NASA not over the moon about prospect of buying out Constellation program contracts

[n2doc]

February 28, 2010 By Robert Block
NASA is discovering that perhaps the only thing harder than starting up a program to send humans to the moon is closing one down.

President Barack Obama has announced he wants the agency to end its lunar ambitions and begin developing "game-changing" technologies that could one day take humans to Mars. If Congress agrees, NASA must turn off the Constellation program that was supposed to return astronauts to the moon by 2020.

But terminating Constellation is no easy feat. To do it, NASA has to navigate a political and financial maze largely of its own making.

Obama's 2011 budget proposal provides $2.5 billion to pay contractors whatever NASA owes them so the agency can stop work on Constellation's Ares rockets, Orion capsule and Altair lunar lander. But administration officials acknowledge that this number is, at best, an educated guess.

"I think we took what was an estimate from what industry said, what our analysts said," NASA administrator Charlie Bolden told the Orlando Sentinel last week when asked how the administration came up with the $2.5 billion price tag. "It's a ballpark figure. Hopefully, it's something that's extreme."

Many inside and outside of the space agency, however, think the number is too low.

http://www.physorg.com/news186590237.html