NASA takes one giant step to getting man back on the moon by 2018

NASA unveiled plans yesterday to put man back on the moon by 2018, at a cost of more than €100 billion.

The space agency hopes four astronauts will make the lunar landing for a period of a week.

Man has not landed on the moon since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.

Michael Griffin, NASA administrator, made the announcement having presented the details to the White House last week.

He anticipates using an Apollo-style capsule perched on top of shuttle-like rockets.

The staggering cost of the programme has already garnered criticism but Mr Griffin insisted he was not seeking extra money and that NASA would keep within future budgets.

He dismissed the idea that the reconstruction of the Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Katrina might derail the new space programme.

“We’re talking about returning to the moon in 2018,” he said. “There will be a lot more hurricanes and a lot more other natural disasters to befall the United States and the world in that time, I hope none worse than Katrina.”

He said the space programme was a long-term investment in the future which would not be sacrificed by short-term problems.

“When we have a hurricane, we don’t cancel the Air Force, we don’t cancel the Navy and we’re not going to cancel NASA,” he said.

President George Bush made a visionary speech in January 2004, outlining a wish to see man return to the moon by 2020 and use that as a base to move on to Mars.

It drew some scepticism, coming less than a year after the Columbia space shuttle disintegrated on its return to Earth, killing all seven astronauts on board.

Mr Bush called for the ageing NASA space fleet to be retired by 2010 and replaced by an entirely new system and for the international space station to be completed.

But ongoing technical problems have dogged the fleet since the Columbia disaster, eventually causing the shuttle to be grounded.

After the Discovery shuttle mission in July, a planned September launch date was delayed until March.