NASA's $100 Billion Moon Plan
Posted on September 18, 2005
CNN reports that NASA has developed a $100 billion plan to return to the moon in 2018. The moon missions will show that man can live off resources found on the moon. It will require the building of new spacecraft.
NASA's plan envisions being able to land four-person human crews anywhere on the Moon's surface and to eventually use the system to transport crew members to and from a lunar outpost that it would consider building on the lunar south pole, according to the charts, because of the regions elevated quantities of hydrogen and possibly water ice.The CNN article also describes some of the spacecraft NASA will need to be build like the Crew Launch Vehicle and Crew Exploration Vehicle.One of NASA's reasons for going back to the Moon is to demonstrate that astronauts can essentially "live off the land" by using lunar resources to produce potable water, fuel and other valuable commodities.
Such capabilities are considered extremely important to human expeditions to Mars which, because of the distances involved, would be much longer missions entailing a minimum of 500 days spent on the planet's surface.
NASA's Crew Exploration Vehicle is expected to cost $5.5 billion to develop, according to government and industry sources, and the Crew Launch Vehicle another $4.5 billion. The heavy-lift launcher, which would be capable of lofting 125 metric tons of payload, is expected to cost more than $5 billion but less than $10 billion to develop, according to these sources.MSNBC also has a similar article about NASA's plans. Space.com also has more information about future NASA missions here and here.NASA's plan also calls for using the Crew Exploration Vehicle, equipped with as many as six seats, to transport astronauts to and from the international space station. An unmanned version of the Crew Exploration Vehicle could be used to deliver a limited amount of cargo to the space station.
