A Presidential panel is recommending that NASA change it’s space exploration plans and skip a return to the Moon for other goals:
WASHINGTON – NASA needs to make a major detour on its grand plans to return astronauts to the moon, a special independent U.S. panel has told the White House.
NASA has picked the wrong destination with the wrong rocket, the panel’s chairman said Thursday. A test-flight version of the new rocket, Ares, is on a launch pad at Cape Canaveral, awaiting liftoff later this month. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration should be concentrating on bigger rockets, the panel members said.
Norman Augustine, chairman of the White House-appointed panel reviewing the agency’s spaceflight plans, said it makes more sense to land on a nearby asteroid or one of the moons of Mars. He said that could be done sooner than returning to the moon in 15 years as NASA has outlined.
The exploration plans now under fire were pushed by then-President George W. Bush after the 2003 Columbia space shuttle disaster. The moon-Mars plan lacks enough money, thanks to budget diversions, the panel said in a 155-page report. Starting in 2014, NASA needs an extra $3 billion a year if astronauts are going to travel beyond Earth’s orbit, the panel said.
The key is where to explore space. In a report, the panel outlines eight options and leaves the choice to President Barack Obama. Three options are part of what the panel calls a “flexible path” to explore someplace other than the moon, eventually heading to a Mars landing far in the future. Augustine said the flexible path option, which includes no-landing flights around the moon and Mars, makes more sense from both a physics and finance standpoint.
Where we’ll get the money for even this scaled back effort is, of course, another question.
October 23rd, 2009 at 10:17 am
Hey, just a thought… we have a space station all assembled and ready to go. How about we use it for something besides a long-duration barracks for a couple of astronauts?
Mars or an asteroid are a LONG way off. We don’t even know how to shield astronauts from solar flares for the months of travel time it would take to get there. It wasn’t a huge problem for Apollo because they were only out there for a few days.
October 23rd, 2009 at 10:35 am
As I understand it the ISS will be obsolete and need to be retired by the mid 2010s or so
October 23rd, 2009 at 2:10 pm
Probably… That would absolutely typical of our space effort so far. Been there, done that, spent 10’s of billions of dollars, let’s abandon it and move on to something else.
October 23rd, 2009 at 2:11 pm
Yep.
And from what I’ve read Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin would agree with you