Need to catch up on our Horizon Goal series?

Part 1: How The Columbia Tragedy Shifted NASA's Sights To The Moon

Part 2: 'Apollo on Steroids': The Rise and Fall of NASA's Constellation Moon Program

Part 3: Space in transition: How Obama's White House charted a new course for NASA

Part 4: To Mars, with a monster rocket: How politicians and engineers created NASA's Space Launch System

Part 5: The flexible path to Mars: SLS, Orion and NASA's Asteroid Redirect Mission

Transition fever

President-elect Trump's transition team already has several advisors assessing NASA's current programs. Trump must also nominate a new NASA administrator to replace Charles Bolden, who was appointed by President Obama. The administrator's job is to run NASA and implement the president's space policies.

What will those policies be?

It's hard to draw firm conclusions based on the biographies of Trump's NASA team. It includes former agency officials who served under both Bolden and his predecessor, Michael Griffin. There's a retired astronaut, a lunar researcher and a physicist. One advisor is an ardent supporter of newer firms like SpaceX, but balancing that choice—and seemingly defying a possible conflict of interest—is the inclusion of the vice president of corporate development for Dynetics, a major NASA contractor with a stake in the Space Launch System.

Most everything else known about possible Trump space policies comes from Robert Walker, a Pennsylvania House Republican from 1977 to 1997 who once chaired the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee.

Walker served as a space policy advisor to the Trump campaign. He was brought aboard by Peter Navarro, who was, at one point, a key Trump economic advisor. With Navarro working out of Trump Tower in New York, the duo drafted campaign space policies and published two op-eds in SpaceNews.

I spoke with Walker less than a week after the election. He said the new administration plans to increase the level of coordination between government agencies with a stake in space operations by re-establishing the National Space Council, which was last convened during the President George H.W. Bush administration. The council, which would report to Vice President-elect Mike Pence, would aim to combine resources and drive out inefficiencies.

When I asked Walker for an example of a cross-governmental inefficiency, he pointed to heavy lift launch vehicles.

"At the present time, you have three—really four—entities that are developing heavy launch vehicles," he said, presumably referring to NASA's Space Launch System, SpaceX's Falcon Heavy (and a future super-heavy variant bound for Mars), Blue Origin's New Glenn, and United Launch Alliance's Vulcan.

"So the question for the space council would be: Do all four of those need essentially a similar vehicle, or would we be better off having just one or two of those being being developed and then used across the breadth of the government?"

Walker was quick to note the campaign did not take a stance on favoring a particular vehicle.

"Everything that we're talking about is anticipatory, because people immediately want to say 'Well, are you talking about eliminating the SLS?'" he said. "There have been no specific decisions made. We're forward-looking on this, to say that the National Space Council could serve the interest of space policy by assuring that that the nation is not duplicating efforts unnecessarily."

Preemptive cost-cutting

NASA's Orion spacecraft could also find itself spotlighted by the National Space Council. The capsule, originally part of the return-to-the-moon Constellation program, was axed by the Obama administration in February 2009, only to be resurrected two months later to placate congressional critics.

Boeing and SpaceX are now building similar gumdrop-shaped vehicles to send astronauts to the International Space Station, though neither spacecraft is currently outfitted for deep space. Lockheed Martin, Orion's prime contractor, recently preemptively announced they plan to slash future Orion construction costs by 50 percent.

In mid-November, NASA issued an information request on how the agency might make the SLS and Orion programs more affordable. While language within the request led some to believe NASA is cracking open the door for cheaper commercial alternatives, administrator Bolden disputes this, as does Greg Williams, the deputy associate administrator for policy and plans in NASA's human spaceflight division. (Williams is not a political appointee; he will remain aboard during the Trump administration.)

"I would take issue with the characterization that we've cracked the door open to a commercial replacement—that's not where we're headed," said Williams during a recent phone interview. "The RFI (Request for Information) really is focused on how we can reduce production operations costs for the systems that we are developing."

Stiff opposition

A move to cut either SLS or Orion would almost certainly face opposition from some Congressional factions, which have the power to push back on White House policies through spending bills.

Florida Senator Bill Nelson, who famously introduced SLS in 2011 while NASA administrator Charles Bolden watched from the sidelines, is the ranking member of the Senate's NASA oversight committee. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, where NASA's Orion program is based, chairs the subcommittee that must approve Trump's choice for NASA administrator. And Alabama Senator Richard Shelby, who represents NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, where SLS is managed, heads the appropriations committee that controls NASA's budget.

On Friday, Congress passed a temporary spending bill to keep the government open through April 2017, but not before adding specific provisions to fund SLS and Orion at higher levels—something they have done consistently during the Obama administration.

The Senate also unanimously passed a NASA Transition Bill encouraging the Trump administration to stay the course on SLS and Orion, while maintaining Mars as a long-term destination. Though the House has adjourned for the year—meaning the bill will not become law—the Senate's action can be seen as a policy statement on how it would react to wholesale changes for NASA's human spaceflight program.

Whether or not the battle would be as bloody as it was in 2010, when the Obama administration canceled Constellation, remains to be seen. One aerospace industry consultant, speaking with me on the condition of anonymity, said privatizing space transportation was more controversial six years ago, when the industry had less success under its belt.

"Fundamentally the scenario has changed, due to the fact there are potential commercial alternatives," the consultant said. "That does not mean Congressional opposition won't be fierce; it simply means there is more nuance to the situation now than there was then."