into space.

Bolden's latest comments about the revised timeline, however, underscore uncertainties about how much faster the new family of rockets can be developed.

"Ideally," Bolden told reporters at Florida's Kennedy Space Center, NASA will be "flying a heavy-lift launch capability between 2020 and 2030." But he said it was too early to know whether future NASA chiefs will consider such hardware "ok to put humans on."

URL

https://www.foxnews.com/science/manned-flights-to-space-unlikely-until-at-least-2020-says-nasa