Hans.Moravec%CMU-RI-ROVER@sri-unix.UUCP (01/20/84)
a232 1356 19 Jan 84
AM-Focus-Moon Settlement, Bjt,0953
TODAY'S FOCUS: Deciding Whether to Build American Base on Moon
Laserphoto NY28
By HOWARD BENEDICT
AP Aerospace Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - Buzz Aldrin, who walked on the moon with Neil
Armstrong, says his old employer, NASA, is wrong in wanting a space
station as its next major goal. Americans, he contends, should go back
to the moon and build a permanent base there.
''The solar system's most desirable space station already has six
American flags on it,'' he said in an interview. ''That's the moon.
Let's use it and not turn it over to foreign pioneering
frontiersmen.''
Aldrin and several individuals and aerospace organizations are
trying to drum up support for a lunar base as the White House nears a
decision on an expanded national space policy for the remainder of
this century. Some groups are supporting a letter-writing campaign to
President Reagan.
The president may announce the new policy in his State of the Union
message Jan. 25. Details would follow in his proposed fiscal 1985
budget to be presented Feb. 1.
There is sharp division within the administration on what course
America should take in space. But there are indicators that Reagan
will strongly endorse an orbiting station, which for years has been
the No. 1 priority of the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration.
NASA officials, noting Reagan's recent call for a ''grander vision''
in space, said he also may support start-up money later in this
decade for a scientific station on the moon, perhaps as an embarkation
point sometime in the 21st century for a manned expedition to Mars.
Preliminary 1985 spending projections given earlier this month to
Republican congressmen by Budget Director David Stockman show the
admininistration wants to add $6 billion to NASA's budget over the
next five years. That's a huge increase for an agency that has seen
several lean years and just about the right figure for space station
development.
Reagan wants to ''recapture the vision of Apollo'' and is seeking
the best way to do that, said the White House science adviser, George
A. Keyworth.
The president hinted at his direction in a speech last October on
NASA's 25th anniversary. He challenged the agency to develop more
visionary long-term goals instead of just focusing on winning approval
of a permanent manned space station.
''We're not just concerned about the next logical step in space,''
Reagan said. ''We're planning an entire road, a 'high road' if you
will, that will provide us a vision of limitless hope and
opportunity.''
The president has been influenced considerably by Keyworth, who said
last September that NASA had not been imaginative enough in its
long-range planning. He said the agency should be thinking beyond a
space station - on how to use such a platform to return humans to the
moon and then on to Mars.
Since then agency thinkers have been working on just such a plan,
but they have kept details under wraps.
Aldrin and others have seized upon the president's challenge to urge
a moon base. Some, like Aldrin and George E. Mueller, who headed
NASA's manned spacecraft effort during the Apollo moon program, and
James Muncy, president of Using Space for America, want to skip the
station as the next goal and go directly to the moon.
Organizations like the National Space Institute, the L5 Society, the
Citizens Advisory Council on National Space Policy and Spacepac would
like to see both a space station and a lunar base by the end of this
century. Some would like to see both in place by 1992, the 500th
anniversary of Columbus' voyage to the New World.
Such organizations, which are privately funded, were formed to
advocate greater emphasis on the national space program. The L5
society is named for the fifth ''libration point'' between earth and
moon, where gravity is balanced and where a space stations conceivably
could be parked.
NASA's concern is that it can't do two expensive programs at the
same time. Developing an operational space station for eight people by
1991 will cost between $6 and $8 billion. Building a moon base in
that same period would cost another $10 billion.
The agency favors constructing a station first, ferrying up sections
with the space shuttle, and then using that platform as a launching
pad to the moon.
A station would be used at first as a scientific observation point
above Earth's obscuring atmosphere, to search for resources on our
planet and as an orbiting factory to make pure and exotic
pharmaceuticals and materials for commercial use.
Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon - on July 20, 1969 - said
the nation would benefit more by developing an Orbital Transfer
Vehicle to transport humans and materials from the space shuttle to
the moon, leaving a space station until later. He said he has
personally presented his proposal to both Keyworth and NASA
administrator James M. Beggs.
The moon could serve as an excellent scientific observation post,
and workers there could gradually construct a large solar power
station to provide an enormous amount of electricity to Earth, he
said. Systems Development Corporation, a Burroughs company in Santa
Monica, Calif., recently made such a formal proposal to the space
agency.
Aldrin is a consultant to SDC and has worked out a series of
rendezvous techniques for manned vehicles transferring between Earth
and moon. As a physicist he developed many of the rendezvous
techniques for the Gemini and Apollo man-in-space projects.
Aldrin said that the six American manned missions to the moon found
that there are considerable supplies of minerals and building
materials there. He said 90 percent of a moon base could be built from
materials already there.
ap-ny-01-19 1656EDT
***************chongo@nsc.UUCP (01/24/84)
would not an space station in orbit be the first step twards building a moon station? chongo <i would like to see both> /\ /\