Mars may be the ultimate target, but continued strong U.S. leadership in human spaceflight is the stated goal of NASA's tightly focused new plan for lunar exploration. A rigorous scrubbing over the summer held the cost of a return to the Moon as a first step to the Red Planet to what NASA says is 55% of the cost of the Apollo program in inflation-adjusted dollars. Still, despite making lavish use of hardware developed during the past 45 years, it will cost an estimated $104 billion to keep the U.S. in the critical path back to the Moon by 2020. That's a breathtaking number, even when spread out over two decades. And the "go as you pay" approach set by the Exploration Space Architecture Study (ESAS) outlined last week also leaves plenty of room for international and commercial players to add their money in the years ahead. The plan has already been targeted by conservative Republicans looking to pay the massive hurricane recovery bill coming due. NASA Administrator Michael D. Griffin defends the price tag as the cost of maintaining the "strategic" U.S. ability to send humans into space after the shuttle is retired at the end of 2010.
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机译：火星可能是最终目标，但美国在人类太空飞行中继续保持强大领导地位是NASA紧紧围绕月球探索新计划的既定目标。夏季进行了严格的擦洗，这是重返月球的成本，这是迈向红色星球的第一步。美国航空航天局表示，按通货膨胀调整后的美元，这是阿波罗计划成本的55％。尽管如此，尽管大量使用了过去45年开发的硬件，但要使美国在2020年之前重返月球的关键道路上，仍需花费约1,040亿美元。这是一个惊人的数字，即使分布在二十年之内。上周概述的“探索空间建筑研究”（ESAS）设定的“按需付费”方法也为国际和商业参与者在未来几年里增加资金提供了很大的空间。该计划已成为保守派共和党人的目标，他们希望支付即将到期的大规模飓风恢复法案。 NASA局长迈克尔·格里芬（Michael D. Griffin）为标价辩护，因为维持航天飞机在2010年底退役后维持美国“战略性”将人类送入太空的能力的成本。
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