How To Un-inspire The Next Generation
The Space Destination Debate Gets Us Nowhere … Literally (Op-Ed), Space.com
“In following the incessant debate about potential NASA missions, I often hear NASA leaders, industry advocates and Congressional champions alike point to the value of these missions to inspire the next generation. Yet the more their arguments cause inaction, the more cynicism they generate in those they seek to inspire. The problem is not that young people don’t understand the importance to humanity or relevance to individuals of a certain NASA mission. We understand perfectly fine. But we also see that these missions are doomed to die a political death when leadership at NASA or elsewhere in government has a change of heart.”
The argument is not about where to go, its about where to send humans. It’s a silly argument. This country can’t afford to send people anywhere. I think the Augustine Committee settled that six years ago.
So lets go everywhere. Delete the $4 billion a year on “exploration” and give it to space science! With that type of money, NASA will be able to GO EVERYWHERE! And all at one time. Why select a destination and wait 20 or 30 years for NASA to spend hundreds of billions to maybe some day spend a few work-months on another planet, when we can send people anywhere in the solar system virtually with our computer controlled spacecraft? The first new spacecraft could arrive at their destination in just a few years, and several, perhaps tens of spacecraft would then start ARRIVING every year!
The technology development necessary to design, build, launch, and operate that many spacecraft at one time would finally start to bring down the cost of space missions to something affordable to those besides governments and large corporations.
Whenever I think of SLS, I think about how the $30+ billion spent on it over the next 10 years could finance Flagship-class robotic missions to every planet in the solar system, plus maybe one or two to specific moons or elsewhere.
Yep. Neptune orbiter? Check! Uranus orbiter? Check! Europa lander! Got it! Oort belt? Experimental systems to deep space? Check, check, check.
It’s the case that after New Horizons in a few weeks we got nothin’ new to the outer system.
Likely thousands of objects out there, many quite large. Who knows what we’ll find? When we don’t know, our brains fill in boring dull gray in our blind spots. But brilliant colors and vibrant processes may be present.
So the answer is to devolve the debate from the Human Space Flight destination debate back to the HSF vs robots debate? I feel like we’ve been here before. No more HSF exploration is the exact result that the author fears, if the destination-debate people don’t get their act together.
“This country can’t afford to send people anywhere. I think the Augustine Committee settled that six years ago.”
Can you point me to the paragraph in the Augustine report where it says the US cannot afford to send humans into space at all?
No, all the report said was that the level of funding was insufficient for the goals and the hardware that was being developed at the time. Further, the report said that the approach *was* do-able with an increase in funding on the order of $5B a year. “Affordability” was never part of the report.
As to the article, Ms. Kerner certainly hits the nail on the head by saing that endless debate with no conclusion is turning people off to space exploration, especially young people. Sadly, her argument, while accurate, is nothing new, and just reflects the malaise the HSF space program has been in for the last 40 years.
Sorry, I was a not completely clear in order to not get wordy. What I was trying to imply is NOT that the Augustine report settled the debate, but that the report AND THE ADMINISTRATION’S RESPONSE settled the debate. The charter of the committee was to find a place to go without raising the NASA budget. The committee report said that it couldn’t be done without spending at least $3 billion a year more. The Administration announced a destination (asteroids) without an the increase to pay for it. Things were exciting for a year or so, and then the reality of the situation settled in and NASA seemed to go into a pretend mode. They pretended that they were going to asteroids and then to Mars in the 2030s. I don’t think anybody believes that anymore, except for maybe Bolden. And for political reasons (he doesn’t want to lose his job) he won’t admit that until at least January 2017.
And there is a little of the “and I was there” in this response.
A lot of it comes down to if you want science or do you want excitement. If you want science, then put the money into Space Science including Planetary. If you want excitement, then put it into Human Space Flight. Given the history of HSF for the last 40 years, if you put it into HSF you will spend the money and get neither science or excitement.
” What I was trying to imply is NOT that the Augustine report settled the debate, but that the report AND THE ADMINISTRATION’S RESPONSE settled the debate.”
This Administration may have decided what it wanted with regard to NASA, but that is NOT the equivalent of settling the debate once and for all time. We don’t have kings in the U.S. Another Administration can come along, or Congress, with enough votes, can decide to change NASA’s direction or HSF destination. I personally hope that the next President or Congress has a strong vision for NASA HSF along with proposing a long-overdue budget increase. I personally advocate returning to the Moon. As the author of the article said, the younger generations have no memory of Moon landings, aside from what they learn in history books. We need new goals and sustainable exploration, not less.
There are many reasons for HSF, which I hope I don’t need to expound on in this comment thread, as it should be a given :). And HSF takes only a tiny fraction of the overall federal budget.
And what makes anyone think that the funds freed up by eliminating HSF would find their way into planetary exploration? Some Congressperson would just write a bill advocating re-direction of the money elsewhere, outside of NASA. Not everyone in Congress is science- or NASA-friendly in that sense.
Actually I think this administration, and the Augustine Committee, are supportive of human space exploration. It just needs to be funded realistically, which the Constellation Program was manifestly not. I also think Obama is personally quite interested in human space exploration, he just has other priorities to consider and fires to put out.
Human space exploration is vastly important, but not quite urgent. Nationally, as in our personal affairs, we must all strive to insure that the important is not completely sacrificed for the merely urgent.
Please. We can afford to send people to outer space. We are doing it right now with ISS. Not to mention the fact that soon we will have 2 spacecraft capable of LEO ops and one capable of cis-lunar travel (and with hab modules interplanetary travel).
I am sorry but an armada of robots is not the answer. They do a good job as precursors and surveying areas we cannot reach yet with humans. However, they really only scratch the surface of what is out there. A few work months on Mars with a crew of humans will be worth 100 Curiosity’s. Even the people who run the Mars rovers will admit this.
To use an Earth-bound analogy: On Earth deep sea exploration has a large robotic component. However, manned subs are also extensively used. If robots were so perfect why would deep sea explorers use manned subs?
The discussion, I think, is scientific return divided by available funds. And considering our currently very low understanding of our our solar system (and universe), there is much to be gained robotically for now. When the scientific return begins to diminish manned trips will be needed.
At least that’s one way to spin the dismal times we live in.
The discussion is the destination for settlement. The author, being an advocate of lunar settlement, is showing that her destination preference does not outweigh the others, for fear of fueling a debate with no end, and going nowhere instead.
Settlement requires people. Robots simply cannot do it. But robots will be very useful. If you want to debate Human Space Flight vs Robotics, I think the grand compromise is not a robotic mission of science as the primary mission but In-Situ Resource Utilization. It is unfortunately not usually a contender for flagships, or even Discovery missions, but I would like to see a robotic ISRU mission that demonstrates something useful for HSF, such as harvesting water or making fuel on the surface of another world.
Major Sir: I take your point and apparently clumsily stated mine, which was meant in no way to disparage or discourage or dissuade humans in space. My sense is that the human future is indeed in space.
It’s simply that I see a different roadmap: in the near term, depend on robots, which leads us to the asteroids and perhaps Luna for materials and in situ construction, and finally to the surface of Mars.
We have neither the tech nor the $$$ for Lunar/mars colony construction- every plan depends on a huge, expensive supply line to Earth. In the meantime, let’s develop tech, learn some things about the neighborhood, and perhaps make some money finding raw materials.
Lately I’m wondering if a completely robotic facility for mining ice on the Moon might be practical. The 2.5 s latency for Earth operation seems marginal, but might be OK for almost all needs on the surface. If not, it would need operators in lunar orbit. I am supposing the aim of this thing would be to deliver ice to low lunar orbit, where solar-electric cargo ships could get at it to deliver it to LEO or to Mars orbit, for whatever purposes there, and be cheaper than hauling it up from Earth surface.
Yes but is it cost effective. Indeed is it safe? Telepresence and the use of a humanoid ‘robotic’ infrastructure, I would argue, is the better option for any lunar activity short of tourism or nationalistic flagwaving. For Mars it is a necessity! Until we have completely ruled out any possibility of life. (Contamination issues…) The time lag issue would be resolved by a base on Phobos. Characterising the asteroidal environment remains for me the priority. I would favour a robotic mission to 2010 TK10 as a matter of urgency. Possibly a gravity tractor. In passing I note Buzz Aldrin is suggesting the L4 (?) point as a target and 2010 TL10 is not small: “300 meters” according to wiki. Big enough for a bootprint!
I think we need both. For cost and safety reasons it seems wise to me to use robotics to the fullest extent possible, as we step cautiously into this new realm. But for now there is no substitute for human presence, especially (as on Mars) where the light travel time makes real-time control from Earth impractical. A station on Phobos to control rovers and labs on the surface sounds terrific to me, and I think servicing astronomical observatories at Sun-Earth/L2 is another case.
And of course I think our ultimate objective should be to spread earth life throughout the Solar System, meaning warm bodies present. 🙂
As a retired space scientist, who has worked in science all my professional life, I think we need to understand that space exploration is not all about science, thrilling and exciting as that is for most of us here.
Academic science could never have supported the Apollo program, obviously. And although the immediate occasion and justification for that was mostly as a political demonstration of the power and capability of democratic societies vs authoritatively governed systems, the huge outpourings of public interest and support was much more about the sudden opening of a whole new field for human life and exploration into the vastness of the universe, rather than mere “fear of the Russians”. Our horizons went from one small blue marble, to living in the deeps of space and time.
Science, exploration and settlement are distinct, complementary objectives. They mutually support one another, but they all need to be supported in a healthy, balanced way, considering scientific and economic opportunities, our available resources, and other needs.
I believe in pursuing human exploration in addition to unmanned missions, but it requires a real, clearly defined, achievable near-term mission. The simple fact is that we have the technology to get humans to the moon today. Humans to Mars we do not have the ability to accomplish, nor are we likely to by the 2030s if we keep following the unsustainable, budget busting Apollo redux approach represented by SLS and Orion. I do think we need an ambitious but achievable goal before we define the architecture, rather than trying to fit the architecture to some nebulous long-term goal. The moon is the only near-term goal that makes sense (crazy asteroid capture stunts in the name of giving Orion a purpose sans lunar lander notwithstanding).
The first half of the ‘asteroid capture stunt’ gives us a SEP tug – useful for taking cargo including propellant to the Moon and Mars.
To get money every piece of new equipment needs its own mission.
I’d like some honesty from NASA. Just say outright that until the ISS completes its mission, there’s no money to go anywhere else with the manned program unless Congress gives them a couple extra billion a year for it.
We are going to need the ISS for ins-space technology development and validation for a long time, far beyond 2024 in my opinion. If it is allowed to die then, we will just have to build something equivalent again, and that took us 20 years (& $150 Gig). Everyone needs to face up to this. Expand its funding, so that it can return more value above its bare operating costs.
For about $1 billion NASA could buy the living quarters of a new spacestation.
http://bigelowaerospace.com…
Came back here to fight with you. When I scanned this comment earlier I thought you had typed SLS not ISS.
Go in peace young man 🙂
Didn’t the Augustine Commish point that out? And what do you expect of the General and staff- that he should buck the boss? Not gonna happen.
I thought they said it in an oblique fashion. They said, “Without a funding increase we can’t do XYZ”. They didn’t say, “Our budget is bound up in SLS development and ISS operations, so unless we get more money we’re waiting until after ISS to do anything different”.
The Commission obviously thought their job was to campaign for more money. What was needed was a way to produce results on NASA’s current budget.
Lets get back to the Moon in 10 years then use the lunar base technologies to get to Mars.
10 years to the Moon – use the SEV rover as the lander’s cabin and the Masten Xeus as the reusable lander. Both exist as project definitions. Refuel the Xeus at a combined spacestation and propellant depot in lunar DRO. Commercial Crew will return LEO flights to NASA within 5 years.
LEO to DRO needs thought but since the Xeus contains a Centaur some self ferrying may be possible.
A BA-330 could be transported to DRO by either a SLS or possibly a Falcon Heavy followed by a SEP tug.
The next-generation, and many of this generation, as well as the last generation may not understand all the acronyms when you make your case to them that Moon should be first. Wait, wasn’t the article about just that thing??? The invalidity of Moon-first (or other destination) arguments?
Time to stop talking and to start signing cheques.
Good luck getting Congress to provide money to write those checks.
If you do not ask you do not get.
Plenty of senators want high tech jobs in their state.
edit:spelling
Have you paid attention to what the House and Senate–it’s not just a Senate decision–have been deciding on space? People are asking for reasonable things, and the House and Senate are ignoring them and/or cutting those intelligent things. This is also the same House and Senate that thought increased funding for SLS was a good idea even though increased funding would in no increase the pace of that program.
Things change.
New president in about 2 years. 1/3 of Senate up for re-election.
First SLS launch ~November 2018, which is 3 years away. They are going to need to announce something spectacular first.
The general public does not need to understand the acronyms, just make a video for them of the trip. I have posted links to Wikipedia articles covering many of the
items below.
SEV rover
https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…
Xeus lander being developed by Masten Space Systems
https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…
DRO – Distinct Retrograde Orbit. The lunar orbit the asteroid diversion missions wants to park the boulder in. A good orbit for a spacestation to refuel lunar landers and assemble Mars Transfer Vehicles.
Centaur upper stage
https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…
Bigelow BA-330 spacestation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…
Let’s see if we can really get the things we need to go forward from the moon before committing to a huge effort to land there. I think the key short-term issue is whether we can really mine ice (for LH2/LOX propellant) and get it into low lunar orbit where robotic solar-electric cargo ships can get at it, and carry it cheaply where we need it — back to LEO, and out to Mars orbit.
And do that cheaper than other possible sources — up from Earth, up from Mars, from Phobos, or from Ceres,… etc.
We need the LH2/LOX ,of course, to fuel our human ships, which must get through the Van Allen belts quickly so we don’t sterilize our astronauts, or to land propulsively on massive bodies (Moon, Mars), etc.
Your making to much sense! 🙂
Isn’t it a lot more important to find out if there is a practical fuel source on the moon than bugs in the outer solar system?
Unfortunately the technology to head back to the moon was completed 50 years ago and the technology required for Mars has nothing to do with going back to the moon.
A second problem is that SLS and Orion cost NASA over 3B/year and their are cheaper alternatives regardless–‘simply’ shift funds to mission hardware and technology development.
By heading to asteroids and to mars, one can than plan on lunar missions once the lower cost architecture is in place.
The technology to perform an Apollo 8 (manned orbit of the Moon) in 5 years time is already underdevelopment – Falcon Heavy plus Dragon V2.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wi… – mission
https://en.wikipedia.org/wi… – capsule
https://en.wikipedia.org/wi… – launch vehicle
I estimate this mission will cost NASA less than $300 million.
The development costs of the Dragon are being paid for under Commercial Crew Development and the Falcon Heavy by a mixture of the Commercial Orbital Transport Services (COTS) program and SpaceX’s own money.
But we still don’t really know if we can get “value” from the moon to make it more than a tourist stop and a dead end. We need a little more robotic exploration of the moon (and its ice resources especially), and a lot more engineering systems studies to see if we can use it for the resources we need, at a competitive price. Its gravity is one factor (not a killer I think), the availability of other resources (volatiles, especially), and mining technology (robotic, especially) on the surface are other issues.
So why hasn’t nasa had robots on the poles for the last twenty finding this junk out. Why don’t they have a plan in place to go to the moon over the next few years using falcon Heavies and low cost new Space contractors???
All we get is talk of possible fuel there. No action.
SPACEX could make a lot of mars money servicing a decent practical moon program.robot and or human
Hopefully this Mexican probe landed using an Astrobotic lander in a few years time will increase our knowledge of the Moon.
http://www.parabolicarc.com…
“use the SEV rover as the lander’s cabin and the Masten Xeus as the reusable lander. Both exist as project definitions.”
Sounds good but will then have to get money now to pay for that stuff, which nobody wants to spend. Besides money there is build and test, and there may be some failures such as equipment blowing up on ground tests meaning someone’s going to have to explain what happened. Plus all the extra all-nighters to make it right. Much easier to do PPT for Mars mission concepts.
Equipment blowing up – been there done that; like this video.
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
Manned surface equipment for the Moon and Mars is similar. Rovers, spacesuits and habitats have to survive (near) vacuum, wide temperatures and corrosive dust.
The landers will need different sized fuel tanks but they could use the same design of engines.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wi… – advanced engine technology
https://en.wikipedia.org/wi… – demo the landers
Time to start lobbying for the money to pay for this. The work is going on in several different states.
We’ve created a self-fulfilling prophecy in this country.
On the one hand there are cries that the ‘government IS the problem’. Then, even worthwhile projects are so starved that those same voices can smugly assert “See! I TOLD you so!”
It is happening in education, too, as well as in many other endeavors including any sort of rational energy policy.
Sadly, she has history on her side.
I think we know where we are: in the post-Shuttle, ISS-focused era, and with a heavy lift rocket being developed for an undefined set of future missions. What I would like to see is how we are going to adapt the current set of resources to develop the next set of capabilities, which probably ought to be aimed at cis-lunar capabilities. That is, after-all, the next place beyond where we go today. What do those new vehicles and systems look like? How do they function? What is their defining requirements, purpose, capabilities? How might they be used in the future? That is what NASA ought to be figuring out.
Seems to me that the current apparent NASA campaign…’steps to Mars’…is exactly what the editorial says is wrong with NASA. NASA is promising Mars missions that are so far off that everyone shrugs and says ‘that’ll never happen, at least not in my lifetime”.
The genuine destination agnosticism of the article surprised me (even though the writer is a “loony”.) Usually when someone loudly calls for an end to “endless debate” and to “pick a plan and stick to it”, it’s usually to support their own plan and to silence criticism.
[And so when we get something that does “inspire the next generation” (for example SpaceX, DC-X, etc), the old guard immediately undermine it because its very popularity threatens their own plans.]
Well, there really is a lot we don’t know: is there useful ice on Phobos? Is there an asteroid (or asteroids) whose orbit, size and composition makes it a realistic source for the in-situ materials we need to make human space exploration a going concern just now? Committing to a huge project is still a little premature, as we do not quite know the details we need to do it affordably. The MOXIE experiment on the 2020 Mars rover mission is an example of the of the kind of things we need to explore, one brick in the bridge….
It is unfortunate that our President got caught up in this early on in his term. “been there, done that” without the follow-up actions that he may have intended, hasn’t gotten us very far in the eyes of general public. So take away the action and all we are left with is the rhetoric. Congress has their say and it is far from being in lockstep with what a president wants.
So it may be Moon first after all.
I hope all the destination advocates, would be willing to say on record that they would rather see their opponents view win, than not go anywhere at all, as an alternative to the place they are advocating. Would Zubrin be okay with the Moon, as opposed to nowhere? Would Spudis accept bypassing the Moon for Mars first? Would they be willing to risk weakening their personal destination argument to give a win to the other guy so at least somebody is winning?
I’ll settle for a barge then a concrete pad in Florida or California with a little testing in New Mexico.
With that Obama has had the most progressive space advances since the sixties
I agree but in the context of this destination debate, Obama’s rhetoric on this matter added fuel to the fire. Although he didn’t say “been there, done that” specifically (my mistake), for some reason that is how everyone remembers it:
“Now, I understand that some believe that we should attempt a return to the surface of the Moon first, as previously planned,” Obama said at the John F. Kennedy Space Center in Florida. “But I just have to say pretty bluntly here: We’ve been there before.”
More recently, during his latest state of the union speech: “Pushing out into the solar system not just to visit, but to stay. Last month, we launched a new spacecraft as part of a reenergized space program that will send American astronauts to Mars.” with no mention of his term’s (possible, fingers crossed) greatest accomplishment, as you imply, reusability and dramatic reduced cost of access to space.
All you can do is lobby for more. Same issue plagues most of the other federally supported research.
NASA missions or space programs at large may inspire the last generation, but definitely not future generations. Future generations are more likely inspired by straight forward neuron programming.
Or on-line video gaming. Let’s get the whole planet happily wired up in virtual reality, serviced by robots. How thrilling !!
Billions to be made in that, just waiting for bright young entrepreneurs to make it happen.
It really doesn’t take a lot to inspire, what is difficult is keeping that momentum going and preventing those you have initially inspired becoming jaded by repetition or false dawns. In many ways both Apollo and the Shuttle programs suffered badly from these problems and NASA seemingly hasn’t really learned much from these mistakes over the past 50 years. Of course it’s not just NASA’s fault it’s also the fault of successive administrations and their utter failure to address the inherent problems within the US space program. For people to be and remain inspired it is crucial to have a consistent and visible forward momentum something very much lacking in large parts of the space program, it’s not just down to a lack of money but a lack of a clear and defined direction, if you don’t know what direction you’re supposed to be going in it’s pretty hard to tell if you’re moving forward or backwards! What is really needed is not the old one trick Mercury-Gemini-Apollo type goal which NASA blindly still seems to think will work but an incremental and adaptable goal carried out efficiently and cost effectively, that sounds a lot like the Space-X way of doing things to me,
I blame most of the destination argument on the creation of the Mars underground in the 1980’s. Prior to that NASA was focused on using the Shuttle for industrialization in LEO with projects like demonstrating the repair and return of satellites, building structural items in orbit, tethers, etc., all logical starting points for building a Cislunar industrial capability that would have given us the Solar System. NASA didn’t even have plans to send robots to Mars. By advocating that we needed to skip the Moon and go rushing off to Mars they started this entire useless destination debate that has paralyzed space policy ever since.
Although their arguments made no rational or economic sense, falling back on outdated ideas like “manifest destiny” and painting Mars like a second Earth, they struck some cord among a very vocal hard core group that has shouted down any rational space strategy ever since. We see it now with Senators force feeding the SLS with money it doesn’t need while starving commercial crew because the SLS would, in theory, be able to take astronauts to Mars. As a result the ISS is only one Soyuz failure away from being abandoned.
We need to give Mars a rest and once again spend the limited budget on building capabilities in space, space tugs, orbital refueling, lunar LOX, that would serve for going to all the interesting destinations beyond Earth, not keep wasting money on plans to go to a single one that is already well mapped and explored.
An article by Paul Spudis suggested this “quest for life elsewhere” QFLE has become the basis for NASA and many others of the space program, and this neglects industrial basis for a space program (hey, I remember this is what the Shuttle was about as envisioned in 1970s/1980s). And there is no life on the Moon, there might be something on Mars or life may have been on Mars. And this is why everybody focuses on Mars (Musk, NASA, Zubrin, and several movies).
Neither Elon Musk nor Dr. Zubrin are interested in life on Mars. Elon Musk wants to see a million settlers there to create an industrial society. Dr. Zubrin sees settlement of Mars as extension of Manifest Destiny that will show America still has it. The discovery of life on Mars would likely lead to restrictions that would put it off limits for any humans except for perhaps a very restricted science base. So if anything they would be hostile to life being found on Mars.
In terms of NASA it does make sense on why they have become so dysfunction in terms of moving beyond LEO. Skipping the Moon makes Mars nearly impossible and puts any interesting missions at least twenty years in the future, too far to inspire anyone.
I cannot see how the Moon is relevant to Mars. We might possibly use lunar ice to get LH2/LOX rocket propellant in low lunar orbit, conceivably cheaper for use at Mars than shipping it up from LEO, but at a large infrastructure cost before that can deliver anything of value to the Mars program. And there is obviously lots of ice on Mars where we would need it for an ascent vehicle to return crews.
Let’s thoroughly investigate Phobos and Deimos first for what they have to offer. Then we don’t have to fight the Moon’s small but significant g potential well.
The astronauts going to Mars will take off from the Earth in vehicles normally used for flights to the Moon. Their transfer vehicles will use life support equipment designed for spacestations. The manned Mars rovers and habitats will be similar to those used on the Moon.
The Moon is where most Mars equipment will be long life tested in space. Use on the Moon will get it to TRL 7 for Mars.
Some thoughtful comments.
The goal should not be any particular destination, but rather to establish humanity’s habitation securely in the Solar System. I think the NASA (& international, really) goal, analogous to the lunar landing by 1970, ought to be something like achieving one or more “economically self-sufficient and independent” colonies off earth by the end of this century.
By economically self-sufficient and independent I mean that such colonies ought to be able to survive without critical support from earth. and return enough value (material, and other) to earth to justify whatever economic support they get. Basically a positive balance of trade, considering the “other” values, which must include some consideration for the insurance they would give for the long-tern (millions of years) survival of homo sapiens, and earth life.
I think such a goal is reasonably achievable, and would have widespread appeal.
Here we go with the next generation again…The generation that’s here NOW is uninspired…That’s a bigger problem…
We had a destimation 10 years ago. It was the Moon. The purpose of going top the Moon was to explore and create the infrastructure and experience to go to Mars, a much harder destination. Many did not like the way we were going there, or did not like the way we were planning to get there, or like it because it was associated with GWB. It was also underfunded by Congress because of the aforementioned reasons or the idea that the money was better used elsewhere. So the Obama administraion canceled the plans to go to the Moon, and now we have a program to nowhere. The new idea was to build the systems to go somewhere, but not chose where until we spent 10’s of billions of dollars to build these system without real requirements. This is the antithesis of systems engineering approach that worked so very well for Apollo.
But we are really not not doing the systems developmentvery well either: all we are working on is a very expensive HLV with firm plans to fly it only 2-3 times, and a manned capsule only capable of operating in cis-lunar space. Because we have no plans and no unity, we are ‘unispiring’ this generation. Many of the current space leader, planners and visionaries were inspired by the Apollo program. They will be gone soon. There is little to inspire the next generation. That is the failure of having a plan to nowhere: no plans = no funding = no accomplishments = no inspiration.
What we have now is the failure of unrelenting dissent. A plan to somewhere is better than a plan to nowhere but, I suppose, not to those who would rather see nothing than something they did not agree with.