Beam Me to the Moon, NASA
Future funding for the moon missions has not yet dried on the check yet, yet NASA is planning [or should we say hoping] to return humans to the moon by 2020. Their prospective plans are to set up a lunar outpost to serve as a springboard in order to explore Mars. Previously, NASA has unveiled a highly ambitious plan to place a solar-powered, manned outpost on the south pole of the moon. NASA’s Rick Gilbrech said, “Our job is to build towns on the moon and eventually put tire prints on Mars.”
Another spokesman for NASA, Jeff Hanley, head of NASA’s Constellation program, has been quoted as saying, “We have the International Space Station; we’re going to have a lunar outpost, and someday, certainly, somebody will go to Mars.” Presently, the Constellation program is developing the tools to return humans to the moon. Mars will have to wait.
Thirty-five years ago, Gene Cernan, Ron Evans, and Jack Schmitt were on the surface of the moon. Many of us still remember that famous moment. Now NASA is working hard to return a future generation of astronauts to the moon. To accomplish this, NASA hopes to have the program Constellation fully operational by 2016, even though as always their budget constraints are pending. It is hoped that a budget will be passed by Congress in favor of these future missions. Six-tenths of a penny of every tax dollar now goes to funding NASA’s space program.
“We’re making plans to be ready for any and all scenarios. The budget proposal we put in keeps our program on track for the March 2015 initial operating capability …… and full operating capability a year later,” Gilbrech, who leads new spacecraft development at NASA, said. “That will enable the human-moon return by the 2020 date that the President envisions.”
President George W. Bush in 2004 had previously announced a plan to resume human flights to the moon after a decades - long gap. The first phase involves retiring NASA’s space shuttle in 2010 after construction of the International Space Station is completed, which is almost there now. Then the attention will be focused on building the shuttle’s successor, the Orion crew vehicle, and ares launcher of the new Constellation program.
“Very soon, and we have already begun at a low level, we will ramp up rapidly to build the big systems which are the Ares V rocket and the lunar lander and the surface systems that wi be put in place on the moon”, Hanley said, again stressing budgetary constraints faced by NASA. In 1961, U.S President John F. Kennedy proposed sending astronauts to the moon which launched the Apollo era.
Eight years later in 1969, the goal was reached when Apollo II commander Neil Armstrong became the first man to set foot on the moon. The last manned mission to the moon for the US was the December 1972 flight of Apollo 17
This entry was posted on Friday, February 8th, 2008 at 4:18 pm and is filed under Space Agency News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
