Shooting for the moon and beyond

Even before Neil Armstrong set foot on the Moon, it seemed obvious that Mars would be next.

Wernher von Braun, the great architect of the American space program, had envisioned it as the next logical step after landing on the Moon. Less than two months after Apollo 11, a presidential task force convened to chart the future of human spaceflight came to the same conclusion.

When that idea died on Richard Nixon's desk a year later, it was not for lack of American know-how, but for lack of money. Later this week, when President Bush is expected to announce his plan to build a lunar base and send an astronaut to Mars, it will again be as much an issue of dollars as of science.

Like the scientists of 30 years ago, many today look a few decades into the future and see a human mission to Mars as a real - though difficult - possibility. What's different now is that NASA can hope to achieve that goal without devouring a budget that could fund a third-world nation.

The notion of going into space on a budget has never been more controversial than now, a year after a space-shuttle disaster blamed in part on NASA's attempt to stretch money too far. But that accident gave policymakers new impetus to look at the direction of the space program. Moreover, advances in robotic missions, like the Spirit rover now on Mars, suggest that - with appropriate vigilance - NASA can indeed do more with less.

The result could be the most significant shift in the US space program since the 1960s, as well as a new sense of purpose for an agency that has struggled to recapture the public's imagination.

"The challenge of the next decade will be to repeat that [Apollo] performance, but do it at one-third the price," says Howard McCurdy a NASA historian at American University in Washington. "The challenge will be going to the Moon, but in a very different way."

The White House has provided little information since the first leaks of the plan last week. But several reports have traced some generalities. They suggest that the shuttle will only be used until the International Space Station is finished, and will then be retired. Russian, European, and Japanese rockets would be used to service the space station, and the $3 billion-plus needed to operate the shuttles could be put into a new program.

Goals would include the design of a new spacecraft to ferry astronauts to the space station, the moon, and perhaps even Mars, and the establishment of a moon base as a way to test technologies and procedures for a Mars trip. No time frame has been confirmed, but the administration would reportedly ask for $800 million more than normal for NASA this year, with that number increasing 5 percent annually.

The increase represents less than 6 percent of NASA's current budget, and in a time of massive deficits, keeping that number low will be crucial to the plan's long-term support on Capitol Hill and across America.

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