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NASA's human spaceflight chief just resigned, and the timing couldn't be worse:
On Tuesday, NASA announced that its chief of human spaceflight had resigned from the space agency. The timing of Doug Loverro's departure is terrible, with NASA's first launch of humans in nearly nine years due to occur in just eight days.
[...] "Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations Doug Loverro has resigned from his position effective Monday, May 18," the statement said. "Loverro hit the ground running this year and has made significant progress in his time at NASA. His leadership of HEO has moved us closer to accomplishing our goal of landing the first woman and the next man on the Moon in 2024. Loverro has dedicated more than four decades of his life in service to our country, and we thank him for his service and contributions to the agency."
Loverro's resignation set off a firestorm of speculation after it was announced. He was due to chair a Flight Readiness Review meeting on Thursday to officially clear SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft for the first flight of humans to the International Space Station. The final go or no-go decision for that mission was to be his. That launch is presently scheduled for May 27.
However, his departure does not seem to be directly related to his work on Crew Dragon. Rather it seems to stem from the recent process during which NASA selected three bids—led by Blue Origin, Dynetics, and SpaceX—from among five bidders. In an email to the human exploration staff at NASA on Tuesday, Loverro admitted that he made a mistake earlier this year.
"Our mission is certainly not easy, nor for the faint of heart, and risk-taking is part of the job description," Loverro wrote. "The risks we take, whether technical, political, or personal, all have potential consequences if we judge them incorrectly. I took such a risk earlier in the year because I judged it necessary to fulfill our mission. Now, over the balance of time, it is clear that I made a mistake in that choice for which I alone must bear the consequences. And therefore, it is with a very, very heavy heart that I write to you today to let you know that I have resigned from NASA effective May 18th, 2020."
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday May 20 2020, @07:54PM
Women have been astronauts for decades, doing the same work as the guys. Excluding them from this kind of mission would be just silly.
As for why we're going back to the moon: I have to hazard a guess that rockets, computers, rovers, science equipment, etc has changed a bit since the 1970's, and NASA's human missions have always been about more than just sticking it to the Soviets. For instance, if we can get astronauts there much more cheaply than the Apollo missions did, that matters, because it means that moon visits can become as unremarkable as visits to the ISS currently are (not saying they aren't doing useful work there, just that it's not worldwide TV every single time someone arrives).
Also, if we got really good at shipping stuff up there and established some sort of permanent facility, I could imagine using that as a staging area / launching pad for trips further out. Yes, you have the cost of landing the supplies and taking off again, but at least your final point of contact has to use substantially less fuel to get off the ground.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.