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Bush Seeks Manned Mars Trip

Posted on: Friday, 9 January 2004, 06:00 CST

Jan. 9--WASHINGTON -- President Bush next week will announce plans to send U.S. astronauts back to the moon within the next decade and then on to Mars, presidential aides said Thursday.

Nearly a year after space shuttle Columbia disintegrated in the skies over Texas, Bush will outline an ambitious new agenda for NASA that includes building a permanent space station on the moon that could be used to launch flights to Mars or elsewhere in the solar system, aides said.

"The president is strongly committed to the exploration of space," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said. "In the immediate aftermath of the space shuttle Columbia tragedy, he made it very clear that our journey into space will go on."

Bush ordered a comprehensive review of the space program after the shuttle accident on Feb. 1, 2003. That review, which was led by Vice President Dick Cheney and included NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe, urged Bush not only to preserve manned spaceflight but to push it further than it has ever gone before.

Bush's announcement would be a shot in the arm for NASA, which was rocked by the Columbia explosion and subsequent questions from investigators about the space program's safety and management.

The administration's vote of confidence is expected to lead to future funding increases for NASA as it phases out the current fleet of space shuttles over the next decade and creates a new generation of space vehicles, officials said.

The cost of a lunar camp and a Mars expedition has been estimated at a minimum of $500 billion and up to $1 trillion, a tall order at a time when the U.S. government is facing a record budget deficit.

However, in laying out such lofty goals for the nation in a Kennedy-esque manner, Bush also burnishes his own image on the eve of his re-election bid.

White House aides have said Bush was looking for a grand plan that would elevate him in the eyes of Americans as he moves toward November's election. Rumors have persisted for weeks that Bush's big announcement would involve space exploration and therefore invite comparisons to former President John F. Kennedy.

The White House, however, would not confirm those reports until Thursday night, when McClellan spoke to reporters aboard Air Force One on Bush's return to Washington from a trip to Tennessee and Florida.

Bush's announcement would come amid the excitement already generated by last weekend's landing on Mars by the robotic rover Spirit, which was sending back unprecedented pictures of the red planet but is now stuck on the air bags that cushioned its landing.

Another NASA-dispatched rover, Opportunity, is expected to land on Mars Jan. 24.

O'Keefe, the NASA administrator, took part in an Internet chat about space exploration Thursday on the White House Web site and told his questioners that it's still unclear how far humans will be able to go in space or how soon.

"It is hard to say when we may be able to conduct regular interplanetary missions," O'Keefe told one online questioner. "One of the things about exploration is you never know what you may find until you get out there."

O'Keefe called the Mars rovers "a precursor mission."

"Once we figure out how to deal with the human effects, we can send humans to explore in real time," he said.

The announcement would place Bush in the middle of a long-standing debate about what the true goals of space exploration are, and whether they can be best achieved in the near term by humans or robotic probes.

Also at stake is the identity and future of NASA, which was criticized in the official report on the Columbia accident as having no clear ultimate goals for humans in space.

Though investigations into NASA's management and safety procedures rattled the space program, Bush has maintained since the Columbia explosion that space exploration would continue under his administration.

In addressing the nation hours after the explosion, Bush said, "The cause in which they died will continue. Mankind is led into the darkness beyond our world by the inspiration of discovery and the longing to understand. Our journey into space will go on."

Bush is following in the footsteps of his father, former President George Bush, who in 1989, on the 20th anniversary of the first manned moon landing, called for a 10-year plan to return Americans to the moon and eventually send them to Mars.

"Back to the moon, back to the future," the elder Bush said at the time. "And this time, back to stay. And then a journey into tomorrow, a journey to another planet: a manned mission to Mars."

It's not clear yet what a mission to the moon and Mars may cost the country today, but the price was estimated at about $500 billion when Bush's father proposed it; Congress nixed it at the time as too expensive.

NASA sources told the Orlando Sentinel that the space shuttle would be retired by 2010, the date the fleet would have to be recertified as safe to keep flying. The International Space Station would be completed by then, with the U.S. scaling back its involvement in the project by about 2013. Manned lunar missions could resume about the middle of that decade.

The space agency is developing an orbital space plane to carry crew and cargo to the station, and prototypes of the craft could be ready for testing by 2008.

Even many experts who have argued for a resumption of manned moon missions admit that the primary justification is not scientific. Unmanned probes and rocks from the Apollo era already have detailed the moon's mineral composition. One use might be for humans to operate a lunar telescope, but numerous other space telescopes have shown that such missions do not require a human presence.

"I do not think this is an undertaking that could be justified on its science payoffs alone," said John Logsdon, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University. "But it is an undertaking that goes well beyond science. I think the justification is that human spaceflight and exploration is part of the American identity. It's something that gives us a sense of our humanity."

The mission also could galvanize NASA in a way that was never possible with the space shuttle, which had the relatively unambitious goal of ferrying people and cargo to and from low Earth orbit.

"This is the kind of goal that can give NASA a focus and bring it back to excellent performance in human spaceflight," said Logsdon, who was on the Columbia accident board, which criticized NASA's lack of a clear mission. "Without a purpose, NASA would continue to be kind of a floundering institution. . . . If you're going to have humans in space, giving them someplace to go except in circles makes eminent sense."

But many scientists believe the costs of sending humans into space do not justify what such journeys might accomplish.

"It's hard to think of it in any other terms except absurd," Alex Roland, a former NASA historian and a professor of history at Duke University, said of Bush's expected proposal. "It's just election year politics that appeal to the aerospace industry and space enthusiasts."

Even before NASA sets its sights on a manned mission to Mars, returning to the moon likely would cost at least $100 billion, Roland said.

"I don't think NASA has given an accurate cost estimate for manned flight since the Apollo program," Roland said, noting that the shuttle program once was expected to pay for itself by charging commercial customers to put satellites in orbit.

"Right now, the automated spacecraft do exploration better than people," Roland said. "If you want exploration, you don't send people. When you put people in the equation, the primary mission is to get them back alive, it's not the science."

By Bob Kemper and Jeremy Manier, Tribune staff reporters. Tribune national correspondent Bob Kemper reported from Washington, and staff reporter Jeremy Manier reported from Chicago.

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

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