Independence day

Specific to the rolling out of the Bush space program, Criswell is hopeful something wonderful is about to happen.

"This week President Bush can create a real space program. Now, our space program is based on Earth and supported exclusively on the backs of taxpayers. Bush and the U.S. Congress can enable U.S. companies to establish new lunar industries as part of a permanent U.S. base on the Moon," Criswell told SPACE.com.   

Criswell said that power beaming from the Moon can also open up a new era of deep space exploration.

"Lunar industries can build and power real spacecraft that safely and affordably let people travel throughout the solar system and live and work about Mars, Venus, and the major moons and asteroids," Criswell predicted. A real space program will let our next generation look back on President Bush’s announcement as humankind’s real ‘Independence Day’, he said.

Robert Zubrin, head of the Mars Society, a space advocacy group, said rumors are contradictory as to what mix of Moon/Mars the President will actually announce.

"NASA needs a goal, and that goal should be humans to Mars," Zubrin said. The goal needs to "real".

"It must be sufficiently imminent in character to force NASA to change its spending from its current random activity to focused action to develop, build and fly a coherent set of hardware to implement the program plan," Zubrin said.

Zubrin is author of the recently released book, Mars on Earth: The Adventures of Space Pioneers in the High Arctic (Published by J. P. Tarcher; September 2003).

Using lunar missions as an intermediate milestone to test out and exercise a subset of the needed humans-to-Mars hardware -- that approach is fine, Zubrin said.

However, commonality of hardware for both the Moon and Mars is essential, Zubrin emphasized. "This overall coherence needs to be designed into the program from the start," he said.

Some speculation has already surfaced that an Apollo 8-like -- humans around Mars but not land -- is being discussed.

"The Mars mission must actually go to Mars. Missions that simply fly by Mars, go into Mars orbit, or to the Martian moons are insufficient," Zubrin stressed. "The purpose of sending humans to Mars is not to set a new altitude record for the aviation almanac. The purpose is to explore and pioneer a new world. This can only be done with astronauts on the Martian surface."

Jack Schmitt, Apollo 17 astronaut – he and Gene Cernan were the last humans to set foot on the Moon – said that his first inclination is to support a modernization and upgrading of Apollo concepts to reach for the Moon again – including a Saturn 6 booster, and transition to less conservative trajectories "as we get our lunar space legs back."

Schmitt said that going to the Moon accelerates going to Mars in a number of ways. Just for starters:  

• you get a low cost, heavy lift booster into the inventory, perhaps largely paid for by private investors if you do it right;
• you get helium-3 fusion technology that can be adapted to an Earth-orbit to Mars-orbit continuous acceleration-deceleration rocket;
• you get lunar hydrogen, water, oxygen and food to reduce the Earth launch mass until a Mars settlement is self-sufficient;
• you get Mars surface facilities designs derived from lunar designs that will have indefinite life engineered into their construction and maintenance strategies; and
• you get experience in working in deep space again, a much less forgiving environment than earth-orbit.
  

"I pray that the White house will insist that the effort be a partnership with private investors, based on the commercial potential of helium-3 fusion, as well as the ‘bridging businesses’ to get there," Schmitt said.

America’s possible return to the Moon next decade has already stirred interest in international quarters. How the Bush space strategy encompasses the role of other space faring nations is not fully known at the moment.

Nevertheless, President Bush’s lunar initiative "can challenge space agencies" and "trigger opportunities for ongoing activities and collaborations", says Bernard Foing, Executive Director of the International Lunar Exploration Working Group (ILEWG).

Europe is presently on its way to the Moon, with the European Space Agency’s SMART-1 technology mission, launched late last year.

"SMART-1 will provide opportunities for scientific research, mapping of lunar resources, and studying potential sites for future landings and lunar bases", Foing said.

ILEWG has identified a "roadmap for lunar exploration", with a progressive approach, starting with precursor missions such as SMART-1. Japanese, Chinese and Indian space agencies are preparing to launch lunar probes from 2004 to 2008.

Foing said that for ILEWG, a second phase will be to deploy a series of robotic lunar landers. These craft are slated to perform new investigations, to return lunar samples that help decipher the history of our own Earth, and to test exploration technologies for future
lunar and planetary missions.

These autonomous robotic landers will be controlled from Earth with tele-presence and virtual reality, Foing said.

As a third phase, ILEWG envisages an "international robotic village" around 2015.

Advanced landers and rovers from various space agencies would share facilities for exploiting local resources, producing energy, conducting life support experiments, and deploying infrastructure in preparation for human arrivals.

ILEWG sees a fourth phase around the 2020 time period with a permanently inhabited lunar base, to conduct research, to exploit lunar resources, to learn to live off the lunar land, and to test technologies for voyages to Mars.

The European Space agency is also defining an exploration program dubbed Aurora. That program calls for a series of missions leading to humans on the Moon and Mars.

"An international lunar base before 2020 is possible", Foing added, depending on the demand of the public and commitment of political actors from space-faring nations.