Budget Woes Could End NASA's Space Exploration Plans

The nation's space program can slip the surly bonds of Earth's gravity. But escaping the bonds of budget pressures and logistical problems is another story.

Space exploration is at a crossroads. NASA is scheduled to retire the space shuttle next year, leaving the United States with no taxi of its own to get to the international space station, which itself becomes a 250-mile-high orbiting white elephant when it is decommissioned after 2015. The shuttle is an aging transportation system. Its first mission occurred in 1981, so now it is akin to a 30-year-old car that needs to be replaced. The shuttle still is functional, and the space station still allows astronauts to conduct research, but NASA had to make a choice between operating the old technology or starting a new exploration program. The current plan favors a new program, but all that could change. Under severe financial constraints, President Obama must decide whether to continue on the current course and infuse the space program with billions of dollars, or scale back the efforts and risk losing the leadership role the United States holds in space exploration.

NASA is retiring the shuttle so that it can build a new ride to space called the Constellation that will get astronauts to the moon again; a plan to go all the way to Mars someday is under review. But a special committee this summer said NASA does not have nearly the cash it needs to carry out that ambitious plan by 2020, the timetable laid out by former President George W. Bush. In 2004, Bush asked for an additional $1 billion in funding for NASA, but that's a drop in the bucket compared with the current shortage of $50 billion over the next 10 years.

The budget troubles were already well known when Obama took office. But rather than go full speed ahead with the plans, Obama, who has spoken fondly of the space program, appointed the Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee in May to get an objective view from industry heavyweights on where in the universe NASA should be setting its sights and, realistically, what it can afford to do. As the committee—led by former Lockheed Martin CEO Norman Augustine—gets ready to deliver its report to the White House and release it publicly later this month, the White House is finding out just how tough the choices will be. "Somewhere you had to take a timeout and admit there are smoke and mirrors here," says Rep. Bart Gordon, a Tennessee Democrat and chairman of the House Science Committee, which will hold a hearing on the Augustine report and the future of NASA on September 15. "Trying to put a thousand pounds of canaries in a 500-pound box is where we are now."

Once the advisory committee gives its findings, the White House and Congress will have to answer some thorny questions. Should the shuttle program be extended to keep the United States from having to rely on partners like Russia for transportation to space? Should the life of the space station be extended five years to give scientists and astronauts a few more years to use the $100 billion orbiting laboratory, as many in Congress favor? Should NASA step aside from the business of ferrying astronauts to space itself and help private companies fill that role? If NASA puts its own lunar plans on hold, should the United States worry that some country like China will grab a strategic advantage by setting up an outpost on the moon? And should NASA go to Mars to explore the fundamental question of whether life is present elsewhere in the universe?

These questions collide with the reality of a new administration with lots of other priorities on Earth and a tight budget environment brought on by a lousy economy. But some hope the Augustine committee, which plans to send the White House a short list of options for continuing the space program, will help clear things up. "The message is pretty ugly. The whole notion we are going back to the moon, given the current budget, is a myth," says John Logsdon, former director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, who is writing a book on the space program under President John F. Kennedy.

Indeed, money shortfalls are nothing new. NASA has long labored under a mismatch between its exploration goals and its budget and has never regained the funding glory days that came with Kennedy's 1961 charge to land a man on the moon by the end of the decade.

NASA's current goal of another lunar landing was dreamed up by Bush. He also wants U.S. astronauts to use outposts on the moon as a service plaza on the eventual road to Mars. Bush, in proposing his vision for space exploration in 2004, argued for extending a human presence through the solar system. "Mankind is drawn to the heavens for the same reason we once were drawn into unknown lands and across the open sea," he said. "We choose to explore space because doing so improves our lives and lifts our national spirit."

But the first step to achieving that dream is creating a way to ferry astronauts to the moon. The Constellation involves a crew capsule atop a new rocket called the Ares 1 and a larger, heavy-lift rocket, the Ares V, to haul cargo. It looks different from the current shuttle, more like a rocket and less like a plane.

Now Obama, who endorsed the moon and Mars program on the campaign trail, must decide whether to find money for the program, save some aspects of it, or scrap it entirely. The Augustine committee, which has held marathon meetings all summer long, has provided insights into what options it might include in the report and has raised the question of whether NASA should follow its original plan to set up one lunar outpost or explore multiple sites on the moon's surface. And it has questioned whether to keep the current plan of replacing the shuttle with the Constellation.

To make it more complicated, the spacecraft has faced technological and safety problems. Even though billions have been spent developing it, some space experts don't believe it's the best option for transportation to space because of those safety concerns and the high cost associated with it. Like continuing the moon and Mars program, the option of extending the shuttle and the space station costs more than the current budget. But despite plans to retire it, the shuttle is likely to fly at least until 2011 instead of 2010, just to have time to finish its current lineup of six more missions. David Goldson, a former House Science Committee chief of staff, says extending the shuttle and station does little to advance science and exploration. "Something's got to go." And flying the aging shuttle carries plenty of risk of an accident.

Obama's charge to the Augustine committee was to work mostly within the current budget parameters. So the committee will most likely present an option that will try to excite the public imagination without a major infusion of cash. That could be a "deep space" plan for flying out of Earth's orbit but not landing on major planets or large moons. Astronauts could, for instance, head out to scientifically significant points in space to study asteroids that might someday hurtle to Earth, or land on a distant Mars moon. Avoiding landing on "gravity wells" like the Earth's moon makes the necessary technology simpler and less expensive.

Even that plan has its critics. Some experts argue that it would be safer and cheaper to use unmanned missions. And if exciting the public imagination is the goal, zipping around without landing probably won't do it, critics say. But John Pike of the aerospace information website Globalsecurity.org sees value in the idea. "You get a better understanding of asteroids and comets. If these things are out there trying to kill us, we need to understand the enemy better," Pike says. And since it is easier technologically, "you drop a zero off the budget."

While the budget could make, or break, NASA's plans, all of the focus on money drives Robert Zubrin crazy. He heads the Mars Society, which promotes exploration of that planet, and is president of Pioneer Astronautics in Lakewood, Colo. He thinks the Augustine committee is overly pessimistic about how much a Mars program would cost and ought to focus more on what NASA should do instead of just on money. "Mars is the challenge that's been staring NASA in the face since Apollo," says Zubrin, who counts himself one of the many scientists inspired as children by the moon program. Landing on Mars could motivate thousands of children to become scientists. Those children could later go on to help the United States economically and defensively.

And while that goal is admirable, Zubrin also sees another benefit. Sending humans to Mars is crucial because it's the only other place in the solar system that has all the preconditions for life, including a suitable atmosphere, water, and other elements, he says. "The place in space where astronauts could really do something that matters is Mars. It's the Rosetta stone that will let us know whether life is a general phenomenon in the universe or unique to Earth," Zubrin says. And if life is possible in the rest of the universe, he asks, isn't that worth knowing? With a price tag in the billions, some aren't so sure.

Some space advocates are worried about eventually reaching Mars; others are concerned about more down-to-earth questions, like how to keep NASA's human spaceflight program alive if the shuttle and station are gone and a new program is too far off in the future. "It would be hard to put Humpty Dumpty back together again if it all falls apart," Gordon says.

What will Obama do when he gets the Augustine report? "That's the multibillion-dollar question," Logsdon says. NASA says it now spends about $6 billion a year on human spaceflight. Also at stake is losing the sense of national pride that comes along with a heritage as a land of frontier exploration. The White House is waiting for the full report before it starts talking about the future. "The sobering revelations that have emerged from the Augustine hearings—namely, that the former administration's human spaceflight plans are even farther from being realizable than had been thought—only affirm the importance of the current review and the need to come up with innovative means of getting the nation's space program back on track," says Rick Weiss, spokesman for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Obama, who has reminisced about watching Apollo capsules splash down in the Pacific as a child in Hawaii perched on his grandfather's shoulders, has a keen sense of history. And perhaps a fondness for comparisons to JFK, who stood at another crossroads of space policy 38 years ago.

Soon, Obama will have to decide whether NASA's next move is a small step or a giant leap.

• See photos of space missions.
• Read 10 Things You Didn't Know About NASA.