Star Tribune By Adam Minter 12/29/2020
Trump had ambitions but will leave behind a messy space program. The path forward: harnessing the efficiency and inventiveness of private competition. Donald Trump badly wanted to be the president who sent Americans back to the moon. Instead, his administration has presided over Artemis, a lunar-landing program plagued by "uncertain plans, unproven cost assumptions, and limited oversight," according to a new watchdog report. Pieces of the program, including the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft, are billions of dollars over budget, years past deadline and poised to eat into NASA's more promising projects. As a result, the U.S. space agency will almost certainly miss its goal of landing Americans on the moon again by 2024.
President-elect Joe Biden inherits the task of deciding what to do next. He should focus on what has made the U.S. space program distinctive in recent years: the power of private competition.
As far back as 1989, presidents have been advocating for a return to Earth's closest neighbor, partly on the theory that it could be a testing ground for the equipment and processes needed for any deeper-space mission, such as a Mars visit, and partly to spur the development of a private space industry. The most ambitious effort, known as Constellation, began under George W. Bush in 2005, with the goal of putting Americans on the moon around 2020. It was a complex initiative that required the development of new hardware, including rockets and a space capsule now known as Orion.
By 2010, however, Constellation was so far behind schedule and over budget — with no realistic prospect for success before the 2030s — that President Barack Obama asked Congress to end funding for the program. In its place, Obama proposed a new initiative that retained the Orion capsule but aimed to take humans beyond the moon. It also added a new rocket, the Space Launch System (or SLS), partly based on hardware and designs dating back to the space shuttle.
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https://www.startribune.com/nasa-status-check-all-systems-go-ing-rather-poorly/600004814/
