A Commission of Experts on space appointed by the White House said yesterday that thereturn to the moon will not be viable. The problem is money. After making the calculations, the commission concluded that the new moon landing would cost€ 4.3 billionannually, beyond the 26,000 that make up the current annual budget of the US space agency. “With the current budget, exploration beyond Earth is simply not possible,” says Edward Crawley, a member of the panel and a professor of astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The report offers options to President Barack Obama, but ensures that NASA’s plans now must change. Five years ago, then-President George W. Bush proposed to resendastronauts to the moonin order to2020. To finance it, the plan wasremove ferries from circulationduring the coming year andclose the International Space Station by 2015.
All those deadlines have to change, experts say. Also, space exploration would work betterincluding other countries and private commercial companiesthe panel concluded. Former NASA Associate Administrator Alan Stern says the report brings to light that the rhetoric of NASA’s space plans “does not match its resources.” Obama, he adds, “basically has to choose between abandoning the manned special program or paying extra money.”
The panel, headed by retired Lockheed CEO Martin Norman Augustine, includes executives, scientists and former astronauts. Their conclusions are summarized in thatNASA won’t be able to fly beyond Earth orbit without spending more money, but at the same time special exploration with astronauts is very important. That will cost an extra 4.3 billion euros a year, and “there’s no question that it’s worth it,” Crawley said.
The question is where to go
Bush’s plan was to go to the moon, which could serve as training for flights toMars. The commission agreed thatMars is the goal, but that going to the Moon first is only one option, and that in fact it is not the best. Rather, they say,a “flexible approach” of exploring “near-ground” objects is recommended(near-Earth objects), such as asteroids or the moons of Mars, and then landing on the moon, but after those other explorations. “There are a lot of places in the neighborhood,” Crawley said. “In fact, going to the moon is more difficult than going to an object close to the earth.”
The panel chaired by Norman Agustine further recommended that thespace shuttleshould continueflying until early 2011to finish all the work related to the Space Station, rather than being retired in October 2010. Experts referred to Bush’s plans to shut down the Space Station by 2015 as something “which is not very wise”, since abandoning it to the five years of service, after having invested 20 years of construction is not logical. The life of that orbital laboratory must be extended, they add.
Once the shuttles are decommissioned, it could be six to seven years before the US has its own space transportation system, the panel’s experts estimate. The reason is that it will take a few years to build and test the new rocket.Ares. Meanwhile, NASA would have to count on theSoyuzRussian.
The panel also urged NASA to pay private companies to develop spacecraft that can carry astronauts from Earth to the International Space Station, and to other points in low Earth orbit. That might be riskier, but at the same time it would free up NASA to explore elsewhere in the cosmos. Elon Musk, CEO ofSpaceXHe argues within a few years he would be in a position to send astronauts into space for about 29 million euros per person, less than the 72 million that Russia charges. Musk hopes to launch his private rocket,Falcon 9, later this year or early next, from the Kennedy Space Center. In addition, according to experts, NASA should encourage other countries to join the US in exploring space beyond Earth orbit.
The panel has prepared alist of Obama’s options. In two of the cases, the federal government can choose not to spend any extra money on exploration, and then it would not go to the Moon or anywhere new for the next two decades. The other plans involve spending more money. If NASA continues with its current plans to travel to the moon, to save money it must then abandon the Ares I rocket plans, and focus only on the larger Ares V rocket. Other variations of the moon landing plan could choose to use a version of the system. of the shuttle that would use the white thrusters and the outer tank with an astronaut capsule attached to it.
NASA has already spent 11.1 billion euros on its current lunar plan, including the design and construction of the new rockets. The Ares 1 atmospheric test is scheduled for the last day of October.
Angela Posada-Swafford
