According to Bloomberg News reports late Thursday, President-elect Barack Obama would seek some sort of a merger between NASA and the Pentagon, so that America launches next generation of spacecraft into orbit before its scheduled 2015 date - with military rockets being less expensive and more readily accessible than NASA's proposed - and still in testing - Ares I and Ares V vehicles.

Obama's transition team opines that Obama's vision of the civilian space agency and the military collaboration would bring about shared expenses, to further US mission to the moon, in competition with the Chinese attempt, by 2020.

Bloomberg reports that "Obama has said the Pentagon's military space program - which spent about $22 billion in fiscal year 2008, almost a third more than NASA's budget - could be tapped to speed the civilian agency toward its goals as the recession pressures federal spending."

To overcome the dread that China, with its immense space efforts, could offer substantial challenge to the US for orbital supremacy in future, Obama has widely vowed to restart the National Aeronautics and Space Council. This particular White House agency was responsible for synchronizing military and space policy from the time of President Eisenhower to President Nixon, and also later during the Presidency of George H. W. Bush.

Meanwhile, Michael Griffin, the NASA chief and a rocket scientist himself, is a strong supporter of the Constellation program, which includes the Ares vehicles. He is reportedly having problems, both with Bush administration and Obama's transition team, about budget restrictions and the likely restructuring of Constellation.