Posted on 04/15/2010 5:49:49 AM PDT by Schnucki
President Barack Obama will on Thursday unveil a "bold and daring" new space mission to send astronauts to Mars months after he scrapped a project to return to the Moon.
The president promised that the programme would pursue trips to "a sequence of deep-space destinations", buoyed by a Nasa budget that will be increased by $6 billion (£4 billion) over the next five years.
By 2015, the agency will determine "the specific heavy-lift rocket" needed to send astronauts to asteroids, the moons of Mars and eventually to Mars itself, details of the proposal published on the White House website said. It also allocates $3 billion (£2 billion) more to the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida, a 60 per cent increase over previous plans.
The proposals also give private industry the role of building new "space taxis" to take humans to the international Space Station, after the space shuttle project ends this year.
But while the White House promoted the plans as "bold and daring", many retired astronauts and Nasa officials viewed it as just the opposite.
Mr Obama has faced fierce criticism from lawmakers and space enthusiasts since budget proposals in February revealed plans to axe the expensive and under-funded Constellation rocket project designed to return US astronauts to the Moon by 2020. The last manned trip there was in 1972.
A panel of experts appointed by Mr Obama decided that the scheme had been so poorly funded by the Bush administration that its goals had become unrealistic.
But in an open letter to the President, Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the Moon, and other pioneering astronauts criticised the "devastating" decision to axe Constellation, saying the US space programme risked becoming "third rate" as a result.
With the demise of shuttle
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Didn’t W do that in a SOTU?.............
Wow, no President has ever wanted to send men to Mars before!
/sarcasm
Astronauts response, “President Obama, you first.”
On a four-year mission to boldly spread communism where no man has gone before.
Better that Obammy should go to Mars.
Or as Ralph Cramden would say “to the moon”. “Bang, zoom!”
He's not totally stupid. We never went to the moon in the first place.
i would be supportive if we could send Obama to Mars
Lip service.
Barack Obama to unveil ‘bold’ space mission to send astronauts to Mars
Been there. Done that. At least according to Sheila Jackson Lee...
Well, Barry, that sounds a whole lot cheaper than turning the moon into a death star, which is what China will probably do
sarc
no, ceej, they came here and probed you. you’ve told me the story....
I wish to G-d we could find a way to launch his arrogant islamic ass into space and leave him there.
Yet without a Space Shuttle replacement the U.S. will have to rely on the Russian Soyuz to get to the Internatational Space Station. And there will be no way to service the Hubble Space Telescope which the Soyuz is not designed to do.
Apparently all is cool with Barry as long as it takes us to someplace red, eh?
Apollo sites revisited
Apollo 15 and rangefinder
Shadows of Apollo Lunar Modules
Obama had to reverse course due to the outrage and loss of jobs in Fl. I wonder how the $6 billion will be allocated during those five years and what is in this year's budget. Next year, the money may not be available. This is pure PR.
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