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"NASA has largely been living off the successes of space projects launched up to a decade ago — including the now 'dead' Mars Opportunity rover. It hopes to launch its first manned space flight since the demise of the Space Shuttle program in 2011.
..........
But now the Trump administration appears to be determined to get a new Moon project off the ground. And it's eager to pay private companies to carry its cargoes.
NASA has been considering the prospect of a 'Lunar Gateway' space station placed in orbit around the Moon, acting as a stopover point for missions to the surface and, perhaps, Mars.
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NASA documents indicate the earliest date for an American to tread the lunar surface again is 2028." foxnews.com/science/nasas-new-grand-space-race-plan
Hopefully we can speed that one up.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday February 21 2019, @08:47PM (5 children)
NASA Could Scale Down First Manned Flight of the SLS [soylentnews.org]
I am pessimistic about your pessimism. If SLS's first flight is massively delayed, SpaceX has a chance to completely kill it using Starship/BFR. If SLS does fly, it will probably end up flying a few times and wasting many more billions of dollars.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DannyB on Thursday February 21 2019, @10:28PM (2 children)
I am pessimistic about your pessimism of my pessimism.
Even if SpaceX completely nails everything and becomes massively successful, this will be taken as proof that the US Senate must put MORE money into SLS. After all, they've already sunk too much cost in to stop now! (plus it puts pork into every senate district)
Now to inject a note of pessimistic optimism.
I predict that by the mid 2030s, SLS will finally fly as a payload on some new, yet unimagined, SpaceX launcher.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday February 21 2019, @10:56PM (1 child)
I am pessimistic about your pessimism of the the prior poster's pessimism about your pessimism.
No, I have no point, other than trying to get the word pessimism and derivatives of it as many times as possible in an reply.
Meow! [youtube.com]
This sig for rent.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by driverless on Thursday February 21 2019, @11:42PM
I'm pessimistic about being pessimistic about... ahh, whatever. Looking back over the last few decades, there's some new announcement about grand space plans (major manned missions, that sort of thing) for NASA every few years, of which exactly zero have come to fruition. The last grand plan that they actually saw through to completion was the Space Shuttle from the 1970s. So following the decades-long established pattern, this one will go nowhere.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Friday February 22 2019, @03:38AM (1 child)
It's under contract to develop and fly, so the billions are spent either way. Getting out of the contract is laughably unlikely.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday February 22 2019, @03:51AM
A certain number of $billions are allocated to SLS, Orion, etc. through NASA each year. If Congress wants to cut that money off, they can do it (NASA has actually gotten more than requested to prevent the schedule from slipping more). But it's going to require great success on the part of SpaceX, great failure on the part of the SLS contractors, and probably a PR campaign. Nothing stopping it from happening though.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]