NASA plans to inhabit the moon

The Associated Press, the LA Times, and the Washington Post all report that yesterday NASA unveiled official plans to attempt to inhabit the moon. The Washington Post reports,

"NASA unveiled plans Monday to set up a small and ultimately self-sustaining settlement of astronauts on the south pole of the moon sometime around 2020, the first step in an ambitious plan to resume manned exploration of the solar system."

Apparently, it will be funded with the help of international partners and "space commercial businesses", whatever that means. As you can imagine, this would be pretty damn expensive. The purpose of this endeavor, aside from generally inhabiting the moon, is to act as a hub for the potentially manned exploration of Mars. Pretty cool.

The time line is as follows, as reported:

Space timeline
2008: Launch of Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, a mapping mission to determine where to build the lunar base.
2009: A first test of one of the lunar spaceships.
2010: NASA to mothball the space shuttle.
2014: First manned test flight of the Orion crew exploration vehicle, but no moon landing.
2020: Begin setup of settlement of astronauts on the south pole of the moon.
2024: Permanent base could be operational.

Sounds like they've put some time into this, or they've read one too many Robert Heinlein books.

[via The Seattle Times]