Executive doubts NASA has enough funds for moon
Posted on: Thursday, 12 February 2004, 06:00 CST
Executive doubts NASA has enough funds for moon, Mars
By MARCIA DUNN Associated Press
Thursday, February 12, 2004
An aerospace executive warned a presidential commission Wednesday that NASA probably does not have enough money -- or bright young stars -- to achieve President Bush's goal of returning astronauts to the moon and flying from there to Mars.
"It would be a grave mistake to undertake a major new space objective on the cheap. To do so, in my opinion, would be an invitation to disaster," said Norman Augustine, retired chairman of Lockheed Martin Corp. and head of a panel that examined the future of the space program for the first President Bush.
Augustine was among five aerospace experts who addressed the first public hearing of the current President Bush's space exploration commission, held in Washington.
Commission member Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist who is director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York, asked Augustine whether $15 billion a year for 10 years would be enough to set NASA on course to fulfill the moon-and-then-on-to-Mars vision put forth by Bush one month ago. The space agency's annual budget has been around $15 billion in recent years.
Augustine replied that he had not done enough analysis to give an answer, "but I guess if I had to bet, I'd bet that it wouldn't be enough."
Augustine, for one, said he was worried about NASA's graying work force.
Neither Bush nor NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe has put a price tag on the plan to return astronauts to the moon by 2020, let alone send them on to Mars a decade or more later. The president has proposed an extra $1 billion for NASA over the next five years for the initiative.
The commission's chairman, Edward "Pete" Aldridge, a retired Pentagon official, said both the White House and NASA believe the new space initiative is affordable with small budget increases and reallocations, at least for the foreseeable future.
The nine-member commission has 120 days to complete its review of how best to implement the policy.
On the Net:
Moon-Mars commission: www.moontomars.org Mars rovers: http:// marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov
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