First Lunar Outpost Lander: 9205-FLO-1 (FLO)

On July 20, 1989 – the 20th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing mission – President George H. W. Bush announced plans for the Space Exploration Initiative (SEI), which called for a long-range continuing commitment based on construction of the Space Station Freedom, sending humans back to the Moon, and ultimately sending astronauts to Mars. 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. The “90-Day Study” team, assembled from program offices and field centers, developed a reference base from which strategic options could be derived while still meeting the basic objectives of the Human Exploration Initiative. The final package consisted of an end-to-end strategy that began with robotic missions, exploited the unique capabilities of Space Station Freedom, and moved forward to the development of planetary surface systems that could support human life, without losing sight of programmatic matters such as resources, management systems, international participation, and national benefits. On November 29, 1989, Truly briefed the National Space Council’s Blue Ribbon Panel on the resulting 90-Day Study report. This time period is bookended by a comprehensive series of lunar base studies performed by Eagle Engineering for NASA in 1988-89 and a focused return-to-the-Moon study, First Lunar Outpost, in 1992-3. This period ended when the next administration, mindful of its promise to balance the budget, canceled the SEI.