Obama Said to Back Heavy-Lift Booster to Dash Out to the Moon and Beyond

In an exclusive ScienceInsider report, President Barack Obama has decided to ask the Congress next year to fund a new heavy-lift launcher to take humans on 'dash outs' to the Moon, asteroids, and the moons of Mars. NASA would receive an additional $1 billion in 2011 both to get the new heavy-lift launcher on track and to bolster the agency’s fleet of robotic Earth-monitoring spacecraft. The report failed to indicate if the heavy-lift vehicle would be the Ares-V.