Bush’s Lunar Plan Requires Dramatic Change for NASA

The Bush administration’s goal of returning humans to the moon will trigger the most tumultuous reorganization at NASA ever, threatening major cutbacks at its research facilities across the country.

The plan outlined by President Bush on Wednesday would put only $1 billion of new funding into the effort over the next five years, relying instead on $11 billion taken from undisclosed NASA programs and reallocated to the moon initiative; but neither the president nor NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe identified a single job, program or facility that might be affected.

Restructuring NASA, traditionally a major source of political patronage, could trigger a fight in Congress. Bush’s plan was attacked Wednesday by Democrats, environmentalists and arms control groups, who asserted it would militarize space.

The financial commitment made by Bush falls far short of what would be needed to start a major moon program, experts agree. The $11 billion would come out of existing NASA programs that would be curtailed or killed.

“This is a transforming event for NASA,” said Howard McCurdy, a professor at American University in Washington and an expert in the history of the space agency. “The NASA that carries this out is not the same NASA that has been around for the last 30 years.”

Any number of programs that previously were considered politically untouchable could be threatened. McCurdy said such NASA facilities as the Ames Research Center in Sunnyvale, Calif., the Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, the Stennis Space Center in Hancock County, Miss., and even the Langley Research Center in Norfolk, Va., could be vulnerable to cutbacks or closure. Details of the Bush plan will be unveiled next month as part of the 2005 budget.

Without any assurance of future funding from Congress, some experts said they were dubious about the success of the venture. Marco A. Caceras, senior space analyst for aerospace research firm the Teal Group in Arlington, Va., said that the initiative seemed “hollow” at best.

“It’s not a serious proposal,” he said, noting that the administration plans to pump only $200 million a year extra into the agency over five years, or less than half the amount that is spent each time the space shuttle is launched. “Bush wants to be seen as the guy who came up with the idea, and let someone else worry about it.”

Just days after taking office in 2002, O’Keefe riled NASA supporters by saying that no program or center was immune from cuts or closures. With a reputation as a longtime Republican budget-cutter, O’Keefe was one of the harshest critics of the agency before he was tapped for its top post.

“It’s all on the table,” O’Keefe said at the time, adding that his appointment was an “opportunity to think fresh about a variety of things.”

Among his proposals was the development of nuclear propulsion systems for long-haul space missions. But he never got the full backing by the administration, which was occupied with military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. That propulsion system figures prominently in a future Mars program.

On Wednesday, O’Keefe seemed emboldened by the president’s initiative, saying it would necessitate a transformation of the agency.

“Organizationally, this will require a different way of doing business,” he said. The former Navy secretary said he foresees a closer collaboration with the Pentagon, for instance, on such things as launch capacity.

Such collaboration alarms critics who suspect the new space initiative is part of a broader administration effort to militarize space. “It is a Trojan horse,” said Alice Slater, president of the Global Action Resource Center for the Environment, a New York-based group. “The U.S. space command has a mission to militarily dominate space. We are starting an arms race in space.”

But many space experts and leaders said that establishing a new goal for NASA was long overdue, because the agency had been languishing without any strategic direction or vision.

Louis Friedman, executive director of the Pasadena-based Planetary Society, said Bush’s initiative gives O’Keefe “the mandate to reorganize and reinvigorate the agency,” which he said “has been adrift too long.”

Bill Ballhaus, president of El Segundo-based Aerospace Corp., called the new program a key step for NASA -- one that he hoped would attract a new generation of Americans into science and technical education. “For years, we have been importing a high percentage of our technical work force,” he said. “Hopefully, this will inspire people, as space did my generation.”

Elliot G. Pulham, president and chief executive of the Space Foundation, an advocacy group, endorsed the president’s program, saying the last moon voyages during the 1970s were “like building a house and only looking through the front door. Sooner or later, we have to be at home in the universe -- and not just on planet Earth.”