Man will return to the moon as early as 2015 to establish a permanent base from which to launch exploratory ventures into space, including a manned mission to Mars and “worlds beyond,” President Bush declared yesterday.
“We will build new ships to carry man forward into the universe, to gain a new foothold on the moon and prepare for new journeys to the worlds beyond our own,” the president said at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. “Human beings are headed into the cosmos.”
Mr. Bush said the aging space shuttle fleet, which has flown 100 missions, will be retired in 2010, by which time the International Space Station will have been completed.
Robotic missions to the moon will commence in 2008, and by 2015, humans — using a “Crew Exploration Vehicle” — will be ferried to the moon to begin extended missions living and working on the lunar surface. The exploration vehicle is to start testing no later than 2008.
Several years after the manned missions to the moon, the president seeks to use the moon to start missions to other planets.
“Our third goal is to return to the moon by 2020 as the launching point for missions beyond,” the president said. The last time a U.S. astronaut went to the moon was December 1972.
Mr. Bush pre-empted concerns about the plan’s military implications while dismissing the notion that the country was embarking on a costly “space race” akin to the one in the 1960s, as the United States and the Soviet Union spent billions on space-travel efforts. China last year launched its first manned space flight.
“We’ll invite other nations to share the challenges and opportunities of this new era of discovery. The vision I outline today is a journey, not a race, and I call on other nations to join us on this journey, in a spirit of cooperation and friendship,” he said.
Although critics say the plan is too costly, Mr. Bush put the expense at $12 billion for exploration over the next five years, with $1 billion of the amount in new funds. The beleaguered space agency’s budget would be reallocated to push the manned missions to the moon and Mars to the top of its agenda.
“I think it’s just a total fiscal absurdity. Bush has been spending money like we’ve got money to burn, and we don’t,” said Stephen Moore, president of the Club for Growth, a politically powerful conservative group.
Mr. Bush said establishing a permanent base on the moon could reduce the cost of future space travel and, perhaps, become a source of needed ingredients for such travel.
“Lifting heavy spacecraft and fuel out of the Earth’s gravity is expensive. Spacecraft assembled and provisioned on the moon could escape its far lower gravity using far less energy, and thus, far less cost. Also, the moon is home to abundant resources. Its soil contains raw materials that might be harvested and processed into rocket fuel or breathable air,” he said.
The president’s announcement comes less than a year after the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated upon re-entry in February, killing seven astronauts. Embattled NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe, whom Mr. Bush praised, said the president’s proposal proves his confidence in the agency.
Speaking to astronauts present and past and workers at the NASA headquarters, Mr. Bush said robots cannot replace man on the future journeys “across our solar system.”
“Robotic missions will serve as trailblazers — the advanced guard to the unknown,” he said. “Yet the human thirst for knowledge ultimately cannot be satisfied by even the most vivid pictures, or the most detailed measurements. We need to see and examine and touch for ourselves.
“And only human beings are capable of adapting to the inevitable uncertainties posed by space travel.”
The president employed lofty rhetoric — which made him misty eyed several times during his 20-minute speech — as he sought to set America on a renewed path to explore space.
“Mankind is drawn to the heavens for the same reason we were once drawn into unknown lands and across the open sea. We choose to explore space because doing so improves our lives, and lifts our national spirit. So let us continue the journey,” he said.
Mr. Bush listed the vast benefits of space exploration and research, saying astronauts have “expanded human knowledge, have revolutionized our understanding of the universe, and produced technological advances that have benefited all of humanity.”
“The exploration of space has led to advances in weather forecasting, in communications, in computing, search and rescue technology, robotics, and electronics. Our investment in space exploration helped to create our satellite telecommunications network and the Global Positioning System,” he said, noting that research also has led to medical technologies that “help prolong life.” The White House said those include CAT scanners, magnetic resonance imaging, kidney dialysis machines and programmable heart pacemakers.
Mr. Bush named Pete Aldridge, a former Air Force secretary and chief Pentagon weapons buyer and current board member of defense contractor Lockheed Martin Corp., to lead a commission to advise the government on the new space program.
The president was greeted on stage yesterday by astronaut Michael Foale, whose face was beamed onto a giant video screen from the space station 240 miles above the Earth, orbiting at 17,000 miles per hour. He told Mr. Bush that he is just one chapter in the ” ongoing story of discovery.”
“I feel fortunate to be part of this agency’s historic legacy, but I also know the NASA journey is just beginning,” said the astronaut, who is on his sixth space mission.
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