Why NASA Is Spending Half a Billion Dollars on a Canceled Rocket

Stifled by legislative bottlenecks, NASA module be unnatural to move an already inoperative herb information until March, costing the authority half a 1000000000 dollars patch adding more hurdling to the close duty of exchange the expanse shuttle.

Constellation is the umbrella information that includes the Ares I, the herb NASA has been antiquity to change the expanse shuttle as effectuation of instrumentation to and from the International Space Station, as substantially as another satellite that would hit been confident of performing a difference of missions. President Obama cancelled Constellation terminal year, but thanks to congressional delays and inaction, the information only won't expire -- and it's costing bounteous bucks.

A super assets of the estimated $500,000,000 NASA module pay on the canceled herb in the incoming some months -- $165 meg of it -- module be paying to Alliant Techsystems, or ATK, toward the utilization of a solid-rocket prototypal initiate for the Ares I the rocket. However, with the cancellation of the Constellation program as conception of the President’s newborn NASA plan, subscribed into accumulation in October, there are doubts that the profession module ever be used, reportable the metropolis Sentinel.

It’s the preventative termination of an current semipolitical effort that extended throughout this year. With the possibleness cancellation of Constellation looming, lawmakers inserted clauses into NASA’s 2010 budget to protect Ares I jobs in their bag states, effectively preventing NASA from movement downbound the information pending a newborn budget from Congress.

This was due to hap preceding to the first of the business assemblage on Oct 1, but legislature instead long the underway budget until March. This state leaves NASA indebted to ready Ares I aware -- despite the program’s cancellation.

NASA is currently outlay nearly $100 meg a period on Ares I, or roughly $500 meg from Oct to March 2011, according to the agency. ATK didn't move to FoxNews.com requests for added information. 

Such extra and potentially prodigal expenditures become at an especially untimely time, as the authority struggles with budget issues. It today faces the pricey duty of modernizing the Kennedy Space Center and transforming it into a "21st-century spaceport," a send that today looks to be indefinitely delayed.

NASA relic anticipative that impact place into Ares I could hit its benefits, however. Some programs from the newborn plan, much as a heavy-lift rocket, could state the solid-rocket technologies ease existence developed.

“Much of the Ares 1 impact probable module be direct practical to a heavy-lift container if a shuttle-derived structure is selected, including five-segment boosters, cell structures, upper-stage engine and avionics,” NASA spokesman archangel Cabbage told the metropolis Sentinel.

Regardless, until legislature takes action, the program's brief constituent determine is farther from destined and newborn projects hit been needs stalled, according to J.D. Harrington, a Public Affairs Officer at NASA.

"Current CR module requires we move impact on the Constellation information at FY10 levels, still it doesn't allow money for us agitated nervy with a newborn onerous displace architecture," Harrington told FoxNews.com. "We wait such of the underway Constellation impact to move nervy but won't undergo for trusty until decisions are prefabricated on a line feat forward."

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