Well, attendees at the Return to the Moon conference did have a good time. However, the conference brought together some of the leaders in government, established and entrepreneurial space companies, scientists, engineers, lawyers and citizen space advocates to examine where we are in the effort to return to the Moon to stay.
Technical aspects of flying to the Moon and using its resources were discussed, along with a stimulating discussion by leading space lawyers on the topic of space property rights. But the big news coming out of the conference is the announcement by NASA officials of new approaches to achieving its space exploration goals.
There’s just one problem with this approach: the money’s not there. Shank made that clear in his presentation as he outlined the overall exploration roadmap. “We’ve run the numbers, the budget numbers, and we can’t afford this plan—we simply can’t—if we follow the business-as-usual approach.” He didn’t go into the specifics of what made this unaffordable, although he later indicated that the problems were in the out-years beyond 2010 when NASA had to fund continued operations of the ISS and the new CEV while developing a heavy-lift launch vehicle and other systems needed for a human return to the Moon.
However, as Shank put it, “If there’s one thing about Mike Griffin that industry and stakeholders are learning about, it’s that he’s not a business-as-usual kind of guy… The NASA budget is only so much per year. It is just a matter of what it is you want to do with that money. So we, NASA, need to be smarter customers.”
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