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Bush Details Space Plan at NASA Headquarters

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

Jan. 15--WASHINGTON -- Charting a new course for American space exploration, President Bush Wednesday said U.S. astronauts should return to the moon as soon as 2015 to build a permanent space base that would be used to launch man farther into the heavens, including a journey to Mars.

"Mankind is drawn to the heavens for the same reason we were once drawn into unknown lands and across the open sea," Bush said. "We choose to explore space because doing so improves our lives and lifts our national spirit. So let us continue the journey."

Bush detailed his plans at NASA's headquarters, though the White House had confirmed key components of the proposal last week. NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe called it a "historic day," and Michael Foale, commander of the international space station circling 240 miles above Earth, joined the event through a video hookup.

Bush's sweeping plan, whose potential cost could as much as $1 trillion threw its future into doubt even before it was formally proposed, includes completing work on the international space station by 2010, retiring the space shuttle around the same time and rewriting NASA's existing long-term exploration plans.

NASA's shuttles, grounded since the Columbia exploded during its return to Earth nearly a year ago, will return to service as soon as feasible, Bush said. But they would be retired by the end of the decade after nearly 30 years of service, to be replaced by a new spacecraft, dubbed the "crew exploration vehicle," which is still in the conceptual stage.

Under Bush's plan, America's next space vehicle is to be designed and ready for testing by 2008 and capable of its first manned space flight by 2014.

Starting in 2008, robotic vehicles, similar to the rover Spirit now on Mars, would be sent to the moon to analyze the environment and prepare the way for manned missions, Bush said.

The president set no timetable for the completion of a moon base or the first manned flights from there to Mars.

"In the past 30 years, no human being has set foot on another world or ventured farther up into space than 386 miles, roughly the distance from Washington, D.C., to Boston, Mass.," Bush said. "America has not developed a new vehicle to advance human exploration in space in nearly a quarter century.

"It is time for America to take the next steps," he said. "We do not know where this journey will end. Yet, we know this: Human beings are heading into the cosmos."

The administration said Bush's plans would cost $12 billion over the next five years, though $11 billion of that would come from NASA's current budget, which totals $86 billion over that time. A new commission, headed by former Air Force Secretary Pete Aldridge, will determine what existing NASA programs would be reshaped or eliminated to achieve Bush's vision.

Bush would add $1 billion in new money to NASA's budget over the next five years to pay the remaining costs, and said he would include the first $200 million in his 2005 budget proposal, which is due out shortly. The president called the relatively modest sum a "solid beginning," and the bulk of the program's costs would be left for future presidents to pay, if they chose to continue the program.

Bush invited other nations to join the U.S. not only to share in the benefits of continued space exploration but to help offset the costs.

"The vision I outline today is a journey, not a race," Bush said, drawing a contrast with the space race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. O'Keefe, NASA's administrator, said agencies from Europe, Russia and Canada have expressed tentative interest in Bush's plans.

The president announced his new agenda for manned space flight nearly a year after the space shuttle Columbia exploded Feb. 1, killing the seven astronauts aboard, and just days before his State of the Union address to Congress outlining his plans for the coming the year.

It was the latest in a series of major policy announcements by Bush this month as he enters the election year. He has already outlined plans to overhaul U.S. immigration laws, and The New York Times reported Wednesday that the White House plans to spend $1.5 billion this year to promote marriage, though the White House would not confirm that.

Unlike other election-year proposals, which appeal to specific voting blocs, Bush's space agenda is intended to provide what his father, former President George H.W. Bush, once called "the vision thing"--an inspiring, unifying message that appeals to voters of all stripes.

Critics noted that most of the program's cost would not be incurred until after Bush leaves office, even if he were to win a second term. Others complained that Bush would siphon away money needed closer to home, either to fund social programs now facing the budget axe or to pay down a federal deficit approaching $500 billion.

Tom Schatz, president of the watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste, called Bush's plan unaffordable and risky.

"While space exploration may be a noble idea, it is not feasible at this time," Schatz said. "Until the federal government brings the record deficit down to Earth, it should not launch expensive new space programs of questionable scientific value."

Bush's father had proposed in 1989 to send a man to Mars, but that program was deemed by Congress to be too expensive and was quickly killed.

A number of congressional Republicans rallied around Bush, however. "The president's vision is exactly what NASA needs: a bold, unifying mission that honors America's 40-year legacy of triumph and sacrifice in human space flight," said House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, whose district in Texas abuts NASA's Johnson Space Center.

Anticipating criticism for proposing such a hugely expensive program, Bush focused attention on what he called the great number of technological advances that have been derived from the space program and the promise of future technological breakthroughs.

Many scientists have worried that an expanded program of manned exploration would divert resources from productive unmanned missions. But the director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory -- the home of the recent unmanned Mars rovers -- said Wednesday that robotic exploration would not suffer from a new focus on human exploration.

"From my experience, when you have a human program it also strengthens the robotic program," said JPL director Charles Elachi.

Elachi said it appears that unmanned missions would actually expand to support the manned program. NASA officials said Wednesday that they plan to launch a lunar orbiter in 2008 and a mission to the lunar surface -- perhaps a rover -- in 2009.

Those flights would be the first of what officials say would be a wave of new unmanned probes with a new mandate: To blaze a path for humans. Elachi said that could include a search for resources on the moon that could be used for fuel, and ice at the lunar poles that could be used by astronauts for their water supplies.

Athough Bush spoke Wednesday of using the moon as a low-gravity base for launching missions to other worlds, some experts are skeptical that such an approach would be practical. But Elachi said one clear advantage of such an outpost would be to prepare humans for longer space missions.

"Whether it's a physical stepping stone [to Mars] remains to be seen," Elachi said. "But it could be a training stepping stone."

Where the money for such missions will come from is another unknown. Tentative budget projections shown Wednesday by O'Keefe suggest that some of the savings would come from the international space station, which would see a sharp decrease in funding after 2011. By the end of that decade, most of NASA's manned spaceflight budget would be devoted to exploration of other worlds.

--Tribune staff reporter Jeremy Manier contributed to this story from Pasadena, Calif.

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(c) 2004, Chicago Tribune. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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