Within the next 13 years, NASA plans to plant the foot of man upon the moon, once again achieving a phenomenon that hasn’t been done for 33 years..
Michael D. Griffin, NASA’s new administrator, gave a $104 billion plan that would get astronauts to the Moon by 2018. The plan will be paid in equal amounts over time.
The new shuttle would also take astronauts to Mars and beyond, all the while staying within NASA’s existing budget.
“It’s very Apollo-like, but bigger. Think of it as Apollo on steroids,” Griffin told a New York Times reporter late in September.
Apollo is the shuttle that took the first men to the moon on July 21, 1969.
The new craft will be able to carry a crew of four to the moon. It will weigh 50 percent more than the original Apollo.
“After adjusting for inflation, the program would cost just 55 percent of what it cost to put a dozen men on the lunar surface from 1969 to 1972,” Griffin said.
The plan was approved by the White House and will stay within NASA’s budget of $16 billion per year by retiring the current space shuttle, finishing the International Space Station, and by reallocating money from other NASA programs.
Griffin said the nation could well afford it, despite concern about tight budgets in the wake of hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
“There will be a lot more hurricanes and a lot more other natural disasters to befall the United States in that time; I hope none worse than Katrina and Rita,” Griffin said. “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 the 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,” Griffin said.
NASA officials said the shuttle will be 10 times as safe as the old shuttle, with an estimated failure rate of one in 2,000, as opposed to one in 220.
“I think it would be awesome to see the day when NASA goes to the moon again. We have heard about it, have talked about it in our generation, and have seen old videos but have never seen it or experienced it ourselves,” said Sarah Hill, a freshman from Bend, Ore.
“It would be especially cool for our children to see. It is something we have learned about our whole lives, but you would never think that it could happen again,” Hill said.
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