If reports prove correct, the new space agency agenda is not a rewind back to Project Apollo. The soon-to-be-unveiled plan is expected to use the cratered lunar terrain as a literal pit stop on the way to planting footprints on Mars.

President Bush has apparently given the green-light to the creation of an Earth-to-Moon transportation link. Robots would first do the heavy-lifting of piecing together and sustaining a human-tended lunar base.

Setting up a permanent home-away-from-home on the Moon for astronauts does not appear in the cards, according to some reports. Rather, the lunar landscape is viewed as a close-at-hand practice and proving ground for more adventuresome travel to the red planet.

Although wheeled robots dont fear to tread across the red planet, how humans will fare the trek and trauma of exploring there remains to be seen.

While details of the White House strategy are still sketchy, space scientists, a moonwalker, and others dont mind filling in the blanks.

The Moon's value lies in its ability to give us both the theoretical knowledge and operational experience of living off-Earth and using space resources," said Paul Spudis, a senior scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland.

"If I were advising the President, I would suggest that he declare that the mission of this new effort is to develop the technologies and techniques to mine, process, and use lunar resources, specifically, the hydrogen and oxygen of the lunar poles," Spudis told SPACE.com . 

Spudis said that secondary objectives would be to develop the operational strategies using people and machines to maximize the efficiency and results of planetary (lunar) surface operations. "The final goal is to begin to establish an Earth-Moon transport infrastructure, based on the use of lunar resources."

"If we can go to the Moon and develop this transport system, we will have the ability to go anywhere in the solar system, not just Mars," Spudis explained.

Doing so, Spudis added, is a paradigm-shifting moment for the space program.

"If we can break the bonds of Earth and re-fuel our spacecraft, both interplanetary and Earth-orbital, our whole way of doing business in space will be forever changed for the better. Our limitations will no longer be driven by the capacity of our launch vehicles, but by our own imaginations," Spudis concluded.

"This thing is much bigger than a Mars mission. It is nothing less than a revolution in how we will live and operate on the New Frontier, Spudis concluded. "It's very exciting, and good for the country! I can't wait for the real announcement!"

The Bush space plan has the potential to do things in more clever ways than ever done before. Thats the view of Mike Duke, a space resources expert at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden.

First of all, a new heavy-lift launch vehicle to get to the Moon isnt required. But the catch is developing and certifying the production of propellants from lunar resources. Such a fuel plant on the Moon, or perhaps a space propellant depot, could support a transportation system beyond low Earth orbit.

"A propellant production capability on the Moon could be established robotically with spacecraft of a scale that is about the same as we are now considering for automated lunar missions," Duke told SPACE.com .

Propellant cranked out by this system, Duke added, would be sufficient to reduce the need for launch capability from the Earth by at least a factor of two for a round trip mission to the Moon and a factor of four if a refueling depot is established at the L1 Lagrangian point in deep space.

A Lagrangian point is a spot at which a small body, under the gravitational influence of two large bodies, will remain somewhat at rest relative to them.

"That is a clever way of doing it, not just depending on brute force, and it would have ramifications for Mars, as well as potential commercial benefits," Duke advised.

University of Houston physicist, David Criswell, has had a longstanding, powerful interest in the Moon. Given the potential for robotic and lunar exploration being restarted, utilizing the Moon as an energy hub is within reach, he said.

Criswell has been formulating the plans and the justification for building bases on the Moon to collect solar energy and beam it through space for use by electricity-hungry Earthlings. He is convinced that a Lunar Solar Power (LSP) system can cultivate into being a prosperous world, one that is attainable through clean, safe, low-cost electrical energy.

Criswell estimates that by the year 2050, a well-to-do population of 10 billion would require about 20 terawatts of power, or about three to five times the amount of commercial power currently produced.

The Moon receives more than 13,000 terawatts of solar power, and harnessing just one percent could satisfy Earths power needs, Criswell said. The challenge is to build a commercial system that can extract a tiny portion of the immense solar power available and deliver the energy to consumers on Earth at a reasonable price.

Criswells lunar-based system to supply solar power to Earth is based on building large banks of solar cells on the Moon to collect sunlight and send it back to receivers on Earth via a microwave beam.

"Even today, most of us dont seem to realize that the Moon was explored sufficiently 30 years ago for use now," Criswell explains in a recent issue of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) magazine, IEEE Potentials.

"We can use the Moon to provide an enormous flow of net new, useful work. We can move from depleting the Earth and the biosphere to sustaining, nurturing, and protecting it," Criswell argues.

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