That shift to less spectacular missions caused the American public to lose interest in space, several witnesses testified. And in the view of some, while returning to the Moon could return that spark, it might best be driven by privately funded endeavors."The NASA of today is probably not the agency to undertake a significant new program to return humans to deep space, particularly the Moon and then to Mars," Harrison Schmitt, an Apollo 17 astronaut, told the subcomittee.
NASA today lacks the energy and imagination needed for sending humans into deep space, Schmitt, now chairman of Albuquerque, N.M.-based and chairman of InterLune-InterMars Initiative Inc., said. "It also has become too bureaucratic and too risk-adverse," he said.
Schmitt also dismissed the idea of a public-private partnership to fund a moon mission, because of the spotty record of success of such endeavors. "A partnership with the government has been a tough managerial nut to crack," he said. "We either need a new NASA, a new agency, or private investors. I dont think there is a good middle ground."
Schmitt advocates a privately-funded endeavor, enticing funding support by creating a Moon-based business that would provide a cheap source of power for Earth.
Schmitt claims his plan, which involves the mining of helium-3 to power future fusion reactors on Earth, can be accomplished in 10 to 15 years using between $10 billion and $15 billion in private financing, which he claims will be more stable than government funding.
David Criswell, director of the Institute for Space System Operations at the University of Houston, also supports using the Moon to provide energy for Earth. He claims solar power collectors on the lunar surface could provide power to Earth at much cheaper costs than any terrestrial methods currently in use.
The necessary technology to produce the Lunar Solar Power system already exists, Criswell said, and "can be in operation in space and on the moon within a few years."
Paul Spudis, a visiting scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute, Houston, said returning to the Moon also can be done with existing space technology derived from work that has been done on the space shuttle and International Space Station programs.
"There is no magic involved," Spudis said. "We could build vehicles that involve rocket technology that is basically off-the-shelf."
"The space shuttle or unmanned vehicles could ferry parts to low-Earth orbit that will be assembled into a vehicle to carry humans beyond low-Earth orbit," Spudis said.
"Were spending money whether the space shuttle is flying or not," he said. "The shuttle is expensive right now, even on the ground, and were trying to find a way to use the existing infrastructure to build a transportation system to return to the Moon."
Besides the dream of cheap energy, the Moon also can provide a base for enhanced astronomical observations, said Roger Angel, director of the Center for Astronomical Adaptive Optics at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
Placing a 20-meter telescope at the Moons south pole would provide the best combination a remote place of operations away from Earth and the chance to upgrade and maintain the system, Angel said.
"In the past decade, NASA did not encourage thinking about Moon," Angel said. "But I think the astronomical potential there is very high. If one felt this was really going to happen, I think there would be enormous enthusiasm for this."
Angel, Criswell, Schmitt and Spudis were the only witnesses who testified. No one from NASA was at the hearing nor was anyone who advocates a NASA-led mission to the Moon or Mars.
Schmitt said he sees the Moon not as a final destination, but as a key base for sending humans to Mars and beyond.
"I think the cheapest and fastest way to get human to Mars is by way of the Moon through commercial development of a technology base necessary to go to the Moon and extract its resource," Schmitt said.
Spudis also believes that returning to the Moon is a stepping stone for sending humans deeper into space.
"What do on the Moon is learn to live off the resources," Spudis said. "If we do that, it opens up everything. To go to Mars right now would require an amazing amount of money and that probably is not an investment the country is willing to put up. If we go to Moon and do this, than it automatically make it easier to go to Mars in the future."
Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), a member of the subcommittee, agreed that sending humans to the Moon again would be beneficial.
"I think this is an exciting time and its key that things like this are being reviewed for the real nature of their sustainability," he said. "Im very aware of the start-and-stop nature of space programs, and we cant that again. This has to be a vision that is real and it has have a buy-in from the American public."
The White House is currently leading an interagency review of possible new missions for NASA. Several committees and subcommittees have held hearings to listen to various viewpoints about the future of human space travel.
Robert Zubrin, executive director of the Mars Society, told the full Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee Oct. 31 that the goal of the United States should be to send humans to Mars within a decade. Zubrin criticized the amount of money NASA spends on the shuttle program and space station programs calling it much less efficient than the return the agency achieved on the money it spent on the Apollo program.
He encouraged the Senate to fund a Mars program.
"Congress should not fund the construction of things," Zubrin said. "It should fund the implementation of a plan."
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