“Presidential Panel says NASA should skip Moon”

Prabhupada, Vrndavana, November 1, 1976: […] “Of course, these rascals, they are finding only stones and rocks in other planets. They have got everything only in this planet. And you have to believe them. Wherever they are going, in the moon planet or in the Mars planet, what do they see? Simply rocks and sands. But that is not the fact. Each and every planet is full of living entities, janata. That is the statement in the sastra. Everywhere, every planet, there are different kinds of living entities. Just like we see in this planet also, the Europeans are of different features, the Americans have different features, India different features, Africa different features. So there are varieties of living continent, varieties of living entities, but no planet is vacant. That is not the fact. This is rascaldom. They are declaring the planets are vacant; only their father’s property here, that is full of living entities. This is nonsense. This is nonsense.”
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Presidential Panel says NASA should skip Moon
The Associated Press
2:31 PM EST October 22, 2009

NASA needs to make a major detour on its grand plans to return astronauts to the moon, a special independent panel told the White House Thursday.

Under current plans, NASA has picked the wrong destination with the wrong rocket, the panel’s chairman said. A test-flight version of the rocket, the new Ares I, is on a launch pad at Cape Canaveral, awaiting liftoff later this month for its first experimental flight.

Instead, NASA should be concentrating on bigger rockets and new places to explore, the panel members said, as they issued their final 155-page report. The committee, created by the White House in May to look at NASA’s troubled exploration, shuttle and space station programs, issued a summary of their findings last month, mostly urging more spending on space.

On Thursday in a news conference, panel Chairman Norman Augustine focused on fresh destinations for NASA, saying that it makes more sense to put astronauts on a nearby asteroid or one of the moons of Mars. He said that could be done sooner than returning to the moon in 15 years as NASA has outlined.

Moon-Mars plan lacks funds
The exploration plans now under fire were pushed by then-President George W. Bush after the 2003 Columbia space shuttle disaster. The moon-Mars plan lacks enough money, thanks to budget diversions, the panel said in a 155-page report. Starting in 2014, NASA needs an extra $3 billion a year if astronauts are going to travel beyond Earth’s orbit, the panel said.

The Augustine commission wants NASA to extend the life of the space shuttle program and the International Space Station. Space shuttles are due to retire Oct. 1, 2010, but should keep flying until sometime in 2011 because they won’t get all their flights to the space station done by that date.

And the space station itself – only now nearing completion – should operate until at least 2020, allowing for more scientific experiments, part of its reason for existence. NASA’s timetable calls for plunging it into the ocean in 2015.
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