Armstrong attacks Obama space plan

The first man to walk on the moon told senators that new plans by Barack Obama would cede America's long-time space programme leadership to other nations.

Neil Armstrong and Eugene Cernan, the last astronaut on the moon, told a Senate Commerce Committee hearing that the US president's plan to revamp the human space programme was short on ambition, including the decision to alter the Bush administration's goal of establishing a permanent presence on the moon.

Cernan said that he, Armstrong and Apollo 13 commander James Lovell agreed that the administration's budget for human space exploration "presents no challenges, has no focus, and in fact is a blueprint for a mission to 'nowhere'."

Lovell, while not present at the hearing, issued a statement opposing Mr Obama's Nasa budget.

Last month, Mr Obama told Nasa workers in Cape Canaveral, Florida, that he was committed to manned space flight and foresaw sending astronauts to an asteroid and, by the mid-2030s, sending humans to orbit Mars.

Speaking in the administration's defence, John Holdren, head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, cited a blue-ribbon report that found that President George Bush's Constellation programme was unexecutable because Nasa lacked the money.

The administration "is steadfast in its commitment to space exploration", he said.

Buzz Aldrin, who partnered Armstrong in the Apollo 11 moonwalking mission in 1969, has backed Mr Obama's plan.

Committee chairman Senator Jay Rockefeller, a Democrat, reminded critics that Nasa's current budget of $18bn (€14.2bn) may be a high water mark because of budget problems and "defenders of the status quo for Nasa seem to justify their views solely because of the impact of jobs".

The Bush plan proposed scrapping the International Space Station, developing of a new rocket that would support lunar missions, and establishing a permanent station on the moon that could be the jump-off spot for future trips to Mars.

But Mr Obama wants extend the life of the space station until at least 2020, promote privately-built craft to fly to the space station as the shuttle ends its service, make a decision no later than 2015 on a heavy lift rocket and plan for a trip to an asteroid by 2025 and then on to Mars.

Armstrong admitted that the Bush space blueprint had not been adequately funded, but said waiting for the private aerospace industry to develop low-earth-orbit spacecraft would result in limiting the US to buying passage to the space station from Russia.

He said the Obama plan was "contrived by a very small group in secret" who persuaded the president that this was the way to put his stamp on the space programme.

"I believe the president was poorly advised," Armstrong said.

Cernan was even harsher in his criticism, predicting it would take as long as a decade for the private sector to access low earth orbit safely.

Mr Obama's space budget projects either showed extreme naivete or a willingness to accept a "plan to dismantle America's leadership in the world of human space exploration", he said.

Cernan said Nasa administrator Charles Bolden warned in a briefing last week that the failure of the private sector to provide spacecraft in a timely way could result in a bail-out equal to that given to the car industry.

Mr Bolden, who also spoke at the hearing, said he did not recall making that remark.

Mr Holdren said the plan was devised after an extensive and open process based on findings of the US Human Space Flight Plans Committee, also known as the Augustine Committee, which had six public meetings.

Armstrong and Cernan joined other astronauts and space programme officials last month in writing a letter protesting at the cancelling of the moon programme.