Panel Foresees Humans Living on Moon, Mars

A presidential commission on the future of the U.S. space program, whose research predates the Challenger accident, envisions humans living on the moon and Mars in the next half century.

“America will lead a dynamic movement of humankind to new worlds,” the National Commission on Space says.

The commission says the future will see “growing numbers of people working at Earth orbital, lunar and eventually Martian bases, initiating the settlement of vast reaches of the inner solar system.”

Spending Predictions

The panel says this goal can be achieved with what it calls “reasonable civilian space budgets.”

A chart with the report shows spending for space increasing to about $28 billion in the year 2010 and climbing to $40 billion in 2030. The current NASA budget is $7.3 billion.

Although the United States cannot now put men into space because of the Challenger disaster, which the commission called “a temporary interruption,” the panel advocated a step-by-step program that would by the year 2000 produce two economical new vehicles to move people and cargo from Earth into space and a transfer vehicle for transportation in space. The systems would become operational in conjunction with a spaceport in orbit. The report calls this phase building “a highway to space.”