Space Exploration Initiative

On July 20, 1989, the 20th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing, US President George H. W. Bush announced plans for what came to be known as the Space Exploration Initiative (SEI).

He asked Vice President Dan Quayle to lead the National Space Council in determining what was needed to carry out these missions in terms of money, manpower and technology.

[4] Following this announcement NASA Administrator Richard Truly initiated a study of the options to achieve the President's goals, headed by Johnson Space Center Director Aaron Cohen.

Chairman of the Budget Committee, Senator Jim Sasser, stated "The President took one giant leap for starry-eyed political rhetoric, and not even a small step for fiscal responsibility.

In August 1990, Vice President Quayle established an advisory committee, often called the "Augustine Commission", which recommended that NASA should focus on space and Earth science, and transition human exploration to a "go-as-you-pay" strategy.

The FLO concept incorporated many recommendations from the 1991 Stafford Synthesis report, mainly the use of a Nova class super heavy launch vehicle to minimize assembly and operations in LEO and on the surface of the Moon.

FLO was a major change from previous SEI proposals as the vehicle was standalone and expendable rather than reusable and being staged off of Space Station Freedom.

The International Lunar Resources Exploration Concept was a proposed mission architecture by Kent Joosten, an engineer at Johnson Space Center.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory proposed a LSR for Apollo but it was quickly turned down due to the amount of technology, such as In situ resource utilization, that would need to be developed.