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Bush calls for return to moon by 2020

Posted on: Thursday, 15 January 2004, 06:00 CST

Bush calls for return to moon by 2020

President envisions lunar base used as launching pad for Mars missions

By DAVID E. SANGER AND RICHARD W. STEVENSON New York Times

Thursday, January 15, 2004

Washington -- President Bush on Wednesday set a goal of returning to the moon by no later than 2020 and eventually using a lunar base as a launching pad to Mars. But in a speech that provided a sweeping vision for space exploration, Bush provided little new money for his idea and few technical details.

"We'll build new ships to carry man forward into the universe, to gain a new foothold on the moon and to prepare for new journeys to the worlds beyond our own," Bush said to an audience of astronauts and other space agency employees at NASA headquarters in Washington.

To accomplish the goal, Bush said the United States would retire its aging fleet of space shuttles six years from now and replace it with a new "Crew Exploration Vehicle," capable of ferrying people to a lunar base where, at some point that the president left unspecified, they would depart for Mars or beyond.

But officials said they had not decided what that vehicle would look like, and under the president's plan, no people will be launched in U.S. spacecraft between the shuttle's retirement in 2010 and the first launching of the exploration vehicle, envisioned for 2014.

Bush spoke 17 days shy of the first anniversary of the loss of the space shuttle Columbia and its seven astronauts, an event that revealed major failings at NASA and set off a broad re-evaluation at the White House. Over the next five years, the president said, he will seek an additional $1 billion to begin research on the program.

And in a move with profound implications for other space science, he directed NASA to divert $11 billion from existing programs -- especially the shuttle -- out of its current budget of $86 billion for the next five years to support development of the technology needed to reach the moon and Mars.

Summoning the spirit of Lewis and Clark, who set out two centuries ago to explore the wilds of the uncharted American West, Bush noted America's path-breaking history in space. But he also said that the nation was working on goals set years ago with technology that was now generations old.

For 30 years, he said, no human being has ventured more than 386 miles from Earth, roughly the distance from Washington to Boston.

"It is time for America to take the next step," Bush said.

Drawing a distinction with the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions and the rush to beat the Soviet Union to the moon during the Cold War in the 1960s, Bush invited other nations to participate in the program.

"The vision I outline today is a journey, not a race, and I call on other nations to join us on this journey in a spirit of cooperation and friendship," Bush said.

Sean O'Keefe, the administrator of NASA, was asked Wednesday whether those nations could include China and India, which have ambitions to reach the moon. "Who knows?" he responded. "I wouldn't want to speculate."

In his speech, Bush was vague about even the basic details of a human mission to Mars, including when the technology would be ready to make such a mission possible. He described the moon as the stepping stone, saying that its soil could be turned into rocket fuel, and its comparatively small gravitational pull would make it far easier to launch missions elsewhere in the solar system -- one of several competing theories about how best to propel such missions toward Mars.

"We do not know where this journey will end, yet we know this: Human beings are headed into the cosmos," he said.

In 1989, his father envisioned a permanent base on the moon and a manned mission to Mars and the next year set a goal of reaching Mars by 2020, the outside target date the current President Bush has set for Americans' trip to the moon.

The first President Bush's plan came to naught, but the program announced Wednesday was somewhat more specific, a series of missions that would start with robots and culminate, someday, in lengthy human explorations.

Political concerns

But if the vision Bush sketched was expansive, it was at least partly rooted in earthly political concerns.

With the nation deeply divided along partisan lines on the most pressing issues of the day, including the war in Iraq, tax cuts and the environment, Bush's political advisers had backed the plan as a way of associating the president with a unifying election-year goal that transcends politics.

But with the budget deficit growing rapidly and Democrats pressing for a greater focus on health care, education and other issues, Bush's plan is sure to face intense scrutiny on Capitol Hill on fiscal, scientific and ideological grounds.

Under the rough budget numbers issued Wednesday, relatively little new money would be spent over the next five years. Funds would be shifted from the shuttle and the International Space Station, which would be considered complete around 2010, and the big spending would probably not come until 2014. Democrats were quick to question whether Bush's projections were rooted in reality.

"While I'm encouraged by the administration's renewed interest in the space program, their interest doesn't reflect an honest assessment of the fiscal and organizational realities facing NASA and the financial realities facing the country," said Sen. Ernest F. Hollings (D-S.C.). "Disregarding these concerns will only further jeopardize the safety of our astronauts, the integrity and viability of our broad American agenda for space, and the nation's fiscal health."

INITIATIVE HIGHLIGHTS

CURRENT PROGRAMS

-- Return the space shuttle to flight and fulfill the U.S. commitment to the International Space Station.

-- Halt most work on the space station by 2010, confining the American role there to studies of the health effects of spaceflight.

-- Retire the space shuttle fleet around the same time.

NEXT GENERATION

-- Increase the use of robotic explorers throughout the solar system.

-- Start developing a new "Crew Exploration Vehicle" for venturing beyond Earth's orbit; test it by 2008 and launch its first mission by 2014. Use it to shuttle astronauts to the space station.

-- Send unmanned probes to the moon by 2008.

-- Return Americans to the moon between 2015 and 2020.

-- Establish a long-term presence on the moon to serve as a launching area for "human missions to Mars and to worlds beyond."

COSTS

-- Bush offered no overall price tag for the new ventures; his aides declined to provide one.

-- Bush would launch his plan by increasing NASA spending by a total of $1 billion over five years and by shifting $11 billion from existing space spending toward his priorities.

-- NASA spending would still represent less than 1% of the total federal budget.

Source: Associated Press

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