NASA Vets Skeptical of Bush Plan

Jan. 15, 2004 -- -- The White House is calling for "a renewed spirit of discovery," and many veterans of the Space Age say they welcome it.

"Any astronaut, you scratch our skin and you'll find Mars blood flowing underneath," said Jeffrey Hoffman, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who spent 20 years as an astronaut. "That's how much I care about it."

The president's plan calls for:

• A new-generation "Crew Exploration Vehicle," to start test flights around 2008.

• Astronauts returning to the moon between 2015 and 2020.

• Long-term stays on the moon (though not specifically a permanent base) to mine it for fuel and water, and to prepare for more ambitious flights.

• Astronauts going to Mars, perhaps in the 2020s.

To make all this happen, NASA would retire its remaining space shuttles by 2010 after they have finished launching the components of the International Space Station. The space station itself would essentially be handed off to the 15 other countries that took part in its creation; NASA would only use it for research that would help the flights to the moon and Mars become reality.

"We've undertaken space travel because the desire to explore and understand is part of our character," President Bush said in his announcement Wednesday.

Ever since the end of the Apollo lunar flights, scientists and engineers have lamented that the United States did not have a clear direction in space. The president noted that in the last 30 years, no astronaut has ventured more than 386 miles from the Earth's surface.