Keith’s lament: Apollo missions to the Moon were seen as great feats of exploration by the media. As we try to do that again NASA has clearly lost control of the narrative to tabloid-level stupidity. Since this whole ‘Back to the Moon, Mars, Beyond’ etc. thing was announced 21 years ago we constantly lose our way and get distracted and drag things out faster than we accomplish those things. And now we are going to beat China to the Moon? That’s not gonna happen unless we change the way the government/space industry hive mind does things. Moreover, it will not happen unless NASA gets the population and media on board while all this other crap is going on. Just sayin’
Biologist, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Biologist and Payload integrator, Editor of NASAWatch.com and Astrobiology.com, Lapsed climber, Explorer, Synaesthete, Former Challenger Center board member... More by Keith Cowing
The issue is there is no political focus. Every idea back to the 90’s probably could have worked, if politicians were willing to spend the money to make it work and hold industries accountable for meeting their promises. However I’ve spent my entire adult life and a lot of my formative years watching subsequent presidents and congresses trip over one another to cancel one another’s plans and use grand words to hand money to companies with factories in their districts without every caring if it’s enough money to actually do the thing or ever actually following up where the money went.
And so instead of a moon program we have a 40 year long list of “NLS in a trench coat” launch systems that for all their monumental cost probably still won’t actually see the job through to the end.
I think ‘the US’ will make it this time, but not because of NASA or Congress. If it happens it will be because of one man, Elon Musk. Nothing NASA has in development now, Orion or Gateway, can get a person to the Moon. Blue Origin has talked for a long time but they seem to move slower than molasses. Same thing with Lockheed and their new idea of transforming Orion into a Moon lander. Orion was in work for 20 years with mostly reused hardware. Musk’s Starship has orbited and landed on Earth during an impressive series of test missions. Hopefully it will all come together in the next couple of years and permit a Moon landing.