Obama laid out his case on a visit to Kennedy Space Center, where a sense of a looming crisis has taken hold because thousands of jobs are drying up when the space shuttle is retired at the end of the year. Many also fear the US space program will no longer be a world leader. Obama told a crowd of about 200 people at Kennedy Space Center, a key source of jobs in the election battleground state of Florida, he understood their worries and addressed some of the critics, who included Neil Armstrong, first man on the moon. “The bottom line is, nobody is more committed to manned space flight, to human exploration of space, than I am. But we've got to do it in a smart way,” Obama said to applause.
Pledging a “transformative agenda” for NASA, Obama sketched an ambitious vision of developing by 2025 spacecraft capable of journeys into deep space and by the mid-2030s sending astronauts to an asteroid, into orbit around Mars and later to land there. “And I expect to be around to see it,” he said. But Obama did not provide a detailed road map of how these breakthroughs would be achieved.
Obama said a $6 billion increase in NASA's budget will help ramp up exploration of the solar system, increase Earth-based observation to improve an understanding of climate change, and bolster support for private space companies which he said have formed a bedrock of America's space programs. To those who would return America to the moon as had been planned, Obama said: “I just have to say pretty bluntly -- we've been there before...There's a lot more space to explore and a lot more to learn when we do.”
Obama has faced sharp criticism for proposing to abandon the Constellation moon program after $9 billion has been spent and allocate $6 billion to support private companies in developing space rockets to carry astronauts to the International Space Station.
Heavy-lift rocket
Getting a glimpse of what he hopes will be the future of the space program, Obama took a walk to look at a Falcon 9 rocket set to lift off in a test next month. It is a product of SpaceX, a private company. In his speech, the president said he wants to accelerate development of a large, heavy-lift rocket to carry astronauts beyond low-earth orbit. He called for making a decision on the new rocket design in 2015. Obama stuck to his decision to cancel the Constellation program, designed by the previous Bush administration to return Americans to the moon and which was behind schedule.
