No return to moon in this century
Bangalore: Returning to the moon before this century or rather NASA's current plans are unachievable. A federal government committee assigned to independently review plans for manned spaceflights has released a summary of its first report, reports CNET News.
The Obama administration established the review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans committee in May. The report was released this Tuesday. In one paragraph of page 10, it says, "The committee has found two executable options that comply with the FY 2010 budget. However, neither allows for a viable exploration program. In fact, the committee finds that no plan compatible with the FY 2010 budget profile permits human exploration to continue in any meaningful way."
This implies that without additional money, Americans won't be going anywhere in space anytime soon. Even with another $3 billion per year, it'll be a long time before the U.S. can get back to the moon. The Apollo program had cost less than $150 billion in today's dollars (after accounting for inflation). NASA's budget request for 2010 is well over $18 billion. But NASA is already committed to doing a thousand other things for which it is spending $18 billion a year.
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