MIAMI: NASA will become “an agency of pipe dreams and fairy tales” under proposals by President Obama that would kill off plans for returning Man to the Moon, critics said yesterday.

Spelling out a controversial new vision for space exploration as part of his $3.8 trillion (£2.4 trillion) budget proposal to Congress yesterday, Mr Obama called for a halt to Constellation, the project that aims to send astronauts back to the Moon by 2020 and has already cost $9 billion.

The International Space Station, which was due to be scrapped in 2016, would get a five-year reprieve, and the task of getting American astronauts there and back would be privatised, courtesy of an extra $6 billion of funding, while Nasa works on developing new technologies for longer-term space exploration.

The strategy constitutes a “bold, new approach to human space flight that embraces commercial industry, forges international partnerships, and invests in the building blocks of a more capable approach to space exploration”, Mr Obama promised.

But battle lines are already being drawn in Congress. Constellation is but one casualty of the President’s budget proposal, which aims to trim domestic spending while boosting funds for war and relying on $1.3 billion of new borrowing to help lever America out of economic crisis.

“The President’s proposed Nasa budget begins the death march for the future of US human space flight. The cancellation of the Constellation programme and the end of human space flight does represent change — but it is certainly not the change I believe in,” said Senator Richard Shelby, a Republican.

Joining critics who complain that America would be ceding its place at the forefront of the 21st-century space race, and noting that India announced plans last week for its first manned space expedition by 2016, he added: “The US will still be working on launching people on rockets that do not exist while Russia, China, and India are actually doing it.

“If this budget is enacted, Nasa will no longer be an agency of innovation and hard science; it will be the agency of pipe dreams and fairy tales.”

As Nasa marked the sixth anniversary of the Columbia space shuttle disaster, in which seven astronauts were killed, Mr Shelby said: “It is unfortunate that on this anniversary this administration is choosing to abandon our nation’s only chance at remaining the leader in human space flight. It is ironic that Constellation, a programme born out of the recommendations of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, would be eliminated in lieu of rockets repeatedly deemed unsafe for astronauts by Nasa’s own Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel.”

Nasa’s current mission for space exploration was spelt out five years ago in President George W. Bush’s “Moon, Mars and Beyond” brief. With the space shuttle fleet due to retire later this year, Constellation provided for the shuttle’s successor — a system by which astronauts would travel into space inside a vehicle called Orion, launched on a rocket known as Ares 1.

A second rocket, Ares V, was to be developed for “heavy lift” duties, to help to get hardware up to the Moon and establish a manned base, and take astronauts on longer-haul trips to Mars and beyond. But an independent review ordered by Mr Obama last year concluded that Constellation was on an “unsustainable trajectory”, and that a new Moon voyage would not be possible until 2028 at the earliest because of a lack of funds.

Major-General Charles Bolden, the head of Nasa, put a brave face on the announcement, saying: “The truth is that we were not on a path to get back to the Moon’s surface. And as we focused so much of our effort and funding on just getting to the Moon, we were neglecting investments in the key technologies that would be required to go beyond that.”

Under Mr Obama’s proposal, he said, Nasa would set to work on developing fresh technologies for future missions beyond low-Earth orbit but with no timescale mentioned and no set target laid down.

“Imagine trips to Mars that take weeks instead of nearly a year; people fanning out across the inner solar system, exploring the Moon, asteroids and Mars nearly simultaneously in a steady stream of ‘firsts’ and imagine all of this being done collaboratively with nations around the world. That is what the President’s plan for Nasa will enable, once we develop the new capabilities to make it a reality,” he enthused. “Imagine enabling hundreds, even thousands of people to visit or live in low-Earth orbit, while Nasa firmly focuses its gaze on the cosmic horizon beyond Earth.”

General Bolden’s predecessor, Dr Mike Griffin, who championed Constellation, said: “Only once previously has a US president recommended to the Congress that this nation take a backward step in space. On that occasion, President Nixon cancelled the Apollo programme, a decision which will come to be regarded as one of the most strategically bankrupt decisions in human history. If such a thing is possible, this decision is even worse.”