Kay Bailey Hutchison: “In an open letter to the President, these space pioneers state that although some of the President's proposals have…”

“In an open letter to the President, these space pioneers state that although some of the President's proposals have merit, "the decision to cancel the Constellation program, its Ares 1 and Ares V rockets and the Orion spacecraft, is devastating." They say: 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 availability of a commercial transport to orbit as envisioned in the President's proposal cannot be predicted with any certainty, but is likely to take substantially longer and be more expensive than we would hope. It appears that we will have wasted our current $10-plus billion investment in Constellation and, equally importantly, we will have lost the many years required to recreate the equivalent of what we will have discarded.”