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NASA unveils lunar exploration program

NASA has released its master plan for returning Americans to the moon by 2018, and eventually sending them to Mars, choosing rocketry from the space shuttle era while drawing inspiration from the Apollo program that first put humans on the lunar surface 36 years ago. Administrator Michael D. Griffin said the plan would cost $104 billion over the next 13 years, with increases for inflation, but would not require extra money beyond NASA`s normal budgets. The pace of the project, he said, ",will fit the funding that`s available.",

The plan envisions development of two new rockets, one of them about as tall and heavier than the old Saturn V that carried the Apollo astronauts, and a new spacecraft which will allow four people to stay on the moon for up to six months before bringing them back to Earth, in a parachute landing reminiscent of the Apollo program. And while the rocket technology is ",shuttle-derived,", the new plan abandons the concept of a winged, reusable spacecraft that can fly back to Earth and land at an airport. Griffin said the new ",crew exploration vehicle", can be reused perhaps 10 times, but most of the new program`s apparatus, like Apollo`s before it, will be jettisoned in space or burned up in Earth`s atmosphere.

Griffin also acknowledged that there will be a two-year period between the last space shuttle flight in 2010 and the first flight of the exploration vehicle, anticipated in 2012, during which the United States will have no ability to put humans in space. Still, in response to several reporters` questions, Griffin sought to assure employees at NASA`s shuttle program centers in the Gulf Coast states that the new program ",can use 85 percent of the space shuttle work force.",