RSF%SU-AI@sri-unix.UUCP (02/10/84)
From: Ross Finlayson <RSF@SU-AI>
n530 0121 02 Feb 84
BC-SPACE-02-02
By William Hines
(c) 1984 Chicago Sun-Times (Independent Press Service)
WASHINGTON - The head of the federal space agency has ruled out the
possibility of a lunar base, or even resumed manned flights to the
moon, until after the year 2000.
''Lunar bases, and even manned missions to Mars, are still in our
dreams,'' NASA Administrator James M. Beggs told reporters at a
briefing session on his agency's budget for Fiscal Year 1985. But as
far as manned activities on the moon are concerned, Beggs added, ''I
think you are looking at the years beyond the beginning of the second
millennium.''
The last manned flight to the moon, Apollo 17, ended with a safe
return to earth on Dec. 19, 1972.
Big-ticket activity in space for the remainder of the century will
focus on expanded operations with the four-plane Space Shuttle fleet
and development of a ''permanent presence in low earth orbit'' in the
form of a manned space station.
The station, which is planned for occupation by astronauts and
scientists beginning in 1992, was authorized last week in President
Reagan's State of the Union message to Congress. At that time, space
officials, including Beggs, estimated its price at $8 billion. At his
budget briefing, however, Beggs acknowledged that $8 billion would be
only the beginning. It would finance a bare-bones station that would
be augmented, at a possible cost of $2 billion a year, in the closing
years of the century.
The new budget proposal includes $150 million for start-up costs on
the space station. C. Thomas Newman, NASA comptroller, said the
project would need ''$250-300 million'' in fiscal 1986, $1.2 billion
in 1987, and about $2 billion a year thereafter.
''Don't expect that once the station is operational NASA's program
will stop,'' Beggs said. ''We will continue to develop it. $8 billion
gets you the initial operating capability.''
Interplanetary exploration, which has been on hold for several
years, gets a moderate shot in the arm in the new budget, with $16
million in start-up money on a Mars Geoscience-Climatology Orbiter
(MGCO) scheduled for launching in 1990. Beggs said MGCO represents a
new class of ''relatively lower cost planetary observers designed to
investigate specific questions in planetary science.'' Earlier
probes, such as the Mars-landing Vikings and the wide-ranging
Voyagers, were general purpose exploratory vehicles. MGCO will cost
about $375 million to develop and fly, Beggs said.
Along with a Jupiter probe called Galileo, set for launching in
1986, and a Venus radar mapper and a north-to-south sun-orbiting
craft scheduled for later in the '80s, MGCO completes NASA's existing
planetary program. There has not been an interplanetary launching
since 1979. This was a Voyager spacecraft that is headed for a
rendezvous with the planet Uranus in 1986 and Neptune in 1989.
The coming fiscal year will see delivery of the fourth and final
shuttle plane, to be named Atlantis. Beggs said he sees no
possibility, at present, of a fifth orbiter being needed.
The reusable shuttle planes, about the size of a DC-9 jet transport,
cost about $1 billion each. Two, Columbia and Challenger, already
have flown; Discovery is set for its maiden mission in June; and
Atlantis is expected to be delivered in November.
There will seven or eight shuttle flights in the current fiscal
year, which ends Sept. 30. The first was last November, and a second
is scheduled to begin Friday morning. Beggs estimated that the
shuttles would fly 11 times in fiscal 1985 and 16 times in 1986,
''working up toward a planned 24 flights a year.''
Even with the space station in the picture a decade from now, the
potential capabilities of a four-shuttle fleet should be adequate for
NASA's requirements, Beggs said. He explained that each shuttle
should be good for eight flights a year, a total of 32, and that
servicing the space station would require only seven missions.
Twenty-four regular flights plus seven for station-servicing adds up
to 31.
The bottom line on NASA's new budget is $7,370,000,000, an increase
of 4 per cent over the 1984 level. Beggs said he foresees a ''real
growth'' of 1 per cent a year for the rest of this decade. Taking
inflation estimates into account, this would bring NASA's budget for
fiscal 1989 to $9.2 billion.
END
nyt-02-02-84 0408est
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