U.S. Mars Visit by 2014, Station on Moon Urged : Space: Presidential panel unveils a controversial program that includes nuclear-powered rockets.

A presidential panel Tuesday unveiled an ambitious but controversial program to land Americans on Mars by the year 2014, which includes establishment of a permanent human settlement on the moon and the use of nuclear-powered rockets to ferry astronauts and supplies on interplanetary missions.

The long-awaited report comes nearly two years after President Bush declared the exploration of Mars to be a goal for the U.S. space program. It provides the first details on how it might be achieved.

“As Americans, we must ask ourselves what our role will be in man’s expansion into the solar system: to lead, follow or stand aside,” said retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas S. Stafford, a former astronaut and chairman of the panel, invoking lofty rhetoric reminiscent of that used during the Apollo space program of the 1960s.

The 180-page report, calling for a return to the moon by the year 2005, aroused considerable excitement among space buffs but deep concerns among critics who are worried about the huge cost--put at $500 billion or more by some analysts. The report, issued after 10 months of study, did not mention a price tag.

“It’s no accident there are no dollars attached to it,” said John E. Pike, associate director for space policy at the Federation of American Scientists. “People would have sticker shock at the price.

“The report is very long on how, from the engineering standpoint. But it doesn’t make a very persuasive case on why we should be doing it,” Pike added. “The problem hasn’t been the hardware but a rationale for spending that kind of money.”

James Frelk, executive director of another Washington-based space policy think tank, the George C. Marshall Institute, which backs the Mars initiative, also criticized the report for not incorporating cost estimates into the options.

“The technology is certainly achievable,” Frelk said. “The question will come down to costs. And that has to go into any policy-maker’s decisions.”

The report is filled with a broad range of options on how to put astronauts on Mars and is clearly designed to generate public and congressional support.

In preparing the report, the 27 panelists considered details ranging from possible landing sites to water recycling, air revitalization and coping with waste management. But they also envisioned scenarios that seem to come out of science fiction.

Among the initiative’s potential benefits, for instance, is construction on the moon of solar-based electricity-generating devices and the use of lasers or microwaves to beam such power back to Earth, Stafford said.

Backers of manned Mars exploration also have noted that the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter is studded with minerals that could be worth billions of dollars, if they are mined. In addition, a close-up study of Mars’ surface and atmosphere could shed new light on the basic forces governing the solar system’s evolution and yield clues of possible previous life on Mars.

The report’s mention of obtaining metals, ceramics and energy sources from the moon and Mars won the backing of the California Space Development Council, a Bay Area group that promotes space exploration.

“With enormous problems, you need to find enormous solutions,” said Charles R. Miller, council president.

In all, the “America at the Threshold” report includes four proposals to accommodate the different priorities and 14 separate recommendations for technological breakthroughs to meet Bush’s goal, including new generations of spacesuits and robots.

The panel also endorsed NASA’s proposed $30-billion space station, which won House funding last week only after an all-out lobbying campaign by the Bush Administration. Vice President Dan Quayle on Tuesday called the space station “the next step” to manned exploration of space.

Foremost among the obstacles to a manned mission to Mars is the debilitating, and perhaps fatal, effects of prolonged exposure to zero gravity. The report said that the average mission to Mars would take about 1,000 days. At its closest point to Earth, Mars is 35 million miles away, meaning that it would take about 230 days to get there. The moon, by comparison, is a quarter-million miles away--a three-day journey.

It was Stafford who officially presented the report to Quayle, who is chairman of the National Space Council. The council will study the report and devise strategies to implement the Mars initiative.

Quayle said that any decisions on the panel’s recommendations are “a way down the road.”

Among those present Tuesday when the report was issued were several former Apollo astronauts who have gone to the moon, including John Young and Eugene Cernan. It was on the 20th anniversary of the Apollo landing on the moon nearly two years ago that Bush announced the Space Exploration Initiative.

Both Quayle and Stafford acknowledged Tuesday that congressional funding for the Mars initiative is hardly a forgone conclusion. “We all know there are budgetary limitations,” the vice president said.

The Mars initiative and the recent controversy in the House over funding for the space station foreshadow the difficult choices facing policy-makers in coming years as they decide how large a role that the United States can afford to take as world science leader.

That challenge was repeatedly underscored during a press conference, as reporters peppered Quayle and Stafford with questions about the price tag. “Who said life will be easy?” Stafford said at one point.