President faces a Kennedy decision on space

When America’s young job corps came to this virgin spaceport, their average age was 27. They knew very little about launching astronauts into orbit, let alone sending them to the moon.

Dutifully and carefully they learned. During the Mercury and Gemini projects, these pioneers sent Alan Shepard, John Glenn, Neil Armstrong and 23 other astronauts into space.

But when these trained-on-the-job workers had logged a solid five years of experience, Apollo stepped to the plate, and all that know-how was tossed aside for the sake of political reward.  The contract for Project Apollo was given to North American Aviation — a great aircraft company, but with no spaceflight experience.

The novices tried, but everything they did ended in disaster. 

Apollo 1's command astronaut, Gus Grissom, hung a lemon from his own yard on the spacecraft simulator before he and crewmates Ed White and Roger Chaffee died in their launch pad fire on Jan. 27, 1967.

The tragedy set America’s space program back for more than a year — time for the White House and Apollo contractor North American Aviation to open their eyes. 

Apollo managers went out and hired every experienced person they could find, including Tom O’Malley, the test conductor who had launched John Glenn into orbit.

They put O’Malley in charge, and the first thing he did was run off the retired colonels and generals and political payoff hires and replaced them with Mercury and Gemini veterans. In 18 months, three astronauts orbited the moon aboard Apollo 8.  

Today our Florida spaceport supports four primary launch pads — two for human space flight at Kennedy Space Center, two for robotics at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. It’s a workable system. Law scholars say changing it would create a monopoly. The attorney general could be overloaded with lawsuits.

When Boeing and Lockheed Martin came up with a plan to merge their unmanned rocket businesses and form United Launch Alliance in 2005, President Bush's antitrust officials questioned whether the venture was a monopoly. The merger was ultimately pushed through under the flag of "national security," at the Pentagon's urging.

If this Boeing-Lockheed Martin venture is awarded NASA’s business too, America’s largest military conglomerate will run all of the Florida spaceport's active launch pads. If this isn’t a monopoly, then there are no little green apples in Indianapolis.

The problem seems to be that Project Constellation was formed with a Republican in the White House — and because of this, some want a redo.  But they have a problem: how to get around the fact that Constellation is sound. It’s the safest human spaceflight project ever put to paper. Opponents are groping for anything to tear it down.

In this old reporter’s apolitical opinion, astronauts need the safety of Ares I, and manned and unmanned rockets need to stay in their own field of expertise. The Chinese are well into their plans to walk the lunar landscape within a decade.  We could wake up one morning soon with Americans spending their dollars on the moon for dinner in a Chinese restaurant.

More on Project Constellation | spaceflight debate

MORE FROM HUMAN SPACEFLIGHT

Human Spaceflight Section Front

Shuttle delivers the goods to space station Initial shuttle inspection shows no damage Space shuttle lifts off amid tons of tweets Twitter scribes are all aflutter over shuttle Atlantis’ team carries the ball for NASA New research module arrives at space station Space junk buzzes station while crew sleeps Countdown begins for NASA's uncertain future Space hotel says it's on schedule to open in 2012 Amelia Earhart's scarf flying to space Human Spaceflight Section Front   Add Human Spaceflight headlines to your news reader: