Posted on 01/14/2004 6:11:22 AM PST by presidio9
WASHINGTON - President Bush is asking for a $1 billion boost to NASA's budget over five years to fund the start of a new American campaign in space intended to put a permanent base on the moon and land astronauts on Mars, administration officials say.
In a speech prepared for delivery Wednesday, Bush is calling for a lunar base to be established within two decades and a manned landing on Mars sometime after 2030, an official said.
The proposal comes after members of Congress and others have called for a new national vision for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, urging a human space initiative that would reinvigorate an agency wounded by last year's loss of space shuttle Columbia and trapped by expensive projects that limit manned spaceflight to low Earth orbit.
Bush, speaking with reporters Tuesday on a trip to Mexico, said his plan centers on human exploration of space.
"The spirit is going to be one of continued exploration ... seeking new horizons and investing in a program that ... meets that objective," he said.
His proposal for $1 billion over five years, in effect, would provide startup funds for highly complex projects that could take decades and may require hundreds of billions of additional dollars to complete.
Congressional negotiators last year agreed to a NASA budget of nearly $15.5 billion for fiscal 2004, the budget year that began last Oct. 1. That's a $90 million boost over the previous year. The measure, part of a broad-based spending bill, was passed by the House and awaits approval in the Senate.
Part of the moon-Mars initiative would be funded by the reallocation of money already in NASA's budget, officials said. The plan calls for retiring the space shuttle by the end of this decade and quickly concluding the U.S. obligations to the International Space Station (news - web sites). The shuttle now costs NASA about $4 billion a year and the station about $1 billion.
NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe defended the cost Wednesday.
"We're spending less than 1 percent of the federal budget on the science and technology that NASA employs for exploration objectives," he said on NBC"s "Today" show, "and that won't change. It's about exploration. It's about how do you redirect the focus of what we do toward those broad objectives that the president will outline."
A less ambitious project proposed by Bush's father called for putting astronauts on Mars, but did not mention a moon base. The cost of that project in 1989 was projected at $400 billion to $500 billion, a price tag that discouraged Congress. The project was never started.
Experts say that under the latest plan, robots would be sent to the moon by 2008 and astronauts ready to build a lunar base would land there by 2020. The plan envisions using the moon as a staging area for deeper space exploration with a landing on Mars after 2030.
An official said the president's address will give broad outlines to the moon-Mars plan, leaving details to be worked out later. The administration's officials spoke on condition of anonymity.
Experts said the effort to return to the moon would require building new spacecraft, and the eventual plan could include sending robot craft to the moon and later to Mars to cache supplies for use later by human explorers.
The only human-rated spacecraft now in the nation's arsenal are three space shuttles, aging winged craft limited to Earth orbit. The shuttle fleet has been grounded since Columbia exploded over Texas on Feb. 1, killing seven astronauts. The first post-Columbia launch is expected in about a year.
NASA is committed to completing the International Space Station, an effort that will take a series of space shuttle missions.
The agency already has proposed building the Orbital Space Plane, a craft that would ferry astronauts and limited supplies between the Earth and the space station. Some members of Congress have criticized the OSP and it has yet to receive final funding.
A colony on the moon, experts say, could be used to exploit mineral resources of the lunar surface, such as helium-3, an isotope that theoretically could be used for rocket fuel. There are suggestions that the moon has deposits of water near its poles. Water could be chemically split to obtain hydrogen and oxygen, a combination that could be used as a rocket propellant. The oxygen could be used for an atmosphere inside sealed shelters.
If I understand the proposal, this amounts to 200mil/year. This is barely enough to start planning, much less to build any hardware for the project. I hope GWB isn't going to do what every president since Kennedy has done. Plan a big project for NASA but shuffle the funding issue off on the next administration.
That's All?
Here is a president that will piss away fifteen times that to cure AIDS in Cambodian prostitutes; will spend 1,000 times that in a medical drug give-away program; will spend 10,000 times that in giving Social Security and Amnesty to illegal aliens; but can only dredge up $250,000,000 a year for a space program? Why Ken Lay alone could loot Enron for more money than that.
Even $1 billion a year is not nearly enough to get it done. Right now the 2-3 people living on the ISS need to be resupplied every other month or so. In the extended short term, we can expect the same for the moon base. Self-sufficiency in less than a decade is unrealistic to even the most hardcore sci-fi geek. In 1997 we sent a suitcase-sized probe to the moon that was lauded for its cost-efficiency at $67mm. And re-supply ferries will be several times the size of that probe and involve a much more complicated landing mission. I'm all for a permenant moon base, but I don't think most people have thought this through even a little bit.
Where are you getting this ridiculous figure from?
Perhaps it would be prudent to wait for the president to actually present his program before we start complaining. :)
I recall numbers from over the weekend of $5bil/year increase, and a phaseout of the STS and ISS programs after 5 years, to free up funds for return to the moon. That funding would be more in line with the requirements of the task. Since GWB has worked closely with O'Keefe in developing the proposal, I would think (hope perhaps) that this has been thought through better that it currently appears.
I agree that it's not much. But, did Medicare start out as a MASSIVE program? Did the smoking ban start out with no smoking everywhere? It would be stupid to try starting a good thing like this with HUGE numbers. DemoncRATs (and, sadly some Republicans) would quickly shoot it down in order to spend $400 billion on a drug giveaway/vote buying scheme.
The government should do research that private business can't see making a profit on. Otherwise it won't get done. In many areas, NASA and military research are what's put this country on the technology forefront.
Well let's see, where have heard that before? Blackbird.
The problem with this is that NASA will have to continue to use (and fund) the STS program until ISS is complete, and an alternative launch vehicle is available (may be able to use commercial). That means at least five years and maybe ten before the STS and ISS funds become available, thus confirming my fears of shuffling the real funding issue off to the next administration.
*sigh*
With the 15b he wants to give African Dictators and the 345b Amnesty for Illegals will cost Social Security, we could get to Pluto.
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