Where is the Augustine Committee going?

One of the Committee’s public meetings. On the right, Norman Augustine, its President.
Credit: NASA/David Higginbotham

Last May, the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Politics set up a committee responsible for reviewing the American Human Space Flight Program. Its official name is the Review of United States Human Space Flight Plans Committee but it is often referred to as the Augustine Commission or Committee, named after its President, Norman Augustine. A well-known professional from the space industry, born in 1935, he was notably CEO of the aerospace company, Lockheed Martin. For several weeks, this Committee has been holding public meetings where numerous people involved in astronautics have their say. Such people not only include the directors of the American space industry and NASA’s managers, but also members of associations such as The Mars Society (who have long been fighting for human space flight missions to be launched to the red planet) as well as representatives of the European space industry (for example Jean-Yves Le Gall, Chairman and CEO of Arianespace). The Committee obviously intends to examine all the options open to the United States and has thus listened in detail to the arguments of certain groups of engineers who believe that NASA’s future rocket launcher, Ares-I, has serious design faults and who put forward alternative technologies. As a result, rumours are rife as to the recommendations to be made by this Committee: they range from totally abandoning the return to the Moon coupled with a massive reduction in manned flights to the almost immediate starting up of manned flights to Mars based on new rocket projects! Without attempting to make a forecast even more risky than a 15-day weather forecast, it appears obvious however that the Committee is trying to find a way to reduce the period in which the United States will be unable to send their astronauts into space using their own means to a minimum. At this present time, the space shuttles are due to stop flying in 2010 and the Orion spaceship and its Ares-I launch vehicle will not lift-off with a crew before 2015, an official date often thought to be particularly optimistic. Astronaut Sally Ride (first American woman to go into space), who is on the Committee, has talked about continuing the space shuttle flights by limiting them to two missions per year, not only so that the United States can maintain its independence for manned flights, but also with a view to avoiding massive redundancies and the loss of a qualified work force. The Committee is due to make its recommendations at the end of August and it is explicitly stated that neither the White House nor NASA have any obligations towards said recommendations. This could paradoxically give them more weight as refusing to follow them will require faultless reasoning on behalf of the American agency.

Review of United States Human Space Flight Plans Committee

The Committee’s public documents (with the presentations made during the meetings)

Back to the Moon (NASA)

Article on the Augustine Committee (Space Politics blog)

Articles on The Write Stuff blog (Orlando Sentinel) concerning the Augustine Committee

The main options studied by the Augustine Committee according to Florida Today

Published on 12 August 2009

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