NASA’s moon plan raises questions

By Leonard David

Senior space writer

updated 2:26 p.m. ET Sept. 20, 2005

NASA’s rollout of a strategy to return people to the moon and eventually plant footprints on the distant sands of Mars is sparking both praise and criticism.

Michael Griffin, NASA’s administrator, on Monday publicly unveiled the space agency’s $104 billion mastermind of a mission that puts astronauts back on the moon by 2018, setting the stage for future expeditionary trips to the Red Planet.

New space travel hardware — a Crew Exploration Vehicle and the requisite boosters for tossing people and cargo beyond low Earth orbit — is part of the must-have agenda.

But there's a 21st-century analogy to one of Newton’s laws of physics that drives rocketry: For every action plan, there is always an equal but opposite reaction.

Lacks pizzazz, budgetary timing
Some pundits took a stance similar to those at The New York Times, who saluted NASA’s “Apollo on steroids” approach in an editorial but also noted: “Unfortunately, the new plan lacks the pizzazz to inspire public support and will be operating under budget constraints that make delays or overruns likely.”

NASA’s roadmap to the moon, Mars and beyond also prompted House Science Committee Chairman Sherwood Boehlert, a Republican from New York, to applaud the exploration architecture while underscoring budgetary concerns.

Boehlert congratulated Griffin and his team on the “very thorough work” they have done. “While we are still reviewing the details, it appears that NASA has come up with an effective way to move forward, making the most of past U.S. investments in human space travel to enable us to enter the next phase of exploration in the safest, least expensive and most efficient way.”

That being said, Boehlert added: “The question Congress and the administration will still have to grapple with most is not the nature or desirability of the exploration architecture, but rather its timing.”

The lawmaker cited funding shortfalls in the space shuttle program, explaining that there is simply “no credible way” to accelerate the development of the shuttle follow-on — the Crew Exploration Vehicle — unless the NASA budget increases more than has been anticipated. 

“Whether such an increase is a good idea in the context of overall federal spending at this time is something neither Congress nor the administration has yet determined,” he said in a written statement.

Positive and negative features
Mars Society President Robert Zubrin assessed the new NASA plan, spotting significant positive and negative features.

“On the positive side, it recognizes the need for the development of a true heavy-lift launch vehicle, and takes concrete steps the preserve the shuttle industrial infrastructure necessary to produce such a vehicle,” Zubrin told Space.com. The importance of doing so “cannot be overemphasized,” he added.

FREE VIDEO Return trip NASA chief Michael Griffin describes the technology NASA will use to send astronauts back to the moon. NASA

The heavy-lift booster is absolutely necessary to enable human exploration of the moon and Mars, Zubrin said, with Griffin reversing his predecessor’s “unworkable” space architecture concepts.

Zubrin also said there is negative aspect to the heavy-lift launch vehicle decision.

While preserving the heavy-lifter infrastructure, the plan relegates its development to a subsequent administration. “In consequence, for the next 13 years, NASA will continue to send crew after crew up and down to low Earth orbit, at a cost of some $70 billion, for no justifiable purpose whatsoever.”

In the post-Columbia environment, Griffin and others “have made the point that if we are to accept the costs and risks of human spaceflight, we should be undertaking missions that are worthy of those costs and risks,” Zubrin explained. “But for the next 13 years, we will continue not do so.”

NASA is acting in accord with President Bush’s “Vision for Space Exploration” as enunciated in January 2004, Zubrin said. “That policy, however, was formulated by a White House which lacked a competent NASA administrator to advise it. Now that we have a qualified NASA administrator, this policy needs to be revisited and reformulated,” he concluded.

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