Next Time We Fly To The Moon, We’re Going Coach Nasa Looks At Return Trip On A Down-To-Earth Budget

Stuck circling Earth with the same old shuttle, NASA now is thinking about returning astronauts to the moon within eight years.

In a study involving nearly 100 scientists and engineers in four National Aeronautics and Space Administration offices, the agency quietly is looking at whether a moon trip makes economic sense. That’s a new way of thinking for an agency that used to shoot for the moon and worry about money later.

“‘How much does it cost?’ and ‘Why go?’ are the first two questions we have to answer,” said John Muratore, a manager of NASA’s human lunar-return study. Researchers have not yet found the answers that would make the idea work.

But they will, he said Monday.

If the study ever turns into something more concrete, NASA engineers say the United States could get to the moon by the year 2004, mine it for valuable resources and do special astronomy research. Outside space experts say NASA is trying to recapture the public attention and support it had during the Apollo program.

The Apollo program cost about $125 billion in current dollars. When he ordered the study last fall, NASA Administrator Dan Goldin told researchers to find a way back to the moon for no more than $150 million, one-third the cost of a space shuttle flight.

Now, researchers believe that returning to the moon still can make economic sense even if it costs up to $1 billion. So far, the lowest that study leaders have been able to go is $2 billion to $3 billion, Muratore said.

“It’s not a doable thing yet,” Muratore said. “Are we going to get there? The answer is going to be yes.”

Some critics don’t think a moon trip is worth the money.

Speaking through his press secretary, U.S. Rep. Tim Roemer, D-Ind., said he has not seen details of the study but is skeptical about whether this is a productive use of money. Roemer, a member of the House Space subcommittee, is a frequent critic of NASA spending.

The cheapest and most likely way to return to the moon is to do it in stages, study leaders said.

First, an unmanned rocket or two would drop off supplies on the moon. Then, a lunar-landing crew would take a shuttle to the international space station, which is scheduled to be built in the late 1990s. Another booster rocket would dock with the station and then take the crew to the moon from there.

This plan is different from past NASA lunar-return dreams, said Kent Joosten, the study’s deputy manager.

“The ground rules and the concern about the cost makes this more realistic,” he said. “In the past, we sort of were trying to ride the Apollo coattails. It’s much more of a businesslike approach than flags and footprints and glory of America.” While there is plenty of oxygen on Earth, it would be cheaper to get oxygen for astronauts and space station dwellers from lunar soil than pay for the costs of hauling air from Earth, study leaders said.

Another mineral worth mining would be helium-3, a form of the inert gas that is crucial to some kinds of nuclear fusion, Joosten said. Helium-3 is rare on Earth, but scientists think solar winds have deposited more of the element in lunar soil.

There may be scientific reasons for returning to the moon, but NASA is mostly trying to recapture the country’s imagination.

“They’ve been in the space shuttle rut for the last 15 years,” said John Pike, space policy director of the Federation of American Scientists, a non-profit group that studies science and technology issues. “For their next trick they’ve got to come up with an idea for what to do when people are bored with (the) space station.”

Laurie Boeder, NASA’s associate administrator for public affairs, said lunar exploration is still important. “You may as well as say: Why explore?”