NASA Looks to the Future With Eye on the Past

"It's good to have such an enthusiast like Griffin at NASA, but that whole messianic vision is pretty far from the current state of technology," said Robert Kirshner, an astronomy professor at Harvard University and past president of the American Astronomical Society. "Many of us worry that it will suck the juice out of other very promising projects to learn more about our universe."

Griffin said that NASA intends to maintain the financial balance between manned exploration and pure science in its $17 billion yearly budget, a ratio that is now about two dollars for manned exploration for each one spent on pure science. The billions more needed for the moon-Mars missions will be redirected from the costly shuttle and space station programs, which are due to wind down in 2010.

But Wes Huntress, a former NASA associate administrator and ex-member of the NASA science advisory board, said that ever since Bush announced the space exploration vision, the administration has refused to give the agency additional funding to accomplish its mission.

The result is that "Griffin has had to cannibalize the agency to get the money for the new program," Huntress said. "Even at that, I don't think there are sufficient funds to support even the return to the moon once the program gets really moving."

In Griffin's big-picture view, the stakes in space are high -- which helps explain why he is so driven about return to manned lunar exploration and beyond. Not only are there major national security issues involved -- the country relies on space-based defense like no other nation -- but the NASA administrator said the United States can remain a preeminent civilization only if it continues to explore space aggressively.

If the United States pulls back, Griffin said, others will speed ahead. Russia and China have sent astronauts into low-Earth orbit, and India, Japan and the Europeans all have the technical ability to do the same now -- and far more in the future.

International cooperation has been ingrained into the government's thinking about space, but the United States and others remain committed to manufacturing their own rockets and space capsules and will be looking for international cooperation only once they are on the moon or Mars or some asteroids in between.

"I absolutely believe that America became a great power in the world, leapfrogging other great powers of the time, because of its mastery of the air," Griffin said. "In the 21st century and beyond, our society and nation, if we wish to remain in the first rank, must add to our existing capacities . . . to remain preeminent in the arts and sciences of space flight.

"Space is important to our nation and will be forevermore."