Page 11 - Constellation Program News Today

Did. >> theres no focus, there is nothing out there that we can put our hands on and look forward to. >> it adds up to a lot of philosophical ideas of what we may or might not do. >> reporter: other astronauts like buzz aldrin and sally ride who were at the white house last year disagree, they say george w. bushs promise is back in 2004 to put a man on the moon by 2020 wasnt backed up with money, as i said, the constellation program, way over budget. ride says it probably wouldnt have been able ...

Space center in cape canaveral, florida. tom, fascinating to see these two men at odds over this. it really illustrates the controversy right now. >> reporter: well, yeah. and this is, monica, one of those stories that is very difficult to boil down into a sound bite or into even a five-minute discussion. its very complicated and multilayered. but what we have now is really a family feud within the astronaut core over the future of nasa. should nasa privatize the ability to send astronauts to th...

The space shuttle program was coming to an end. a lot of people had hoped that perhaps the president would extend the shuttle program and add another flight or two, not to say he couldnt come here today and make that announcement and even that would still be ending the program, but people were banking on the constellation program, the building of the aries rocket. the heavy lift rocket that would then take astronauts beyond low-earth orbit. when constellation was killed and all of those hopes fo...

>> reporter: how does that affect how americans feel about government spend something lets take the presidents plan to save $3.5 billion by ending nasas effort to put men back on the moon. if you earn $15,000, youll save about 1.62. however, if you make between 200, $250,000, that will save you about $95. so what do you think? go to foxnews.com/your money and you can vote. whats more important, killing the constellation program to help balance the budget or putting men back on the moon? this, jo...

John, president obama says the new focus will actually create jobs? >> reporter: yeah, thats right. kyra, its important to put this in reference to how we got here. a couple of months ago when the administration announced the first new vision, it canceled the constellation program. it set no timetable for a new heavy lift vehicle that could take astronauts to the moon or to mars. turned over large chunks of the futures on the tourt commercial sector and the private sector. that raised huge probl...

Event. bill: and that would be. if i may, here, just to ber ject for a moment here, if we go this route, there will be a prd of years where the united states of americas relying on the russians to get us to the international space station. are you comfortable with that? >> no, im not comfortable with it, but when that decision was made in january of 2004, we had six years to appropriately prepare for retiring the shuttle in 2010. i dont believe we took the appropriate actions by designing two ro...

Underneath his fingernails. the records did not sell at auction, good news for sir tom who will be 70 in june. he was knighted about four years ago. jon: and guess who weve got now? tom jones! not the singer, this guy is an astronaut and very smart guy. dr. tom jones is with us to talk about president obama. hes enroute to the kennedy space center in florida to unveil his administrations plans for the future of the u.s. space program. so far the white house has axed the constellation program tha...

Center today. on the other hand, former apollo astronaut buzz aldrin and the first woman in space, sally ride, getting behind the presidents plans. so lets talk about it with former nasa astronaut, fox news contributor as well tom jones. do you sing, tom? [laughter] >> only in the shower, jon. jon: all right. so sum up what the president is saying here. whats he planning, why is he canceling that one program and why are so many people so upset about it? >> well, back in february he did cancel th...

Is going to privatize the space program and that didnt work too well when we tried to privatize the war in iraq, the war in afghanistan. in general, we have a bad experience with there for the past two decades and i dont think this is going to be any different. there is no reason to believe that commercial entities can launch people or mass amounts of cargo into space. there is no evidence of that, no history of that, and we cant have the space program continue on a hope or a dream or a matter o...

So the point is what were looking for is not just to continue on the same path, we want to leap into the future. we want major breakthroughs. a transformative agenda for nasa. now, yes, pursuing that new strategy will require we revise the old strategy. in part this is because the old strategy including the constellation program was not fulfilling its promise. thats not just my assessment. its the assessment of a panel of respected nonpartisan experts charged with looking at these issues closely...