Gomez 1

Matthew Gomez

Prof. John F. Dannenhoffer, III

ESC 101: Aerospace Engineering

25 September 2013

Exam 1 Essay

Over the past four decades the United States’ space program activity has drastically

decreased and slowed. With technological advancements made in the past forty years, one would

only assume that activity would be much more frequent and the rate at which our space program

would operate at would increase as well. The case is quite the contrary, but some of the many

following points should be considered: the technical differences of today’s spacecraft (SLS) and

the 1960’s spacecraft, the differencing in scheduling of the space program itself, and the political

environment in which the space program operates under.

NASA’s current space program, Space Launch System (SLS), has made many technical

differences to the design of its spacecraft in comparison to that of the 1960’s. Naturally, as

human beings, there is a primordial need to out-perform one’s self; with that in mind, the SLS

program has crafted rockets that can carry larger payloads, generate more initial lift and thrust,

and travel much further distances than a Saturn V rocket, used during the 1960’s. NASA has

much more grandeur plans than that of the 1960’s, the goal is no longer only to reach the moon,

but to someday get men on Mars. To achieve such goals, these technical differences of the

spacecraft are needed, but will take much more time to achieve, which directly relates to the

difference of scheduling of SLS and the 1960’s space program.

In 1961, President Kennedy promised the world the United States would get men on the

moon before the end of the decade; that became NASA’s deadline, planning to be on the moon

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prior to the year 1970. When Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong landed on the moon in 1969, it

was a feat thought impossible. The space program of the 1960’s scheduling was based on the

President’s promise, making a wondrous achievement in eight years. The SLS program projects

a mission back to the moon to take much longer than ten years! This may seem odd, but this is

due to immediacy of the program. President Kennedy made that promise during the Cold War,

and believed if the U.S. defeated the U.S.S.R. in the race to the moon, that it would end the war.

The urgency of ending the war put much pressure on NASA; they were to complete a task of

getting men on the moon, something never done before, in just under nine years. In our current

day and age, mankind has already made it to the moon and simply continues to explore space for

the thirst for knowledge and answers. To some this may seem very crucial, but to the general

public it does not strike them as an urgent task, so the government is not necessarily rushing the

space program, allowing them to work at the pace they seem fit.

Lastly, the political environment during the space program plays an exponentially large

role. The Cold War plays a huge role in the scheduling and the funding of the space program

during the 1960’s. NASA had nine years to meet the task and at its peak, had 4.41% of the

federal budget dedicated to the space program. Today, there is less emphasis on the expansion of

the space program, and only receives approximately .5% in funding of the federal budget. The

United States spends a large percentage on military funding, and because the space program

currently is not associated with a war, funding is drastically cut and has little importance in the

eyes of a majority of the general public.

All in all, the SLS plan is very practical. It was crafted to find compromise in funding and

mission objective. Because funding is very small for the space program, SLS optimized many of

the parts to the space craft to be more economical, as well as more efficient. This can be a very

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long process, which explains why exploration projections are much longer than in the 1960’s.

Hopefully with the achievements made by the SLS program, more funding will be added to the

space program, continuing the search for knowledge and answers in our universe.