American astronauts could return to the moon by 2018 without big increases in the nation’s budget for manned missions, NASA leaders said Monday, describing the spacecraft designed for the job as “Apollo on steroids.”
The total cost of the moon initiative would be $104 billion spread over the next 13 years, NASA chief Michael Griffin said at a news conference in Washington, where he outlined the plan. The program would cost 55 percent less than the Apollo moon missions, accounting for inflation, and would take about five years longer than the race to the first moon landing in 1969.
Although Griffin sought to downplay budget issues, the cost immediately raised questions in Congress, where lawmakers already are grappling with a reconstruction tab for Hurricane Katrina that could run as high as $200 billion.
In 2004, President Bush called for a return to the moon and eventually journeys to Mars, but representatives from both parties have expressed doubt that NASA can carry out those goals on its current annual budget of about $16 billion–nearly half of which goes to unmanned missions and other research.
One aspect of NASA’s plans that earned praise from some skeptics Monday was the union of Apollo design elements with components derived from the space shuttle.
In place of the shuttle, which NASA plans to retire by 2010, the agency wants to build an Apollo-like crew capsule called a Crew Exploration Vehicle that would ride atop a single solid rocket booster. The assembly also would carry a single, shuttle-like main engine as a second stage in order to reach orbit around Earth.
Griffin said the capsule should be bigger and more capable than the Apollo spacecraft and flexible enough to enable journeys to the International Space Station, the moon or Mars. “Unless America wants to get out of the manned space flight business completely, this is the vehicle we need to be building,” he said.
NASA also hopes to build a separate, much larger launch vehicle intended solely for carrying cargo, such as the lunar lander that astronauts would need to reach the moon.
Griffin said he expects to take the money for the project largely from the expected savings as the shuttle program ends and NASA funnels all of its funds for manned spaceflight into the new objectives. He said he would not take “one thin dime” out of NASA’s science programs and unmanned missions, such as the Mars rovers and the Cassini probe to Saturn.
“This is not about new money,” Griffin said. “It is about utilizing the money that we have to achieve different, and I believe far more exciting, goals.
But U.S. Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (R-N.Y.), chairman of the House Science Committee, which oversees NASA, said Monday that while he’s impressed by the technical elegance of Griffin’s plan he’s still unsure about how to pay for it.
“Given the funding shortfalls in the space shuttle program, there is simply no credible way to accelerate the development of a Crew Exploration Vehicle unless the NASA budget increases more than has been anticipated,” Boehlert said in a statement. “Whether such an increase is a good idea in the context of overall federal spending at this time is something neither Congress nor the administration has yet determined.”
NASA’s current budget projections are that the total bill for the space program will grow to about $18 billion by 2009, with increases in line with inflation after that.
Conceding that energetic congressional support of the new exploration plan is not a given, Griffin said NASA would take a “go as you pay” approach, explaining that the effort would be flexible and would proceed only as fast as funding allows. For example, the Crew Exploration Vehicle is slated to be finished by 2012, but that could be pushed back to 2014 if necessary.
Having wiggle room is no guarantee of fiscal restraint–past projects, such as the space station, have shown that delays can balloon the cost of space missions. But John Logsdon, director of the space policy institute at George Washington University, said he believes Griffin’s estimate of $104 billion is realistic and that it makes sense to anticipate that low funding could slow down the project by “a year or two.”
“We’re in no hurry–we’re not racing anybody,” he said. After the loss of the shuttle Columbia in 2003, Logsdon served on the accident review board that recommended NASA develop a clearer vision for manned spaceflight.
Griffin addressed the problem of justifying new moon missions even as states hit by Hurricane Katrina assess its toll. “When we have a hurricane, we don’t cancel the Air Force, we don’t cancel the Navy and we’re not going to cancel NASA,” said Griffin. “The space program is a long-term investment in our future.”
He also pointed out that much of the work on the engines and fuel tanks for the new vehicles likely would be done at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., and Lockheed Martin’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans–two sites affected by the hurricane.
The new capsule would be bigger than the Apollo spacecraft and about 50 percent heavier and would be capable of taking six crew members to the space station or four to the moon. Astronauts could stay on the lunar surface for about a week–though eventually NASA hopes to establish a moon base where crews could stay six months at a time.
Returning to Earth, the capsule would land by parachute, preferably on land but possibly in water as the 1960s-era capsules did. Unlike the Apollo capsules, the new version could be used up to 10 times.
Griffin said the moon effort would help pave the way for a Mars program. As yet there are no specific plans for that goal.
The resemblance of the new spacecraft to Apollo forebears is not surprising since basic space propulsion technology has changed relatively little in the last half-century, Griffin said. The similarity to the older plans, he said, shows that “by and large the Apollo folks got it right.”
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jmanier@tribune.com
