For more than 50 years, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has extended the frontiers of human experience, with audacious landings on the moon, the research of Skylab, the far-seeing eye of Hubble and the reduction of space travel to something so routine a successful space-shuttle launch rates little more than a minute of the evening news. Now, NASA is exploring a frontier it has never encountered before: possible budget shortfalls. When NASA shuts down the shuttle program next year, astronauts wanting to do their part on the International Space Station will have to hitch a ride on a Russian rocket until 2015 because U.S. funding for the space program has remained flat just when the transition to a new space vehicle demands a fresh infusion of cash. The new exploration program has been whipsawed by the opposing forces of 2004’s presidential Vision for Space Exploration to return humans to the moon by 2018 and a world-crippling economic recession that submits such dreams to cost-benefit analysis.
The program, dubbed Constellation, is estimated to cost more than $100 billion over the next 15 years, but that is little more than a guess. Its development is decentralized; design and construction are handled by regional NASA officials at various installations. No single coordinator oversees the far-flung construction programs and construction costs are fluid, dependent on how new systems evolve, officials say.