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CBO: The Budgetary Implications of NASA's Current Plans for Space Exploration

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The Budgetary Implications of NASA’s Current Plans for Space Exploration, April 2009

  • “In 2004, President Bush announced his “Vision for U.S. Space Exploration,” which called for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to develop new vehicles for spaceflight that would allow humans to return to the moon by 2020. In response, NASA restructured its plans to achieve that objective, and in September 2004, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) published a budgetary analysis of NASA’s new plans. This report updates that analysis, incorporating elements of NASA’s plans that had not been established in 2004. To meet the goal set by the President, NASA reduced its planned budgets supporting science and research in aeronautics by more than 40 percent and made plans to complete construction of the International Space Station and retire the space shuttle by 2010. Using about $100 billion of potential funding through 2020 made available by those changes, NASA began developing new vehicles for human spaceflight in what the agency calls its Constellation program. Two of those vehicles—the Ares 1 crew launch vehicle and the Orion crew exploration vehicle—are to achieve “initial operating capability” by March 2015. At that point, the vehicles should be capable of carrying a crew of astronauts to the International Space Station. NASA is also developing additional vehicles and systems—including the Ares 5 cargo launch vehicle and the Altair lunar lander—that are needed to return humans to the moon.”
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