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In recent months, the executive secretary of the National Space Council, Scott Pace, has worked assiduously behind the scenes to develop a formal space policy for the Trump administration. In a rare interview, published Monday in Scientific American, Pace elaborated on some of the policy decisions he has been helping to make.
In the interview, Pace explained why the Trump administration has chosen to focus on the Moon first for human exploration while relegating Mars to becoming a "horizon goal," effectively putting human missions to the Red Planet decades into the future. Mars was too ambitious, Pace said, and such a goal would have precluded meaningful involvement from the burgeoning US commercial sector as well as international partners. Specific plans for how NASA will return to the Moon should become more concrete within the next year, he added.
In response to a question about privately developed, heavy-lift boosters, the executive secretary also reiterated his skepticism that such "commercial" rockets developed by Blue Origin and SpaceX could compete with the government's Space Launch System rocket, which is likely to make its maiden flight in 2020. "Heavy-lift rockets are strategic national assets, like aircraft carriers," Pace said. "There are some people who have talked about buying heavy-lift as a service as opposed to owning and operating, in which case the government would, of course, have to continue to own the intellectual properties so it wasn't hostage to any one contractor. One could imagine this but, in general, building a heavy-lift rocket is no more 'commercial' than building an aircraft carrier with private contractors would be."
I thought flying non-reusable pork rockets was about the money, not strategy. SpaceX is set to launch Falcon Heavy for the first time no earlier than December 29. It will have over 90% of the low Earth orbit capacity as the initial version of the SLS (63.8 metric tons vs. 70).
Previously: Maiden Flight of the Space Launch System Delayed to 2019
First SLS Mission Will be Unmanned
Commercial Space Companies Want More Money From NASA
U.S. Air Force Will Eventually Launch Using SpaceX's Reused Rockets
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Wednesday November 08 2017, @10:09PM (1 child)
Well the Dems did pretty good yesterday. We'll see if, as a party, they smarten up enough in 2020 to actually win the big election. Feinstein is 84 years old now; she'd be 87 in 2020. The idea that she'd run for President seems pretty ridiculous. Lots of people were saying Bernie's too old, and he's comparatively young at "only" 76 (75 when he ran last year), 8 years younger than her.
The danger is they'll pick some boring, establishment, no-charisma loser like Kaine in 2020. That probably would cause them to lose. Hopefully they won't be that stupid, but I guess we'll see. Remember, the voters have much of the responsibility here since they choose the nominee in the Primaries, and while they were kinda rigged as detailed by Brazile, the choice was ultimately made by the voters. (The party really should have overridden the process at the last minute and replaced Hillary with Bernie, after seeing how unpopular she was, but the voters did pick her.) If we actually get Hillary running again in 2020, I'll be at a loss for words. That level of stupidity is something you just can't talk to. I like to think the DNC won't be that stupid again (remember, there've been a bunch of changes in its leadership since then), but you never know.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 09 2017, @06:40PM
Consider the Virginia governor.
That's a blue state. It already had a democrat for the governor. There is no gain to be had from a successful defense.
It wasn't even a big win. The win was smaller than Hillary's win, suggesting that the state is now less blue that it was before.
The only thing of note is psychological: the democrats ended an off-season losing streak in which they's lost 8 out of 8 special elections