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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 todays spacecraft (SLS) and
the 1960s spacecraft, the differencing in scheduling of the space program itself, and the political
environment in which the space program operates under.
NASAs current space program, Space Launch System (SLS), has made many technical
differences to the design of its spacecraft in comparison to that of the 1960s. Naturally, as
human beings, there is a primordial need to out-perform ones 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 1960s. NASA has
much more grandeur plans than that of the 1960s, 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 1960s 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 NASAs 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 1960s scheduling was based on the
Presidents 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 1960s. 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 1960s.
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.