WASHINGTON Combining an old concept, existing equipment and new ideas, NASA has given shape to President George W. Bush's promise to send humans back to the moon by the end of the next decade.
Michael Griffin, NASA's administrator, spelled out a $104 billion plan that he said would send astronauts to the moon by 2018, serve as a steppingstone to Mars and beyond, and stay within NASA's existing budget.
At present, the United States is the only nation with an active, date-specific moon program. China entertains a moon landing and exploration as long-term objectives of its space program.
India's space program is focused on satellites and earth imaging. It recently joined the Galileo project, a European endeavor to compete, via a network of satellites, with the U.S. Global Positioning System, or GPS.
Japan has an extensive space program, but it's ambitions relating to the moon are limited to unmanned probes.
Griffin's announcement Monday laid out a timetable and a budget, putting flesh on the bones of a proposal that Bush announced on Jan. 14, 2004, as he was campaigning for re-election. NASA's glossy new plan will replace the aging shuttles with a new generation of space vehicles meant to rekindle the America's exploratory fires.
But while Americans eagerly accepted President John F. Kennedy's challenge in 1961 to put men on the Moon, Bush's plan to return people there and then voyage onward to Mars is generating skepticism about its feasibility.
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