Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, has issued an open letter lashing out at President Barack Obama's proposed plan to cancel the Constellation program.
Along with Armstrong, the letter was also signed by Jim Lovell, commander of the famous Apollo 13 flight, and Gene Cernan, the commander of Apollo 17 and the last man to walk on the moon.
In the letter, obtained by NBC news, the famous astronauts said some of the components of Obama's proposed budget for NASA have merit, including an increase in total funding, substantial research and technology development and an extension of the International Space Station operation.
However, they said the accompanying decision to cancel the Constellation program, its Ares 1 and Ares V rockets, and the Orion spacecraft, is devastating.
"America's only path to low Earth orbit and the International Space Station will now be subject to an agreement with Russia to purchase space on their Soyuz (at a price of over 50 million dollars per seat with significant increases expected in the near future) until we have the capacity to provide transportation for ourselves," the astronauts said.
They further argued that it appears "that we will have wasted our current ten plus billion dollar investment in Constellation and, equally importantly, we will have lost the many years required to recreate the equivalent of what we will have discarded."
"While the President's plan envisages humans traveling away from Earth and perhaps toward Mars at some time in the future," the astronauts added, "the lack of developed rockets and spacecraft will assure that ability will not be available for many years."
They said that the proposed plan "destines our nation to become one of second or even third rate stature" after being "the leading space faring nation for nearly half a century".
On Monday, Senators Mark Udall, D-Col., and Michael Bennet, D-Col., met with NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden to urge the president to re-evaluate his proposed cancellation of the Constellation program.
While expressing support for certain aspects of NASA's funding in the proposed 2011 federal budget, both Senators voiced concern about terminating the Constellation program, which would provide a replacement for the retiring space shuttle fleet.
In a letter to Obama, the lawmakers said his decision to cancel the Constellation program "raises many concerns."
"For Colorado," they wrote, "where the Orion capsule is being developed - this move would lead directly to the loss of over 1,000 jobs and indirectly to thousands more."
On a more broad basis, the Senators said that they are "concerned that a reliance on unproven commercial providers for U.S. access to low Earth orbit (LEO) compromises America's leadership position in space."
Under Obama's budget, $6 billion would be added to the NASA budget over the next five years. NASA's budget would hit $19 billion by 2011 under the proposed plan.
However, the president's plan ends the Constellation program, which, according to the text of the budget proposal, "was planning to use an approach similar to the Apollo program to return astronauts back to the Moon 50 years after that program's triumphs."
by RTTNews Staff Writer
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