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Published online 8 September 2009 | 461, 153 (2009) | doi:10.1038/461153a
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Cash crisis could ground NASA rocket
Crewed missions to the Moon are under threat, warns an expert panel.
A committee of aerospace engineers and scientists was poised to deliver its grim assessment of NASA's human space-flight programme to US President Barack Obama on 8 September. The panel's report will outline the stark choices Obama will face, which could include cancelling a new system of Moon-bound rockets and all but giving up on exploring space beyond the low Earth orbit of the International Space Station (ISS).
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Space adventure has been a real costly affair. The need for its continuation ought to be re-scrutinized and reassessed in this difficult time of economic downturn.
Instead of burning billions of dollars with no immediate benefit to the general well-beings of mankind in the next few decades, it might be better to channel the money to researches that would help to alleviate the suffering of a billion of people in abject poverty.
Perhaps finding new renewable, cheap and clean energy sources could be given the top priority.
(tanboontee)
It would be extremely foolish to confine human civilization solely to our planet of evolutionary origin since doing so could eventually lead to our extinction. We need to begin our first meager expansion into the rest of the solar system by establishing a permanent human presence on the surface of the Moon.
Obama needs to raise the NASA budget by at least $3 billion annually (the cost of less than 10 days of US occupation in Iraq) and he needs to choose the quickest and cheapest method to begin establishing permanent outpost on the lunar surface by canceling the Ares 1 and Ares V and supporting NASA's substantially cheaper Sidemount-HLV alternative.