WASHINGTON — A presidential space panel announced on Thursday a glossy report with a simple message: NASA's current plan to replace the space shuttle won't work, and the agency needs more money to do anything noteworthy.

The 155-page analysis, prepared by a group of space experts on the Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee after months of hearings, contained no major surprises and largely reinforced what the 10-member panel has been saying for weeks. But its release puts the focus squarely on President Barack Obama and the White House, which largely has ignored NASA since January.

"The human spaceflight program, in the opinion of this committee, is at a tipping point where either additional funds must be provided or the exploration program first instituted by President Kennedy must be abandoned, at least for the time being," said the report by the panel, also known as the Augustine Committee after its chairman, Norm Augustine, former Lockheed Martin CEO.

To sustain a manned spaceflight program, the committee suggested, NASA needs an increase of as much as $3 billion a year as well as major changes in its current mission, now focused on returning people to the moon by 2020.

It said that NASA's current Constellation program — the Ares I and Ares V moon rockets, Orion capsule and Altair lunar lander — will cost at least $45 billion more than budgeted.

Though the committee report mostly lists options, it indicates that members thought the best way forward was for NASA to pick a good rocket, invite other countries to share the cost, and use commercial rockets to take astronauts and cargo to the space station so the agency can explore the inner solar system and ultimately Mars.

"If, after designing cleverly, building alliances with partners, and engaging commercial providers, the nation cannot afford to fund the effort to pursue the goals it would like to embrace, it should accept the disappointment of setting lesser goals," the report said.

Despite the list of options, however, there are signs that Obama may reject all or most of the committee's suggested increase to NASA's current $18 billion budget.

Privately, senior policy advisers monitoring the committee's work have said that NASA's current Constellation moon rocket program is "busted" and that the Ares I rocket, at least, should be canceled.

"That just says that we have a program that doesn't work," said one administration official not authorized to speak for the White House about the panel's analysis of Constellation's costs.

"I am not psyched about that, but that's just the honest truth."

In addition, two administration officials, and several members of Congress, have said in recent weeks that it would be difficult to divert much more money to NASA. And the panel's chairman said Thursday that White House officials recently gave him a similar message.

"We have two wars. We have a health care issue. Their answer was that it's very difficult," said Augustine.

Officially, the White House released a statement that said the administration was reviewing the findings and applauded the committee for presenting "several key findings" against a "backdrop of serious challenges with the existing program."

Problems with the Constellation program have led to expectations that jobs at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., will be decimated, as the launch facility would have little to do after the shuttle's retirement.

"I would assume operations (in Cape Canaveral) are going to suffer in any event," Augustine said.

But there are signs that some congressional supporters of NASA have already disregarded the committee.

"While I look forward to reading the Augustine panel's final report, Congress has already made its decisions on the issues considered by the panel," said U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., the chairwoman of the subcommittee with NASA oversight.