When the ongoing
celebrations of the 40th anniversary of Neil Armstrong's and Buzz
Aldrin's
historic strolls on the moon are finally over, NASA will be facing one
of its
biggest challenges yet: determining the future of U.S. manned
spaceflight. Should the United States return to the moon after a
decades'
long absence or press ahead for more distant destinations?
Today, NASA is shooting
for a manned return to the moon by 2020 to establish a lunar base where
astronauts could live for up to six months. Former President George W. Bush
introduced the new moon program in the wake of the 2003 space shuttle Columbia accident.
The grand plan was
conceived in the aftermath of the 2003 space shuttle Columbia accident and NASA has already
spent almost $6.9 billion on the effort. Under the plan, the space shuttle will
be retired at the end of next year and for the next five years -- as NASA
builds new rockets and capsules capable of reaching the moon -- NASA plans to
buy seats on the Russian Soyuz to complete missions to the ISS (International
Space Station).
President Obama's NASA budget also shuts down the space shuttle program in late
2010, but fully funds the eight remaining flights to completely build out the
International Space Station. Budget documents released May 7 even allow for a
ninth mission to deliver the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer to the
space station if the first eight can be "safely and affordably
completed in calendar year 2010."
The current plan, though, is under scrutiny as Obama in May ordered a thorough
review of NASA's goals and objectives. A blue-ribbon panel of experts is
conducting the review, led by former Lockheed Martin CEO Norman Augustine. The
panel's completed review is expected in August.
"I am a real believer in the value of this nation's human spaceflight
activities and will do everything I can to provide the information needed to
help the country maintain the spectacular arc of progress NASA has fueled for
five decades," Augustine said in a statement when he accepted the
position.
Count former Aldrin among
those who think NASA is off target with its current plans to reach the moon
by 2020. Aldrin, the second human to walk on the moon's surface during the
historic 1969 Apollo 11 mission, calls the new race to the moon a
"glorified rehash of what we did 40 years ago."
Instead of targeting the moon, Aldrin outlines an ambitious manned space flight
plan for NASA that uses the moon for little more than a staging area for a 2025
manned landing on the Martian moon Phobus. What exploration takes place on the
moon, Aldrin urges, should be jobbed out to an international consortium.
Writing in the August edition of Popular Mechanics, Aldrin said, "As
I approach my 80th birthday, I'm in no mood to keep my mouth shut any longer
when I see NASA heading down the wrong road and that's exactly what I see
today." Aldrin further writes of NASA's lunar plans, "The agency's
current Vision for Space Exploration will waste decades and hundreds of billion
dollars...Instead of a stepping stone to Mars, NASA's current lunar plan is a
detour."
Aldrin emphatically disagrees with NASA on scuttling the shuttle.
"NASA's looming short-term dilemma is the five-year gap between the
shuttle's scheduled retirement next year and the debut of the Ares I rocket and
the Orion spacecraft in 2015," Aldrin wrote. "During that hiatus,
we'll be writing checks to the Russians to let our astronauts hitch rides on
Soyuz rockets to the ISS, in which we've invested $100 billion. I find that
simply unacceptable."
Instead, Aldrin argues, NASA should stretch out the remaining shuttle
flights
to 2015 while stepping up subsidies to commercial space flight
companies such as SpaceX to shuttle astronauts and cargo to the ISS. As
for the
moon itself, Aldrin recommends an international consortium to test the
commercial possibilties on the moon.
As Aldrin puts it, NASA should "scrap our go-it-alone lunar program
and let international partners -- China, Europe, Russia, India, Japan -- do the
lion's share of the planning, technical development and funding." Under
Aldrin's plan, NASA would participate in the international lunar program by
providing technological leadership.
"By renouncing our goal of being the first to the moon (again), we would
call off Space Race II with the Chinese and encourage them to channel their
ambitious lunar efforts into the consortium," Aldrin wrote. "We
should also invite China to join the space station partnership.
Its Shenzhou spacecraft would help transport cargo and U.S. astronauts to the station."
NASA, meanwhile, would spend its efforts on developing new spacecraft capable
of duration flights to deep points in space and, in particular, Mars, using
comets, asteroids and Phobos as stepping stones. Aldrin proposes that by 2018
NASA could mount a one-year flight to reach the comet 46P/Wirtanen. That would
be followed by a flight in 2019 or 2020 to the asteroid 2001 GP2.
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