Throughout the Bush administration, NASA had been given the goal of preparing for long-duration missions in space, first to the Moon and then eventually Mars. Upon reaching office, the Obama administration performed a detailed analysis of NASA's priorities and budget, which revealed some ugly truths: NASA didn't have the money to build the systems needed to accomplish any of this, and even if it were to get a budget infusion, the schedule was unworkable. The report recommended we give up on Mars, skip the Moon, and focus on developing the technology to enable long-duration space travel.
The cancellations that accompanied this change of direction have not gone over well with either space enthusiasts or those who represent the districts in which some of the hardware would be built. But the plan does have a significant risk, in that NASA would be ordered to do technology development without having a clear goal that it would use that technology to reach. A group of US House members now aims to rectify that by, in part, reversing a portion of Obama's directive: they want NASA to build a permanent Moon base.
Most of the bill they have sponsored is spent providing justification for a strong US presence in space, with military (space is called the "ultimate high ground"), economic, and educational reasons highlighted. The meat of the bill, however, states, "the National Aeronautics and Space Administration shall plan to return to the Moon by 2022 and develop a sustained human presence on the Moon, in order to promote exploration, commerce, science, and United States preeminence in space as a stepping stone for the future exploration of Mars and other destinations. The budget requests and expenditures of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration shall be consistent with achieving this goal." Currently, it has four sponsors.
Overall, the bill is roughly in keeping with Obama's priorities, which involve developing the ability to construct and fuel a long-distance mission in orbit; those abilities could apply equally to sending construction materials to the Moon. It would also avoid one of the problems with the lack of an obvious focus in Obama's plan, which could be viewed as "maybe an asteroid, some day."
Even assuming that the bill could clear the full House and Senate (and survive an Obama veto), the impact may be much less than its supporters hope. As its text notes, a return to the Moon has been a Congressional priority several times before; that didn't stop Obama from dismissing it with "We've been there." And, more significantly, it clearly didn't ensure that the NASA budget was sufficient to actually accomplish that goal. Simply stating that NASA's budget will be "consistent" with achieving it by 2020 leaves open a lot of room for different definitions of consistent, and allows the current Congress to shift the burden of finding money onto future ones, which may not be inclined to do so.
Thus, on its own, the bill would accomplish nearly nothing and is sufficiently vague that it probably won't even be viewed as providing direction to NASA, at least within NASA. And, given how contentious budget issues have been in the current Congress, any attempt to turn it into something concrete would probably make it a non-starter.
Listing image by NASA
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