Katrina and “Apollo on Steroids”

As September came, so also did disaster to the United States. Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast, wreaking havoc and causing floods, horrific dam­age, and loss of life. The impact on New Orleans, in particular, was devastating,

and television pictures of that city’s forlorn victims turned the disaster into a public relations calamity for the Bush administration. NASA was affected in many ways, most notably in the damage to two Gulf Coast facilities, Michoud and Stennis. Estimates of damage to these facilities hit $i billion.14

Katrina was obviously going to cost the United States a fortune in recovery money. The collective attention of the nation was trained on New Orleans and adjacent territory through most of September. Nevertheless, on September 19 Griffin chose to unveil NASA’s plans for how it would return to the Moon. Based on extensive study, Griffin pointed out, NASA’s intent was to use a shuttle – derived system he called “Apollo on Steroids.” There was to be a capsule atop a rocket, as was true of Apollo. This would be the basic approach of Project Constellation, the overall Moon-Mars effort. Constellation would develop first a rocket (Ares I) and capsule (Orion) to replace the shuttle. This system would pave the way for developing a larger, heavy-lift rocket (Ares V). The heavy-lift rocket could carry astronauts in the Orion capsule, along with newly designed landing equipment, to the Moon. Griffin estimated that the cost of going back to the Moon would be $104 billion, and that NASA could get there before the president’s deadline of 2020. He set a goal of 2018.15

The media, congressional, and public reaction was quiet, given the concen­tration of the nation on Katrina’s aftermath. Some critics questioned Griffin’s political sensitivity in terms of timing. Griffin noted that Moon-Mars was a long-term program and would have to take place in an environment of many national setbacks of one kind or another.16 At the press conference during which Griffin made his announcement, a reporter asked whether the money for a re­turn to the Moon would require taking funds from science. Griffin responded that “not one thin dime” would come from science.17 That point seemed impor­tant not only to scientists but also to some of their congressional allies.18

While thinking about future missions, Griffin had to deal with day-to­day funding issues. He was getting frustrated as he negotiated the NASA FY 2007 budget with OMB. He was having problems fixing the space shuttle and therefore could not finish ISS. He was finding getting resources from the Bush administration to match its Moon-Mars goal impossible. Then, there was the scientific community, which seemed to have no understanding that he had lim­ited finances.

In October, Griffin met with NASA’s Astronomy and Astrophysics Advisory Committee and said he was “fed up” with the conflicting advice and pressures from NASA’s various science constituencies. He had a finite budget, he ex­

plained, and the scientists should come up with priorities. He noted the over­runs on science projects and also scorned scientists for lobbying for specific projects—like Hubble repair—without considering the financial implications. He did reiterate that he would continue to back science and would not divert science funding to human spaceflight. “The good news,” Fisk commented, “is that Griffin was going to give us our fair share. The bad news is that we can’t execute the programs we have with the money we have available.”19