A special advisory committee on the future of America's manned spaceflight program delivered a report to the White House on Tuesday that could help launch the country on an Apollo-style adventure to Mars, but which also warned that any ambitious program of exploration would require big infusions of cash.
Without a significant boost in NASA's budget, not only will it be impossible to return to the moon by the goal of 2020, but astronauts might not be able to go at all, according to the report by the Human Space Flight Plans Committee.
"Under the current budget, you'd never get there," said committee chairman Norman Augustine, a former chief executive at Lockheed Martin.
The panel, made up of former astronauts and space entrepreneurs, was appointed by President Obama this spring to review the Bush administration's Vision for Space Exploration, analyze NASA's agenda and come up with alternatives. The present plan, outlined in 2004, called for a return to the moon by 2020, the establishment of a lunar outpost and, decades later, human travel to Mars.
According to a 12-page summary report posted at the panel's website, hsf.nasa.gov, NASA would need at least $3 billion a year beyond its current $18.69 billion to realize the ambitious goals.
The report is a product not only of the committee's analysis and research but of a series of public hearings held around the country. Publication of the summary report, to be followed in a few weeks by the complete findings, gives the clearest picture yet of a space program with lots of vision but far too little money for what it wants to accomplish.
"The U.S. human spaceflight program appears to be on an unsustainable trajectory," the report said. "It is perpetuating the perilous practice of pursuing goals that do not match allocated resources."
The president has not indicated whether he is willing to spend the money to carry out Bush's vision -- or whether he would prefer to pull back and continue the policy of recent decades of using robots to explore deep space while astronauts work in low-Earth orbit on such tasks as constructing the nearly completed International Space Station.
The bleak budget picture aside, some members of the space community were cheered by the report, which amounted to a strong endorsement of an ambitious program of human exploration, culminating with humans working and living on Mars.
