With the nation’s attention focused on the hurricane-ravaged U.S. Gulf Coast, NASA unveiled with minimal fanfare a $104 billion plan for landing four astronauts on the Moon by 2018.

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Brian Berger is editor in chief of SpaceNews.com and the SpaceNews magazine. He joined SpaceNews.com in 1998, spending his first decade with the publication covering NASA. His reporting on the 2003 Space Shuttle Columbia accident was recognized with...