5 December 2003 Return to Moon May Be on Agenda By Mike Allen and Kathy Sawyer Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36960-2003Dec4.html

President Bush's aides are considering a new lunar exploration program and other unifying national goals, including a campaign to promote longevity or fight childhood illness or hunger, as they sift ideas for a fresh agenda for the final year of his term, administration officials said yesterday. Several government agencies and task forces have been assigned to determine the cost and feasibility of a variety of major ideas, which could cost billions of dollars at a time when the nation is running a substantial budget deficit. An interagency group led by the White House, for instance, has been working since August on a blueprint for interplanetary human flight over the next 20 to 30 years to give NASA a new mission after the Feb. 1 disintegration of the space shuttle Columbia. Plans call for Bush to issue an ambitious new national vision for space travel by early next year, and officials said the initiative is likely to involve cooperation between NASA and the military. The development of big ideas for Bush's 2004 agenda is being led by the president's senior adviser, Karl Rove, the officials said. Administration officials said options have not been presented to the president, let alone decided, but the search is active for ambitious initiatives to flesh out a reelection agenda that also includes limiting lawsuits, making the tax cuts permanent and adding private investment accounts to the Social Security system. One person consulted by the White House said some aides appear to relish the idea of a "Kennedy moment" for Bush, referring to the 1962 call by President John F. Kennedy for the nation to land a man on the moon and return him safely to Earth by the end of the decade. A senior administration official said that "a lot of simultaneous efforts have been launched" in a quest for such an idea, and that the efforts have been underway since at least late summer. The official said the planning was born of an effort to follow up Bush's emergency plan for AIDS relief in this year's State of the Union address, which called for spending $15 billion over five years to help African and Caribbean countries fight the pandemic. This official said Bush's closest aides are promoting big initiatives on the theory that they contribute to Bush's image as a decisive leader even if people disagree with some of the specifics. "Iraq was big. AIDS is big," the official said. "Big works. Big grabs attention." An ambitious plan for space travel is one possibility, though Republican officials said they are wary of repeating what they consider the mistakes of Bush's father. On July 20, 1989, the 20th anniversary of the first human moon landing, President George H.W. Bush issued a call for a sustained commitment to human exploration of the solar system, with a return to the moon as a steppingstone to the main destination -- Mars. NASA responded with a budget-shattering $400 billion plan to fulfill that goal, and it swiftly sank under its own weight. Vice President Cheney recently discussed possibilities with lawmakers with jurisdiction over the space program but did not tip his hand. Options that have been considered by the administration include a permanent outpost on the moon and a human mission to Mars. Although much of the scientific and emotional focus has been on Mars over the past decade, the buzz inside NASA has seemed to shift toward a return of man to the moon, officials at the space agency said. "The drumbeat is getting louder," Wendell Mendell, manager of the Office for Human Exploration Science at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, said in a telephone interview. Mendell has long advocated a return to the moon. "The tables and lists being created here are consistent" with a lunar initiative, he said. NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe has steadfastly declined to discuss the ongoing review of space policy, except to acknowledge that it is "moving forward." Edward Weiler, NASA's chief of space sciences, said in an interview yesterday that he commissioned a major study to determine space science priorities, which was completed by a panel of the National Academy of Sciences earlier this year. "I was surprised that the moon turned out to be one of their targets," he said. The panel listed the moon as one of five prime targets, he said, primarily because a crater at its South Pole contains some of the oldest, if not the oldest, exposed material in the solar system. Advocates have argued that the moon could be useful in many other ways, as a base for developing technologies, for astronomical observations and for human rehearsals for operating in space. One person consulted by the White House said officials think a renewed push into space would fuel the manufacturing and technology sectors of the economy.

Bush aides and advisers said that separately from his space plans, he is also looking for ideas for next month's State of the Union address that would not rely solely on the government but would also rally business, volunteers and other parts of society.

The Department of Heath and Human Services is developing a proposal that would funnel billions of dollars over at least a decade into relatively noncontroversial research into cures for cancer and other diseases. A GOP official said this effort could be "the Republican equivalent of the War on Poverty."

A senior administration official said policy experts have also researched possibilites for universal health insurance for children. The official said the administration has also been "going to considerable effort to see how much it would cost to attack child hunger and quote, unquote end child hunger."

Political calculations are involved, according to Republican sources. One presidential adviser pointed out that a major anti-disease initiative would be popular with baby boomers. One quality the proposals have in common is that they are not obviously divisive.

On the other hand, the White House will be constrained by the growing budget deficit, which is projected to approach $500 billion in the current fiscal year.

The plans reflect a consistent strain in Bush's rhetoric, going back to his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia in 2000, when he promised to use "good times for great goals." In fundraising speeches for his reelection campaign, Bush says he wants to pursue "great goals worthy of a great nation."

Staff writer Rick Weiss contributed to this report.

 

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5 December 2003
U.S. considers new moon mission
By Traci Watson, Dan Vergano and Rick Hampson
USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20031205/5736273s.htm

Critics say, 'Been there, done that.' To others, it's a practical step toward Mars

Can you fly to the moon on a trial balloon?

Quoting unidentified Bush administration sources, two publications have reported that the president wants Americans to return to the moon after an absence of three decades, and perhaps establish a base.

The reports put the moon, which in recent years has been ignored by all save baying dogs and werewolves, back on the national agenda.

''The moon can be made into a major asset, rather than just providing light at night,'' Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., chairman of the House subcommittee on space and aeronautics, said Thursday.

Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kansas, even talked about a space race between the United States and China, which put its first astronaut into space this fall.

Early reviews of the plan, reported Wednesday by the National Review magazine and Thursday by the New York Post, were mixed.

''Totally embarrassing,'' said physicist Robert Park of the American Physical Society. ''Been there, done that.''

''Great idea,'' said Roger Launius, a space historian at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. ''If we are really going to get off this planet and go to a place like Mars, we've got to learn how to operate in deep space.''

The debate over a moon program comes during a difficult time for the space agency, which has been excoriated for inefficiency and lack of focus since the space shuttle Columbia disaster in February.

The administration has been reviewing its space mission. On Wednesday, NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe said that 2004 would be a ''seminal time. . . . There's an effort underway that will focus the administration's view very prominently on options we can consider,'' he said. ''We are looking at some significant changes.''

But when asked Thursday about the moon, Glenn Mahone, O'Keefe's spokesman, said the review ''is ongoing and will continue.''

White House spokesman Scott McClellan denied that a decision had been made. ''Those (moon) reports are not coming out of the White House,'' he said. ''It's premature to get into any speculation about . . . space policy.''

The National Review said Bush is expected to make his proposal Dec. 17 in a speech recognizing the 100th anniversary of the Wright brothers' flight at Kitty Hawk, N.C.

America's golden age of manned lunar exploration lasted less than four years. It began with Neil Armstrong's ''one small step for man'' in 1969 and ended with the Apollo 17 mission in December 1972.

Why go back now? Suddenly, there are more reasons being offered than there are craters in the Sea of Tranquility.

* National prestige. The Chinese have spoken about plans to land humans on the moon and to establish a base there.

This has attracted Brownback's attention. ''You've got the Chinese and others making plans to send probes and even humans to the moon,'' he said Thursday. ''I don't think we want other countries to get ahead of us in this race.''

An adviser close to O'Keefe, who asked not to be identified, told USA TODAY that the Chinese launch and their interest in a manned lunar mission ''changed the equation'' for NASA.

But to Park, this is weak logic. ''If our goal is to keep up with the Chinese in technology, God help us.''

* A steppingstone to Mars. ''I've always favored a return to the moon because it's three days from Earth, so if you get into trouble, you are only three days from help,'' said Howard McCurdy, a space-policy expert at American University in Washington. A moon base, he said, ''lays the groundwork for an expedition to Mars.''

The moon's tie-in to a Mars mission has a historical resonance: a Mars mission was proposed by the first President Bush in 1989 but was rejected as too expensive at $400 billion.

Some advocates of space exploration, however, are leery of a moon mission. ''You need a milestone on the way to Mars, but that could be an asteroid,'' said Louis Friedman of the Planetary Society. ''The moon could be a detour.''

* A lunar telescope. Astronomers would like to see a large telescope on the moon that would give unparalleled views of space.

But Park says such telescopes could be placed on the moon without landing people there and be controlled remotely from Earth.

* Mining. The Chinese have expressed interest in mining a cheap form of helium found on the moon. Harrison Schmitt, a former U.S. senator and astronaut, says he thinks private companies would pay for moon missions in hopes of making cheap energy from the helium there.

But Park says it would be cheaper to gather the helium from seawater. As for other minerals, he says, ''At $10,000 a pound to get things into low-Earth orbit, it wouldn't be economical to mine the moon even if the whole thing were made of gold.''

* Water. The prospect of lunar water was raised in the mid-'90s, when satellite data suggested polar craters might contain huge amounts of ice. But a new article in the journal Nature says that radar imaging shows little ice there.

* Geology. Geologists would like to take lunar core samples to learn more about the history of the solar system and the formation of the moon. On the other hand, Apollo astronauts carried 840 pounds of lunar rock back to Earth.

The biggest argument against a revived moon program appears to be its cost, especially because the government faces a half-trillion-dollar budget deficit in 2004.

McCurdy said the Apollo mission cost $150 billion to $175 billion in 2003 dollars, and that a new effort would also be costly. But he said that's not really the point: ''In some ways, it's like a yacht. If you have to ask, you can't afford it.''

Meanwhile, the moon may be harder to get to than it was 30 years ago. For instance, there are only three remaining Saturn V missiles like the ones that launched the Apollo capsules. Two were assembled from surplus parts after the last three Apollo flights were canceled, and one is a test vehicle never intended to go into space.

In the end, the reason to return to the moon may be no more rational than the one to go there in the first place -- that is, to show up the Soviet Union.

''The basic reason for going back,'' said John Logsdon, a former member of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, ''is because it's there.''

 

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