WASHINGTON (AP) – President Barack Obama is redirecting America’s space program, killing NASA’s $100 billion plans to return astronauts to the moon and using much of that money for new rocket technology research.

The moon mission, which had already cost $9.1 billion, was based on old technology and revisiting old places astronauts had already been, officials said. The previous chief of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, in selling the old moon plan, had even called it “Apollo on steroids.”

The rockets were based on space shuttle boosters. “Simply put, we’re putting the science back into the rocket science at NASA,” White House science adviser John Holdren said at a budget briefing Monday.

The $4 billion that NASA spends yearly on human space exploration will now be used for what NASA and White House officials called dramatic changes in rocketry, including in-orbit fueling.