A scene from the movie Moon, looking back at Earth. A permanent Moon base is now even less likely than previously imagined.
Credit: Sony
WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama's 2011 budget, to be submitted to U.S. Congress Monday, will propose abandoning a program to return NASA astronauts to the Moon, two Florida newspapers reported.
Citing administration and NASA officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity, the reports said the White House would call on the U.S. space agency to focus on other programs, including the development of commercial services to ferry U.S. astronauts to the International Space Station, or ISS.
Florida Today and the Orlando Sentinel, two papers based in the area around the Kennedy Space Centre in Cape Canaveral, said Obama would seek to boost NASA's budget by six billion dollars over five years, despite a pledge to freeze most discretionary spending.
No money for Moon or Mars
But the boost will fall far short of the money NASA needs to finance the Constellation program launched in 2004 by President George W. Bush after the space shuttle Columbia crash in 2003 effectively brought the shuttle program to a close.
Constellation envisioned the return of NASA astronauts to the Moon by 2020, and then using Earth's nearest neighbour as a base for manned trips to Mars.
But the Bush administration did not set aside a sufficient budget to develop the program, according to the Augustine commission, a group of independent experts who examined the program at Obama's request.
ISS is new NASA priority
The commission's report, released at the end of 2009, proposed a range of alternatives for the future of manned space travel. The Obama administration's approach will give priority to development of a way to get NASA astronauts to the ISS after the U.S. shuttle program winds down in September 2010.
Astronauts will have access to Russia's Soyuz spacecraft until an alternative is available.
There are five more shuttle flights planned, all of them to the ISS, with the next scheduled for February 7.
The possibility of keeping the program running until 2015 has not been ruled out by the administration, officials said.
Reports said Obama's cut backs could face tough opposition, with a spokesman for Florida Democratic Senator Bill Nelson telling Florida Today the proposals could "decimate the space program." A spokesman for Boeing, a key NASA subcontractor, said the company had not been advised about the proposals and urged patience.
"This is the first step, Congress will debate it, there will be a lot of hearings ... before a final decision is made," Edmund Memi said.
Obama Abandons Plan to Return to the Moon, A Woeful Decision
For the Obama Administration to abandon the plan and endeavor for the U.S. to return to the Moon and go to Mars and its two moons is for the Obama Administration to forgo the ultimate frontier, for momentary budgetary convenience and narrow political expediency, and to cede U.S. and collaborative EU leadership in space science and exploration to India, China, Japan, Russia and the E.U., on its own, that are rapidly advancing as competitors in these regards. Limiting U.S. involvement in outer space to international space station and space shuttle missions and runs, is to retard and stagnate the U.S. space program and not to advance and make progress in technological, navigational or knowledge acquisition or application space science in competitive and meaningful ways. Our moon, Mars and its moons, and the mineral-rich nearby asteroids (inevitable extraterrestrial industrial abodes) will be thoroughly explored, studied, incrementally engineered for human settlement and resource harnessing, and colonized in the near-term foreseeable future by the space-faring nations with the most space-science and exploration vision, ongoing and advancing education and drive to peacefully extend their frontiers, knowledge, technologies and economies to territories beyond the boundaries of the socially, politically and economically fractious and contentious Earth. Those nations that occupy and control the near-Earth celestial territories will become the richest and, possibly, securest nations on Earth (from a national security telecommunications and military standpoint), whose treasuries and industry will in large measure be insulated from the economic volatility on Earth that is the result of political and labor unrest. Near-Earth space colonization and industrialization will bring or afford unparalleled economic opportunities and benefits, as well as a such higher standard of living (quality of life), to the people of the space colonizing nations. The Obama Administration's unfortunate decision is a commonplace style of decision in the U.S. of short-term gain at the cost of unheeded long-term pain.
US Space program
There is no question that the crowning achievement of the US space program was the Voyager Missions and there follow up.
US policy toward Space Exploration has always been politically driven ever since Kennedy and the Moon Missions. NASA cut alot of corners and risked much to beat the Russians and it was only a miracle that the whole project 'got off the ground' at all. Various Administrations have played the 'Space Card' to try and distract their population every time their various lunatic foreign policy initiatives have come home to roost or their lack of meaningful social initiatives at home have precipitated yet another crisis.
NASA has developed into conservative hopelessly bureaucratized dinosaur and should be wound up. It is only natural that countries who historically have a national vision dedicated to other than the personal acquisition of wealth and power regardless of the consequences should take up the space challenge and develop an meaning full extra-terrestrial culture.
Bonebrow
Smart move Obama!
Obama did not abandon plans to return to the Moon.
Obama cancelled Constellation, with its Ares rocket.
The new plan looks at four areas:
new ways of getting into space;
extending the life and use of the space station;
the agency's relationship with the private sector; and its scientific mission.
The first part of the plan, known as the transformative technology
initiative, will cost $7.8 billion over five years. It will develop
orbiting fuel depots, rendezvous-and-docking technologies, advanced
life-support systems that recycle all of their materials, and better
motors for spacecraft. The agency will also develop new engines,
propellants and materials as part of a $3.1 billion heavy-lift
programme, to allow it to send craft well beyond Earth, while $4.9
billion is allowed for advances in areas such as sensors,
communications and robotics.
Very smart move by Obama, cleaner, cheaper, safer space technologies. Bringing in private companies, brings competition to make better technologies at a cheaper price.
NASA has been using outdated 30+ year old technology, back in the days when mobile phones if you had one, came with a briefcase on wheels and a computer took up the whole house.
Props to Obama, maybe now we can incorporate subquantum kinetics into our propulsion systems.
Peace,
no quizzle
Going to the moon
It's not worth the money to send humans there and especially not to Mars. Machines, yes.
Governments need to take a back seat
It is time for governments to start to take the back seat and become 'facilitators' for private enterprises.
Looking in the past, the major great sea voyages were always done by privateers who received funding from companies and patrons, with their government's backing. The Navy (wholly government owned and trained ships analogous to NASA) would only do initial exploration, usually for nation-specific goals such as conquest or expansion, but the main follow-up work in colonisation, company trade, mining or other exploration with lasting impact would be done by private companies.
This direction by the Obama administration is a good one. NASA has broken the hard groundwork to enable space exploration to start, but it's never been realistic that governments will keep expending the enormous amounts of money required to keep a space program functioning in the far future. Eventually governments need to withhold direct investments and start to fulfil their role as regulators.
Private enterprises are starting to be the only entities which can further the space exploration cause, and for this to happen there must be an economic basis for them to function. Currently the limit is in the high expense it is for getting objects into space. If government research focusses in this direction, the economics of the private system will start to be more viable.
Well have we received permission?
We can't leave this planet until we are allowed, except those that are already leaving for black ops.