NASA planning for 2018 moonwalk

NASA hopes to return astronauts to the moon by 2018, nearly a half-century after men last walked the lunar surface, by using a distinctly retro combination of space shuttle and Apollo rocket parts.

The space agency presented its lunar exploration plan to the White House on Wednesday and on Capitol Hill yesterday. An announcement is set for Monday at NASA headquarters in Washington.

The fact that this successor to the soon-to-be-retired shuttle relies so heavily on old-time equipment, rather than sporting fancy futuristic designs, “makes good technological and management sense,” said John Logsdon, director of George Washington University’s space policy institute.

“The emphasis is on achieving goals rather than elegance,” said Logsdon, who along with other members of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board urged NASA to move beyond the risky, ageing shuttles as soon as possible.

“It has several elements to it. One is to say that the people who did Apollo were pretty smart,” Logsdon said yesterday. Depending on advanced, unproven technology would slow everything down and raise the costs, which will be high anyway, he noted.

The crew exploration vehicle’s first manned trip will be to low-Earth orbit, probably no earlier than 2012, leaving up to a two-year gap between the last shuttle flight and the debut of its successor.

In January 2004, just five months after the Columbia accident board’s report, US President George Bush called for the retirement of the space shuttles by 2010 and the creation of the crew exploration vehicle for ferrying astronauts to the international space station and ultimately to the moon and Mars.

His main overriding goal: to land astronauts on the moon by 2020.

In a speech at a California aerospace conference two weeks ago, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said the new spacecraft will build upon the proven designs and technologies used in the Apollo moon and shuttle programs – ”while having far greater capability.”

There would be two rockets, one for astronauts and their exploration vehicle and the other for cargo, the propulsion system and the lunar lander.

The idea would be to launch the crew exploration vehicle on the smaller of the new rockets, which would still be taller than the 184-foot (56.08-meter) shuttle. The crew vehicle would be perched on top like an old-style Apollo capsule.

Once in orbit around the Earth, the capsule would hook up with the lunar lander and moon-propelling rocket parts launched separately on a much bigger rocket closer in height to Apollo’s 363 foot Saturn 5, and take off for the moon.