Your Reaction To Constellation Beig Cancelled

[NASAFanboy]

I remember coming home one day and searching up "NASA" in the news to only find out Project Constellation had been outright cancelled.

I closed my laptop, and fell onto the floor, sobbing. I literally felt my future was gone, crushed. My dreams of being an astronaut,gone forever.

I just kept crying and mourning the death of Constellation or several days, lashing out in pain and sadness and some sort of fury and hatred at anyone who comforted me.

Pretty much my reaction for the first five seconds.

[Pluto100]

I was outraged to say the very least. I was really excited for it . I was completely devastated, and the SLS made it no better really.

[razark]

"Oh, another program down the drain. Glad I'm not on one of those contracts."

[Kryten]

'Maybe that means they'll start something they can actually afford to finish.'

[Dispatcher]

I read an op ed piece by a congressman, on NASA researching about how congress (in the US) works, costing over a million dollars to research. Perhaps NASA should stick to sending spacecraft to ... space. I imagine that more contracts for space operations would get fulfilled by doing so.

[The Destroyer]

...Hmm? This wasn't more than a concept?

I didn't follow much space news at the time, so I didn't care at all >.>

[NASAFanboy]

...Hmm? This wasn't more than a concept?

I didn't follow much space news at the time, so I didn't care at all >.>

Actually, no.

Working engines had been tested for the Ares V, the Orion Capsule had been built, and the Ares I had already gone through a successful flight test, sending a payload about th weight of of Orion into LEO.

Also, working parts of the Moonbase had alread been built and demonstrated on Earth.

It was much, much more than a concept.

If SLS and the Mars Mission gets cancelled, I'm packing my bags and offering my services to China. They could use some engineers an scientists and aspiring astronauts, yes?

[Simon Ross]

I pretty much had the feeling of 'Here we go again' !

Was never a huge fan of the proposed Constellation hardware concept, but it did at least split out the manned and unmanned function of the two boosters

And so we are back to Saturn V, oops sorry SLS

Seems we really haven't learnt much in almost 50 years of space flight :-(

[minerman30]

What was Constellation again? (runs for life)

[Bigcheecho]

What was Constellation again? (runs for life)

NASA's plan to send a man to Mars, but it got cancelled by government.

Go America!

[NASAFanboy]

NASA's plan to send a man to Mars, but it got cancelled by government.

Go America!

No, it was NASAs plan to build a Moonbase and use technology developed on the lunar surface to head onward to Mars. Obama cancelled it, saying we shouldn't focus on Mars missions and should develop new tehnology in LEO, but then he caved into intense political pressure and allowed the Mars mission to continue, but with one condition.

NASA has to send a crew to a captured asteroid around 2021. That's the part that Obama added in. And then, NASA signs a deal wth Bigelow to study a lunar base, followed by three different attempts to revive Constellation.

Then NASA comes out and announces they will keep the Constellation-style Mars mission. Then they tell private companies to mine the moon.

It took three years of squabbling, and now Constellation is still alive in some form, spread over commercial and government agencies.

It took three years of squabbling to get us nowhere.

[Kryten]

...the Ares I had already gone through a successful flight test, sending a payload about th weight of of Orion into LEO.

Where do you get this stuff? It didn't even have a functioning upperstage, or indeed any other part intended to be in the actual Ares-1; it was a shuttle SRB, Atlas-V avionics, and lots of sheet metal.

[Seret]

It never really had the look or feel of a project that was going to make it IMO, so not at all surprised that it got canned.

Firm direction and vision about manned flight is not something NASA's had for a while. I don't think they've got it now TBH. We have this vague idea that we should be doing something with manned flight, but we're not quite sure what. I think it's a distraction from the amazing work that the probes are doing personally.

[NASAFanboy]

Where do you get this stuff? It didn't even have a functioning upperstage, or indeed any other part intended to be in the actual Ares-1; it was a shuttle SRB, Atlas-V avionics, and lots of sheet metal.

From some website who's name I long forgotten (It was back in 2010, and I can't even remember what I had for lunch last week and forgot the age of my little sister...horrid memory, one of the worst).

The main issue with probes is that they, well, don't have a personality, and are hard for the media to take a interest in them or the general public at large. Frankly, very few of my friends understand much about the NASA Planetary Science program, other than..

1. They send robots to places.

2. They don't send humans.

When NASA landed Curosity on Mars, everyone was abuzz about it for three weeks, then fell silent and forgot about it. But everyone is still talking about the Space Shuttle, the Apollo missions, and even the ISS, even though some, like Apollo, have not launched in forty years and will not launch again in the future. Robotics do the grunt work, they gather data and are pretty much ignored by midstream media. Astronauts are the heros of the space age, the media darlings and the rolemodels that hundreds of thousands of kids worldwide look up to. Without human spaceflight, I mostly doubt any of my friends would give a bother about NASA.

I don't know why. Its something in our brain perhaps, that endears us to humans and not machines?

Edited February 16, 2014 by NASAFanboy

[Seret]

From some website who's name I long forgotten (It was back in 2010, and I can't even remember what I had for lunch last week).

The Ares prototype shot was suborbital. No payload, it's only job was to get airborne and not crash.

[NASAFanboy]

The Ares prototype shot was suborbital. No payload, it's only job was to get airborne and not crash.

Thanks for the clarification.

Anyways, Ares I did not, in any way, deserve to be cancelled.

They claim the Ares I would do a manned launch in 2019 under the worst circumstances.

And now the SLS will do a manned launch in 2021 under the best circumstances.

Hypocrites, all of them.

[Seret]

Robotics do the grunt work, they gather data and are pretty much ignored by midstream media.

I'm completely ok with that myself. They're getting results, and that's what counts IMO. Space exploration was always going to become somewhat mundane, it couldn't stay at Apollo levels of buzz forever.

[NovaSilisko]

Constellation unfortunately was a bloated disaster of a program, and SLS is no different. Both the Ares family and SLS existed/exist solely to keep the dollars flowing to the same contractors they've always been flowing to since before the beginning of the space shuttle program.

Obama's goal was "man to an asteroid by 2025" then "orbit mars by the mid-2030s" (not exactly the most inspired speech of solid goal), but NASA's budget keeps going down and down and down due both to the actions of the white house and congress - simultaneously telling them to do big things while not giving them the money to do so. The 2021 asteroid capture mission is kind of a bare-minimum cop-out for the "man to an asteroid" goal, but in a way it's the best they can do.

This is of course avoiding all the problems that exist within NASA... for instance, the huge hairball of bureaucracy and constantly shifting priorities, the same sort of managerial machine that led to the losses of Challenger and Columbia, unfortunately. The whole thing is just a mess, and I feel like the current SLS program will just be a repeat of Apollo - a brief spurt of missions going farther then we have before... and then coming home and staying home as the budget dries up.

Personally, I have more faith in private enterprise like Bigelow and SpaceX, but we'll have to see how that plays out. SpaceX has the potential to open up much of the solar system for exploration if they can accomplish their ultra-cheap rockets goal, and who knows what the hell they have in store for their top secret mars plans. In the event private enterprise does take over manned spaceflight, I think it would be ideal for NASA to go back to pushing the boundaries with robotics and deep exploration missions, while not even bothering with either spacecraft going to whatever celestial bodies are being utilized by commercial entities (why do that when you can hitch a ride), or anything in LEO.

Edited February 16, 2014 by NovaSilisko

[Kryten]

The Ares prototype shot was suborbital.

Not even that, apogee about 40km.

[syfyguy64]

Merging NASA with the military is really the only way to get things done at a rapid rate.

That, or splitting the military's budget, which is harder than splitting the atom.

[Mr. Pseudonym]

Sig says all. Guys, Ares was cool only because it was the first real proposal for a post-space shuttle rocket, and it was going to carry around some really neat stuff. Like the lunar truck. So sad it was canceled.

[LaydeeDem]

If Ares (Shuttle too) proves one thing, it's that OSHA needs a bigger budget before NASA. Solid boosters and people should not mix.

[Kryten]

Solid boosters and people should not mix.

Why not? There's no real reason to believe solids are, done properly, are any less safe than liquid stages. Far more people have been killed by incidents with liquid stages than solid ones.

[merlinux]

When constellation was announced I had a gut feeling, it wouldn't last long.

[astropapi1]

I bet Obama's middle name is Dan...

IDK, Constellation had a purpose. It had a clear and well-defined plan for a moonshot in the 20's, and it would only use two common boosters. SLS is just a bunch of Apollo-style rockets trying to recreate the 60's. SLS doesn't even have a moon lander yet!

Constellation was much more than concept art and blueprints, as some people have stated.