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NASA planning moon launch for 2018
(AP)
Updated: 2005-09-20 06:57
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - It will cost $104 billion over the next decade to send
astronauts back to the moon, NASA's chief said Monday, defending the price tag
as an investment the nation can afford despite the expense of Hurricane
Katrina.
NASA Administrator
Michael Griffin speaks at a news conference at NASA headquarters in
Washington September 19, 2005.
[Reuters] | Described as "Apollo on steroids," the
new moon exploration plan unveiled by the space agency will use beefed-up
shuttle and Apollo parts and aims to put people on the moon by 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," NASA Administrator Michael 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."
Griffin said he is not seeking extra money and stressed that NASA will live
within its future annual budgets of $16 billion. Funding within the human
spaceflight program will be redirected to achieve this goal, and not "one thin
dime" will be taken from science projects, he said.
The $104 billion price tag, leading up to an initial four-person lunar
landing and spread over 13 years, represents 55 percent of what the Apollo
program would cost in today's dollars, Griffin said. Apollo development spanned
eight years, from 1961 to the first manned moon landing in 1969.
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