To the Moon? Maybe Not on NASA's Budget

NASA's Plans Not So Much a Physical Challenge for Engineers as it is a Financial Challenge for Budgeteers

(AP)  NASA will test the powerful first stage of its new Ares moon rocket Thursday, a milestone in a program that has already spent $7 billion for a rocket that astronauts may never use.

When that first stage is tested, it will be mounted horizontally. The engine will fire, shake and make lots of noise. But by design, it will not leave the ground. The same could be said for NASA's plans to go to the moon, Mars or beyond Earth orbit. It's not so much a physical challenge for engineers as it is a financial challenge for budgeteers.

The $108 billion program to return to the moon by 2020 was started five years ago by then-President George W. Bush. But a special independent panel commissioned by President Barack Obama concluded that the plan cannot work on the existing budget schedule because it's likely to cost at least an extra $30 billion through 2020.

Even NASA's soon-to-be-retired space shuttle fleet has proved that getting off the ground isn't a given, with two launch scrubs this week of a mission to the international space station.

The space station is finally finished. Yet NASA's long-standing plans call for junking the outpost in about seven years. If the agency keeps that schedule, it would mean that in the next decade NASA's astronauts could be going nowhere if there's no moon mission.

Obama's special panel looked at other options available for the space program — such as skipping the moon and going directly to Mars or an asteroid, or just cruising in the solar system. But they kept using words like "least worst scenario" during their final public deliberations earlier this month. In their report due Monday, they will also give advice about the end of the shuttle and space station programs.

The White House told the panel to aim to stay within current budget estimates.

"If you want to do something, you have to have the money to do it," said panel member and former astronaut Sally Ride. "This budget is very, very, very hard to fit and still have an exploration program."

The options that face the White House come down to variations and combinations of these themes: Pay more, do less or radically change American space policy. The most radical idea would be to hand much of NASA's duties to private companies.

"The problem is the size 14 foot in the size 10 shoe," said American University public policy professor Howard McCurdy, author of several books about the American space program. "It's just really hard to fit it all in. A lot of the assumptions made in 2004 (for the Bush plan) have just not materialized."

The panel will not tell the president which choice to make. That will be up to Obama. Until NASA is told to change course, it will continue with the Bush plan.

Thus, the first big test of moon program hardware is the rocket stage firing Thursday in Promontory, Utah. That test is of the main get-off-the-ground engine in the Ares I rocket. The full test rocket, complete with a dummy crew capsule and escape system, Ares I-X, is supposed to get a launch test at Kennedy Space Center on Oct. 31.

That rocket will be taller than the space shuttle, illustrating an agency eager to launch something new.

"NASA has been like a star athlete that's broken world records back in the 1960s and is stuck in the bleachers ever since, unable to suit up for what it does best," said space scientist Alan Stern, who quit last year as NASA's associate administrator for science.

But, as has been the case since about 1971, money is holding engineers back, Stern said.

"Bush never delivered on his promise to up NASA's funding," Stern said. He added that the previous NASA administrator "tried cannibalizing NASA (to pay for exploration) but that wasn't enough."

While the Bush administration cut some spending, the "real killer" came in Obama's first budget, which starts in October, said Scott Pace, the No. 3 at NASA during the Bush administration. Obama cut $3 billion from projections for future spending on exploration, with even more cut when inflation is factored in, said Pace, director of space policy at George Washington University.

The administration gave the agency an extra $400 million, however, as part of the stimulus package.

Former NASA associate administrator Scott Hubbard said if the United States invited other countries, including Russia and perhaps China, on the next space journey, it would keep America's costs lower. It's an idea the panel and some in the Obama administration have discussed.

Some kind of change is needed in NASA plans, said Hubbard, a professor at Stanford University: "What we ended up with now is clearly unsustainable."

[Keith Geddes]

Good grief..EVERYTHING costs.. I just watched the `making of` feature on the more recent edition of Kubricks 2001.. well, all the talk of the future, in the 60`s they are saying, by 2001 there WILL be passenger service to the moon, telecommunication using the then idea of radiophone and typewriter.. its all so, enthusing.. but THESE days, everything is being cut back, so called credit crunch which IS being proven bit by bit to be more deliberate than they let on.
The surviving banks ARE well off, but they dont shout it. Same in the UK.
We are told, through government help, the public now `technically` OWN some banks.. hahahaha.. WELL.. how much for Apollo? Massive Saturn V.. impressive for its time and STILL.. faulty fuel valves stop a shuttle launch countdown. SO.. no one can guarrantee a faultless `vehicle` by NOW? WHY not? The age of the accountant has already killed so much industry.. everything is now so p/c we arent told the real reasons for things. PATHETIC. With the current climate we may as well all hibernate.. and THEN lets see who starts doing something, like trying to dominate. Where has the fight to `evolve` gone? Eh? HOW do we progress if no one can afford to take chances??
New technology IS being drip fed..deals being done to use old systems for other aervices..I`m fed up with misinformation. WAY too much politics.. IT DOES NOT make the world go round, its slowing it DOWN!!

[Wolf1944]

Some of us still dream of a space-faring super-civilization, but that dream may be hard to sell with a lousy economy and two wars eating up our resources.

I had always hoped to see people on Mars, but I'm beginning to doubt that I'll make it.

Maybe it'll all start to happen under the next President.

[rf35]

Partnering with other nations for beyond near-Earth orbit missions may indeed be the only option to continue a useful space program. However, I would use caution in which nations we partner with. Russia maybe, but not China. Japan, S. Korea, even India would be safer choices.

[RobertSugg]

I hope NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, Lori Garver, and the President will feel the fire for Space-Based Solar Power using lunar materials. SBSP has been favorably reviewed by NASA, DOE, and DOD National Security Space Office. The concept was introduced by Dr. Peter Glaser of A.D. Little Corp. more than 40 years ago. SBSP solves the permanent clean energy requirement and the climate problem here on the ground. It defends the earth from NEOs by using them. Studies by Space Studies Institute in the mid-1980s show that 99% of sunsat manufacture can come from lunar constituents with a 97% cost savings vs. earth-launched materials. Machinery on the moon can be teleoperated from here with a short time delay. It's fortunate that the moon presents to us one face at all times for this application. SBSP can be pursued on restricted initial budgets, with NASA leveraging private, inter-agency, and multinational partnerships. Gerard K. O'Neill's Alternative Plan for US National Space Program, first presented to Bush 41, delivers the rationale for SBSP and the optimum breakout path for development and settlement not only of earth-moon space, but for the eventual exploration and utilization of the solar system out to the shelf and beyond. O'Neill's numbers had the support of the science advisor to the president who was around in the mid-1908s.

[RobertSugg]

Correction: mid-1980s in the last line.