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Originally posted by Forever_frost
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It was GWB that CORRECTLY ordered the retirement of the shuttle fleet based on the Columbia Accident Investigation Board's (CAIB) recommendations. The board stated that flying the shuttle longer than they had prescribed would require a complete refurbishment of each air frame to have them re-certified. This was way to expensive to be cost effective so GW took their other recommendation and retired the shuttles. GW knew that there would be a gap of at least three years before a replacement craft could be ready. We could have had one even sooner but GW and Congress insisted on reusing as much shuttle equipment as possible. This actually led to many delays because the Aries I rocket, based on shuttle boosters, has a multitude of unforeseen technical hurdles that could not be easily overcome. We could have been flying a lot soon if GW had simply insisted that we use a man rated version of the Atlas V that already had a good flight history...
By the time Obama got to office, Congress had gutted the Orion program's budget, pushing its soonest flight back to 2015. The Constellation space capsule was delayed over and over again because of design changes to the Aries I rocket that kept forcing the capsule to be downsized. A ship that was originally meant to carry seven people was down to four and estimated operational costs grew to the point that it would be just as expensive as a space shuttle flight (1.2billion per flight). The moon program was already in a shambles.
IMO, Obama did what he had to do and got it mostly right. He kept GW's schedule for retiring the shuttles (though they added one extra flight). He took GW's COTS commercial supply spacecraft program made a commercial manned program that was modeled after it. It was fortunate for us that Elon Musk had designed his cargo craft to also carry people.
What Obama wanted to do was to create a "flexible path" program that would build an infrastructure that would let us go anywhere in the inner solar system. That would be Mars, the Moon, asteroids, Venus, etc... A lot of people called BS on it because it didn't specifically name the Moon or Mars as destinations. That kinda missed the point because a landing the moon or mars requires very different equipment. Congress wasn't willing to fund a lander for anything. Obama figured that if we can just get there we would develop landers as a follow on project.
So Obama compromised with several Republicans and Democrats which resulted in the Space Launch System (SLS) that is currently under construction. Commercial manned spaceflight will continue as planned but now the Constellation capsule was resurrected for exploratory missions. Congress also forced NASA to spend tens of billions on the new SLS and once again reuse as much space shuttle architecture as possible, including the solid rocket boosters (forced on NASA by Orin Hatch because those rockets are built in his state).
By the time Obama leaves office, we won't have ONE manned launch system. We will have at least THREE. The CST100/Atlas V from Boeing, the Manned version of Dragon/Falcon 9 from SpaceX, and Constellation/SLS from NASA/Lockheed Martin. And a mini shuttle from Sierra Nevada is still looking like a real possibility.
NASA is now solidifying plans for a spacecraft that will be used for Lunar and Asteroid expeditions with add ons for Mars transport in the future.
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