Next Stop Star Trek: Obama Considers Combining Civilian and Military Space Programs

Demian McLean, writing at Bloomberg.com reports that "President-elect Barack Obama will probably tear down long-standing barriers between the U.S.’s civilian and military space programs to speed up a mission to the moon amid the prospect of a new space race with China. Obama’s transition team is considering a collaboration between the Defense Department and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration because military rockets may be cheaper and ready sooner than the space agency’s planned launch vehicle, which isn’t slated to fly until 2015, according to people who’ve discussed the idea with the Obama team." The considered charge comes with increased U.S. concerns over China's increasing military capabilities in space, witnessed by it's 2007 destruction of a satellite in orbit by a missile launched from China. In addition, the combining of civilian and military space capabilities could make the U.S. space program more efficient in terms of budgetary matters and in the creation and use of similar launch vehicles. "Obama has said the Pentagon’s space program -- which spent about $22 billion in fiscal year 2008, almost a third more than NASA’s budget -- could be tapped to speed the civilian agency toward its goals as the recession pressures federal spending." Such a move would end the development of the Ares I rocket and shift manned missions to the military's already existing Delta IV and Atlas V rockets. Another concern for the Americans is that as it stands now a new space race has taken shape between the Chinese and the Americans - and we are losing. China could land astronauts on the moon several years ahead of the U.S.