From Space.com:
(SPACE.com) -- NASA briefed senior White House officials Wednesday on its plan to spend $100 billion and the next 12 years building the spacecraft and rockets it needs to put humans back on the Moon by 2018.
The space agency now expects to roll out its lunar exploration plan to key Congressional committees on Friday and to the broader public through a news conference on Monday, Washington sources tell SPACE.com.
U.S. President George W. Bush called in January 2004 for the United States to return to the Moon by 2020 as the first major step in a broader space exploration vision aimed at extending the human presence throughout the solar system.
NASA has been working intensely since April on an exploration plan that entails building an 18-foot blunt body crew capsule and launchers built from major space shuttle components including the main engines, solid rocket boosters and massive external fuel tanks.
That plan, called the Exploration Systems Architecture Study, was presented by NASA Administrator Mike Griffin, his space operations chief Bill Gerstenmaier and several other senior agency officials Wednesday afternoon to senior White House policy officials, including an advisor to U.S. Vice President Richard Cheney and the president's Deputy National Security Advisor J.D. Crouch.
NASA's plan, according to briefing charts obtained by SPACE.com, envisions beginning a sustained lunar exploration campaign in 2018 by landing four astronauts on the Moon for a seven-day stay.
The expedition would begin, these charts show, by launching the lunar lander and Earth departure stage (essentially a giant propulsion module) on a heavy-lift launch vehicle that would be lifted into orbit by five space shuttle main engines and a pair of five-segment shuttle solid rocket boosters.
Once the Earth departure stage and lunar lander are safely in orbit, NASA would launch the Crew Exploration Vehicle capsule atop a new launcher built from a four-segment shuttle solid rocket booster and an upper stage powered by a single space shuttle main engine.
The CEV would then dock with the lunar lander and Earth departure stage and begin its several day journey to the Moon.
NASA's plan envisions being able to land four-person human crews anywhere on the Moon's surface and to eventually use the system to transport crew members to and from a lunar outpost that it would consider building on the lunar south pole, according to the charts, because of the regions elevated quantities of hydrogen and possibly water ice.
One of NASA's reasons for going back to the Moon is to demonstrate that astronauts can essentially "live off the land" by using lunar resources to produce potable water, fuel and other valuable commodities.
Such capabilities are considered extremely important to human expeditions to Mars which, because of the distances involved, would be much longer missions entailing a minimum of 500 days spent on the planet's surface.
NASA's Crew Exploration Vehicle is expected to cost $5.5 billion to develop, according to government and industry sources, and the Crew Launch Vehicle another $4.5 billion. The heavy-lift launcher, which would be capable of lofting 125 metric tons of payload, is expected to cost more than $5 billion but less than $10 billion to develop, according to these sources.
NASA's plan also calls for using the Crew Exploration Vehicle, equipped with as many as six seats, to transport astronauts to and from the international space station. An unmanned version of the Crew Exploration Vehicle could be used to deliver a limited amount of cargo to the space station.
NASA would like to field the Crew Exploration Vehicle by 2011, or within a year of when it plans to fly the space shuttle for the last time. Development of the heavy lift launcher, lunar lander and Earth departure stage would begin in 2011.
By that time, according to NASA's charts, the space agency would expect to be spending $7 billion a year on its exploration efforts, a figure projected to grow to more than $15 billion a year by 2018, that date NASA has targeted for its first human lunar landing since Apollo 17 in 1972.
Back to the Moon
Moderator: Dictators in Training
-
Zanchief
Zanchief wrote:lyion wrote:If we didnt want Canada, why the fuck would we want the moon? The property is about equally valuable.
There might be oil there?
CANADA CANADA CANADA CANADA.
Do it with me so you can purge it from your system and actually post something of consequence once you’re done.
Actually, oil magnates are flocking to Canada, due to the fact that it has the most oil of any other country besides Saudi Arabia. I'm serious. I just read about it yesterday in the Wall Street Journal.
From Associated Press:
NASA estimated Monday it will cost $104 billion to return astronauts to the moon by 2018 in a new rocket that combines the space shuttle with the capsule of an earlier NASA era.
NASA Administrator Michael Griffin, in unveiling the new lunar exploration plan announced by President Bush last year, said he is not seeking extra money and stressed that the space agency will live within its future budgets to achieve this goal.
He dismissed suggestions that reconstruction of the Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Katrina might derail the program first outlined by President Bush in 2004.
"We're talking about returning to the moon in 2018. There will be a lot more hurricanes and a lot more other natural disasters to befall the United States and the world in that time, I hope none worse than Katrina," Griffin said at a news conference.
"But the space program is a long-term investment in our future. 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."
The $104 billion price tag, spread over 13 years, represents 55 percent of what the Apollo moon-landing program cost measured in constant dollars, Griffin said. Apollo spanned eight years. The objective is to pay as you go and what you can afford, he noted.
The new space vehicle design uses shuttlelike rocket parts, an Apollo-style capsule and lander capable of carrying four people to the surface. The rockets there would be two, a small version for people and a bigger one for cargo would come close in height to the 363-foot Saturn 5 moon rocket. They would be built from shuttle booster rockets, fuel tanks and main engines, as well as moon rocket engines. The so-called crew exploration vehicle perched on top would look very much like an Apollo capsule, albeit larger.
"Think of it as Apollo on steroids," Griffin said.
The crew exploration vehicle would replace the space shuttle, due to be retired in 2010, but not before 2012 and possibly as late as 2014 depending on the money available, Griffin said. It could carry as many as six astronauts to the international space station.
NASA estimated Monday it will cost $104 billion to return astronauts to the moon by 2018 in a new rocket that combines the space shuttle with the capsule of an earlier NASA era.
NASA Administrator Michael Griffin, in unveiling the new lunar exploration plan announced by President Bush last year, said he is not seeking extra money and stressed that the space agency will live within its future budgets to achieve this goal.
He dismissed suggestions that reconstruction of the Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Katrina might derail the program first outlined by President Bush in 2004.
"We're talking about returning to the moon in 2018. There will be a lot more hurricanes and a lot more other natural disasters to befall the United States and the world in that time, I hope none worse than Katrina," Griffin said at a news conference.
"But the space program is a long-term investment in our future. 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."
The $104 billion price tag, spread over 13 years, represents 55 percent of what the Apollo moon-landing program cost measured in constant dollars, Griffin said. Apollo spanned eight years. The objective is to pay as you go and what you can afford, he noted.
The new space vehicle design uses shuttlelike rocket parts, an Apollo-style capsule and lander capable of carrying four people to the surface. The rockets there would be two, a small version for people and a bigger one for cargo would come close in height to the 363-foot Saturn 5 moon rocket. They would be built from shuttle booster rockets, fuel tanks and main engines, as well as moon rocket engines. The so-called crew exploration vehicle perched on top would look very much like an Apollo capsule, albeit larger.
"Think of it as Apollo on steroids," Griffin said.
The crew exploration vehicle would replace the space shuttle, due to be retired in 2010, but not before 2012 and possibly as late as 2014 depending on the money available, Griffin said. It could carry as many as six astronauts to the international space station.
