Panel: NASA's strategy lofty, funding not

WASHINGTON, Aug. 14 (UPI) -- NASA doesn't have the funds to meet its goal of flying astronauts to the moon by 2020, reviewers of the U.S. space agency's human space flight program said.

While advisory in nature, the Human Space Flight Plans Committee has been charged with developing a strategy for NASA for the next two decades and is expected to issue its report at the end of August, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

Committee members were to meet with administration officials Friday, likely telling officials that under existing funding parameters, the United States can't realistically return men to the moon by 2020. A 2020 moon landing would be possible under NASA's current budget only if the agency crashes the international space station into the Pacific Ocean in 2016, the Journal said.

Committee member Jeff Greason, an aerospace executive, said some fixed costs associated with NASA's strategy -- such as the Constellation program that would replace the existing shuttle program -- would break the budget in the coming decades.

"If Santa Claus brought us this system tomorrow, fully developed, and the budget didn't change, our next action would have to be to cancel it," Greason said.

A NASA spokesman told the Journal it would be premature for the agency to comment on the committee's work.