Nearly a year into the Trump Presidency, NASA is arguably no closer to a crewed return to the lunar surface than a decade ago. SpaceX is still focused on Mars. And Ryan Gosling is shooting a Neil Armstrong biopic.
So, for the foreseeable future, it seems as if the only way the Over-50 set will ever get to relive the glory days of the Apollo era will be with a bucket of popcorn. That is, unless Congress and NASA get serious about public/private partnerships of the sort proposed by Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and the company’s Blue Moon program. Blue Moon is a potentially low-cost, repeatable lunar-lander system designed to provide NASA and others with a commercial lunar cargo delivery solution.
Yet, last week Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) put out a statement that made me wonder if we would ever see new boots on the lunar regolith. Smith, Chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, noted that it’s now expected that the first launch of NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) could be delayed to late 2019.
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http://www.isn-news.net/2017/11/nasas-road-back-to-moon-may-be-via.html
