NASA estimates $104 billion for return to moon

By Tariq Malik

updated 8:23 p.m. ET Sept. 19, 2005

Despite a stalled space shuttle program, NASA is confident it can launch and sustain human exploration of the moon by 2018, the space agency’s top official said Monday.

The $104 billion plan calls for an Apollo-like vehicle to carry crews of up to four astronauts to the moon for seven-day stays on the lunar surface. The spacecraft, known as the Crew Exploration Vehicle or CEV, could even carry six-astronaut crews to the international space station or fly automated resupply shipments as needed, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said.

“Think of it as Apollo on steroids,” Griffin said as he unveiled the agency’s lunar exploration plan during a much-anticipated press conference at its Washington headquarters. “Unless the U.S. wants to get out of manned spaceflight completely, this is the vehicle we need to be building.”

The announcement comes as NASA works to resume operations at vital shuttle facilities affected by Hurricane Katrina, as well as solve external tank foam shedding problems to increase launch safety. But those problems are short-term compared to NASA’s exploration plan, Griffin said.

He said the costs of reconstruction in Katrina's wake should not derail the 13-year plan.

“The space program is a long-term investment in our future,” Griffin said. “We must deal with our short-term problems while not sacrificing our long-term investments in our future. 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.”

Griffin said the 13-year program leading to the first CEV lunar landing would cost 55 percent of the amount spent on the eight-year Apollo moon program, measured in constant dollars — and he stressed that the new program would be carried out on a pay-as-you-go basis, with no anticipated increase in NASA's current spending levels.

NASA’s space shuttle program is set to retire in 2010, with the first CEV launch targeted for no later than 2014, though an internal deadline is tentatively set for 2012, Griffin said. The 2012 launch and 2018 moon landing targets should allow NASA to achieve the space vision laid out by President Bush in 2004, which called for a return of humans to the moon by no later than 2020, Griffin added.

The vision set by Bush also called for NASA to refocus its sights on future manned missions to Mars. Griffin said that the fundamental technologies planned for lunar exploration may also be repurposed for future Mars missions.

"We started with the requirement to see what we had to do for Mars, and worked backward," he said.

Development of new spaceships
NASA’s lunar exploration plan entails the development of a reusable 18-foot (5.5-meter) diameter capsule capable of seating six astronauts in all, or a four-person moon expedition.

Slide show   Back to the moon, step by step NASA artwork traces each phase of a future mission to the moon and back.

Capped with an escape tower, the capsule would launch atop an in-line booster and rendezvous with an Earth departure stage and lunar lander in Earth orbit, which themselves would launch atop a separate, heavy-lift rocket. Both launchers would be derived from external tank, shuttle engine and solid rocket booster technology developed for the orbiter program, with power for the CEV to be provided via solar arrays.

"What we're really developing is the shuttle's successor," Griffin said. "The CEV is designed to go to low-Earth orbit."

Once in orbit, the CEV spacecraft could link up with other mission-specific vehicles and push on toward the moon or Mars, or take on other space tasks, Griffin said.

"You can do anything," he added.

The crew capsule's location and escape tower should make the spacecraft about 10 times safer than NASA's space shuttle launch system, with a projected failure rate of 1 in 2,000 instead of the 1-in-220 rate set for the shuttle. With the 1986 loss of the space shuttle Challenger and the 2003 Columbia accident, NASA has lost two orbiters and 14 astronauts on 114 flights.

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