Bleak space report isn't deterring ATK officials

Alliant Techsystems engineers in charge of the company's Promontory facility aren't surprised nor deterred by a report released Thursday by a special White House commission announcing that the proud U.S. human spaceflight program is officially stalling out.

As several ATK engineers prepared for a Tuesday launch in Cape Canaveral, Fla., of NASA's newest rocket motor designed and built by ATK, the Augustine Commission said the country should prepare to accept the fact that the grandest of human endeavors "appears to be on an unsustainable trajectory."

The Ares I, NASA's replacement for the space shuttle, could be the wrong ship altogether, and instead of continuing with strictly government funding, the administration should get less ambitious and more connected with private industry, the commission report states.

That could include building a less ambitious rocket and scaling its Mars plans back while extending the life of the shuttle in the meantime.

The assessment came as no surprise to ATK managers, many of whom are in Florida readying a Tuesday test launch of the Ares I-X, the launch-capable version of the rocket the company successfully fired during a horizontal static test at its Box Elder County facility last month. The Ares-I is the booster motor that is to take a new generation of U.S. astronauts back to the moon and to Mars beginning in about 10 years.

Some might be interpreting the report as a bell sounding the end of the company's rocket motor design and testing section, Charlie Precourt, an ATK vice president and former shuttle astronaut, told the newspaper Thursday from Florida.

"I wouldn't read too much into it until President Obama and his advisers review things," probably by around Christmas, Precourt said. "The commission's job was to present options, not recommendations, to the president. People are saying that funding for crewed exploration just isn't there. Funding for any of the several options forwarded by the commission isn't there either."

Money — saving it — has already been proved by the Ares I without even leaving the ground, Precourt said. "For example, the shuttle requires a month on the launch pad prior to launch. The Ares-l, it's five to six days."