Bush’s vision for space launches cost worries

Knight Ridder Newspapers
Published Wednesday, February 23, 2005
WASHINGTON - NASA is racing to carry out President George W. Bush’s costly vision of sending humans back to the moon and then on to Mars - despite the federal budget squeeze and doubts in Congress and the scientific community about the plan’s wisdom.

Even some of the project’s allies are balking at its price tag and headlong pace.

NASA is "trying to do too much at once," said Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, R-N.Y., chairman of the House Science Committee and a strong supporter of the space agency. He protested that NASA is "barreling ahead" even though Congress "has never endorsed - in fact, never even discussed - the vision."

"I think NASA is headed for a potential train wreck," said Rep. Bart Gordon, D-Tenn., the committee’s senior Democrat, who worried that the moon-Mars plan is gobbling up funds for other scientific ventures.

Even some space agency officials are expressing concern. The cost and complexities of the moon-Mars project make this "a time for sobering up," Michael Meyer, NASA’s lead scientist for Mars exploration, told a committee of the National Academy of Sciences earlier this month.

It’s been a little more than a year since Bush announced The President’s Vision for U.S. Space Exploration, but the space agency has already awarded 118 preliminary contracts for the project. It’s requesting fresh ideas from industry and universities to launch a new spaceship, called the Crew Exploration Vehicle, or CEV, three years from now.

The $15 billion CEV is supposed to take over from today’s aging fleet of space shuttles and carry astronauts "to the moon, Mars and beyond," as NASA officials like to say.

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