NASA manager pitches a cheaper return-to-moon plan

WASHINGTON -- Like a car salesman pushing a luxury vehicle that the customer no longer can afford, NASA has pulled out of its back pocket a deal for a cheaper ride to the moon.

It will not be as powerful, and its design is a little dated. Think of it as a base-model Ford station wagon instead of a high-priced luxury car.

Officially, the space agency is still on track with a 4-year-old plan to spend $35 billion to build new rockets and return astronauts to the moon in several years. However, a top manager at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is floating a cut-rate alternative that costs around $6.6 billion.

This cheaper option is not as powerful as NASA's current design with its fancy new rockets, the people-carrying Ares I and cargo-lifting Ares V. But the cut-rate plan would still get to the moon.

The new model calls for flying lunar vehicles on something very familiar-looking — the old space shuttle system with its gigantic orange fuel tank and twin solid-rocket boosters, minus the shuttle itself. There are two new vehicles this rocket would carry — one generic cargo container, the other an Apollo-like capsule for astronaut travel. Those new vehicles could both go to the moon or the international space station.

What is most remarkable about this idea is who it came from: NASA's shuttle program manager John Shannon. He recently presented it to an independent panel charged with reviewing NASA's costly spaceflight plans. And he was urged to do so by a top NASA administrator.

It shows that top officials in NASA, an agency of engineers who regularly make contingency plans, worry that their preferred moon plan is running into trouble, space experts said.

Shannon says he likes the present return-to-the-moon design. But he said, "I think the cost numbers are going to give us problems." So for the past three years, Shannon and a handful of others have casually tinkered with the shuttleless shuttle, an idea that has kicked around NASA for decades. The Shannon team did so with the permission of NASA and is not connected with another group of space program workers who drew up a different alternative to Ares and did so anonymously for fear of retribution from NASA officials.