NASA to offer $100 billion moon program

Reuters ^ | September 18, 2005

[RWR8189]

With the shuttle fleet grounded and the International Space Station staffed by a skeleton crew, NASA is set to unveil plans on Monday to take people and cargo to the moon.

Even before the official announcement, there is criticism from Capitol Hill over the reported $100 billion cost of the lunar program, given U.S. government commitments to the Iraq war and the recovery from Hurricane Katrina.

"This plan is coming out at a time when the nation is facing significant budgetary challenges," Rep. Bart Gordon, a Tennessee Democrat on the House Science Committee, said in a statement. "Getting agreement to move forward on it is going to be heavy lifting in the current environment, and it's clear that strong presidential leadership will be needed."

To get astronauts back to the moon for the first time since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972, one team of designers envisioned an Apollo-style capsule sitting atop rockets fashioned from shuttle components, including the shuttle's massive external tank and solid rocket boosters. There would be a separate space vehicle to carry only cargo.

The Space.com Web site reported that this scenario was presented to White House officials last week before its formal unveiling to the public on Monday. The new $100 billion lunar program would begin in 2018 by landing four people on the moon for a seven-day stay, Space.com reported.

NASA officials could not be reached for comment on Sunday.

President's vision for space
President George W. Bush's plan to send Americans back to the moon by 2020 and eventually on to Mars has drawn skepticism since its unveiling in January 2004, less than a year after the Feb. 1, 2003, shuttle Columbia disaster.

Bush's Vision for Space Exploration called for the development of a system to replace the aging shuttles, a goal that appears even more important given problems with the shuttle fleet's return to flight.

The same problems with falling debris that doomed Columbia recurred in July with the launch of Discovery, prompting the grounding of the shuttle fleet even as Discovery continued to fly its mission. A September shuttle mission was delayed until November and then to March.

Some $1.1 billion damage by Hurricane Katrina to NASA facilities in Louisiana and Mississippi could push the launch date back further still.

Bush's plan also mandated the completion of the International Space Station, but without shuttles to do the heavy lifting, that process has been on hold. A pair of Russian vehicles--the space taxi Soyuz and the space delivery van Progress--have been ferrying people and material.

Since the fatal Columbia disaster, only two-person crews, rather than the normal three-person crews, have stayed aboard the station.

With the shuttles slated for retirement in 2010, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin has estimated that the number of construction flights to the station could be pared from its earlier estimate of 28 to 15.

[Names Ash Housewares]

"We've already explored the moon, we have largely explored Mars, and there is a probe exploring the moons of Saturn as we type. There is no purpose to sending a man to see what robots have already seen. That isn't exploration, that's just wasting money."

Currently the entire human races eggs are in one basket.

Earth

We cant stay here forever. We MUST explore, we must move outward. We must learn to *live* beyond earth. As sure as when humans left Africa. If we had stayed there, we would not be arguing about exploring space right now thats for sure. We gotta go. We cant stay in the cradle forever. It's time.

Carl Sagan....

"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."

--Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994

[Ichneumon]

NASA to offer $100 billion moon program

I'll do it for $96 billion...

[Coyoteman]

Ichneumon?

What are you doing over on these space threads?

[GEC]

This should be the approach.

I doubt they'll do it though.

[RightWhale]

I'll do it for $96 billion...

Been reading Dewey?

[FreeAtlanta]

I would much rather spend 100 billion returning to the moon, than wasting it in Louisiana.

[Hank Rearden]

I would much rather spend 100 billion returning to the moon, than wasting it in Louisiana.

A twofer would be kinda nice . . . . . send Louisiana to the Moon.

[Atchafalaya]

They can use the Ralph Kramdon launch technology; very cheap.

[LachlanMinnesota]

My concern is not that there are no benefits from scientific advancement, it is that we do not truly use our money wisely when we make it centered on a goal with no clear ultimate benefit for being on the moon in particular.

I really think it is another scientific program to cover the costs of more military developments, since I believe that NASA is one of the biggest contributors to the "black budget."

Don't get me wrong, we need military development, but I think the public has a right to see the results of our hard earned money being spent in ways that we have no opportunity to raise objections, or to have input of our own.

Don't sell me on the space program, sell me on what we have learned with the money already spent. Tell me if we are spending millions on a weather modification program, and why we are doing that. Tell me that all of the billions of dollars we spend are producing more than a fee fly by remote control plans and surveillance vehicles. Frankly, I cannot believe that technology I have seen in fact cost us the treasure we have used.

Follow the money trail...where does it go?

[Atchafalaya]

Watch your mouth!!!

[Mad_Tom_Rackham]

This is REALLY bad timing. Sure, they lose seven astronauts due to structural problems with the shuttle, ground the fleet for two years, and then have the same exact problem on the very next flight. Then they put up an absolute idiot for a spokesman who declares: "We're glad this happened, because it gets us a chance to solve the problem" (paraphrasing his completely nonsensical statement). So now they say, well, we failed at that, so give us another $100 million and we'll do something else. Only government agencies can produce such tone-deaf morons. Jeeez Louize! A good start would be to fire the entire management at NASA and hit the "reset" button.

[WKUHilltopper]

Moon? Why?? Been there, done that--(well, not me but the country)

[Coyoteman]

Moon? Why?? Been there, done that--(well, not me but the country)

Pacific Coast? Been there, done that!

Is that Lewis and Clark said after their trip to the mouth of the Columbia River?

Been there, don't have to go back?

I didn't think so.

[WKUHilltopper]

Well, I would hazard a guess that Lewis and Clark didn't spend $100 Billion for boats and mules.

[battlegearboat]

Drawing a blank here Ben. Who is that creature?

[anymouse]

Can't afford it. We're being forced to rebuild $200 Billion worth of slums below sea level.

Why don't we just demolish New Orleans and build the new Moon rocket launch facility in it's place? /sarcasm

[Irishguy]

great post and i agree ..

i think the greatest restraint for space travel is governments. i think if george is smart, he wouod say 50 billion prize to the firstUS company to get there -- after setting out a criteria.

blasting people on the tip of a rocket will just not do it. i think this is where the X prize was smart.

i say go to the moon, i think NASA are a 1960 invention..excellent for beating the soviets but not so good in the 21 century..

also without getting all tinfoil hatty here, it is our nature to travel to expand...and remember the US would not exist as a country today if similar issues were not faced in the past.

PRIVATE INDUSTRY...they will develop reusable launchers because they will have to to remain viable...NASA will just keep looking for tax dollars. I think NASA should move into a support role for military and private government issues, spy satellites etc..

and even if it doesnt work in the short term...it will mean commercial space travel at a minimum in the next 10 or15 years.


just my opinion for what it is worth

[ghitma]

"NASA is set to unveil plans on Monday to take people and cargo to the moon."

And do what?

[COUNTrecount]

Been there, done that.

[theFIRMbss]

>Been there, done that [?!?]