Orlando Figueroa, NASAs director of Solar System Exploration Division, said Monday that NASA could send people to the moon as early as 2018, five years sooner than President Bush required in the NASA directive unveiled in January.
Posted by jburk at March 16, 2026 10:32 AM | TrackBackThe 2018 date is when the CEV is fully tested and man rated for use. Also ISS commitments are nearing the end for heavy lift responsibilities to the international space station partners.
By the way the ISS is having trouble with the oxygen generation equipment and is about to loss another gyro that must be brought up by the shuttle due to the Russian progress ship being to small.
Just another reason to fast track the shuttle C with the CEV module in my IMO.
Posted by: Harold LaValley at March 16, 2026 10:46 AMI think another way of solving the high budget dollars that is being toted for the SEI project is to crash course it into getting it done in a much shorter time frame. Only with less add on experiments and what ever else is not necessarily needed is a KISS approach.
Sustaining such an effort then would require more cash to continue. At least then you can say we have what is needed to get the job done.
Instead of saying well we need this, one of those and five of these in order to do the plan.
Making it cost way to much to do.