Bush envisions new manned space vehicle for moon landing

WASHINGTON -- President Bush beckoned the nation "forward into the universe" on Wednesday, outlining a costly new effort to return Americans to the moon as early as 2015 and use it as a waystation to Mars and beyond.

Bush said he envisioned "a new foothold on the moon...and new journeys to the world beyond our own," underscoring a renewed commitment to manned spaceflight less than a year after the loss of the space shuttle Columbia and a crew of seven.

In a speech at NASA headquarters a few blocks from the White House, Bush said the United States would complete its obligations to the International Space Station by 2010 and retire the aging space shuttle fleet at about the same time. In its place, he called for development of a new Crew Exploratory Vehicle, capable of carrying astronauts to the space station and the moon.

$12 billion

Bush said early financing would total $12 billion for exploration over the next five years, only $1 billion of it in new funds.

The space agency arranged a splashy, high-tech entrance for the president, who strode to the front of a giant video screen beaming an image of Michael Foale, aboard the space station 240 miles above the earth.

"I know that I'm just one chapter in an ongoing story of discovery," said Foale, making his sixth trip into earth orbit. He said he was also "certain that NASA's journey is just beginning."

"It's time for America to take the next step" in space exploration, said Bush, who spoke 32 years after the American Apollo program last landed astronauts on the moon. He drew applause from NASA employees when he outlined a timetable that would put the first human trip to Mars well into the century. Robotic craft would be sent there first, he said, but exploration wouldn't end there.

"We need to see and examine and touch for ourselves, and only human beings are capable of adapting to the inevitable uncertainties posed by space flight," the president said.

"Mankind is drawn to the heavens for the same reason we were once drawn to unknown lands and across the open sea," Bush said "We choose to explore space because doing so improves our lives and lifts our national spirit. So let us continue the journey."

The nation's manned space program drew its first impetus from Cold War competition with the former Soviet Union, and began with a challenge from President John F. Kennedy in 1961.

Bush made no mention of Kennedy, but his remarks underscored the change in global politics. "The vision I outline today is a journey, not a race," he said.

An extended human presence on the moon "will enable astronauts to develop new technologies and harness the moon's abundant resources to allow manned exploration of more challenging environments," the White House said in a prepared statement released before Bush spoke.

The moon has one-sixth the gravitational field of Earth, so moon-based aircraft could launch from there more cheaply.

Bush proposed a modest increase in spending for the new venture -- $1 billion in new spending over five years. Bush would also shift $11 billion in federal money from other NASA programs to make way for the program.

Probes, landers and other unmanned spacecraft would explore the lunar surface beginning no later than 2008 to research and prepare for future human exploration.

NASA would also develop and build the new "Crew Exploration Vehicle" to ferry people first to the International Space Station after the shuttles are retired, and then to the moon, no later than 2015.

At the start of an election year, the White House cast the next envisioned generation of space travel as affordable and useful to average Americans who might be skeptical about such a mission at a time of record budget deficits.

An administration's fact sheet offered a list of benefits from previous space missions: "Space exploration has yielded advances in communications, weather forecasting, electronics and countless other fields," the White House said. Examples included CAT scanners, MRIs, kidney dialysis machines, programmable heart pacemakers and satellite communications advances.

Bush also formed a new panel, the Commission on the Implementation of U.S. Space Exploration Policy, to advise NASA on the implementation of his ideas. Pete Aldridge, a former Air Force Secretary, was named to lead the effort.