Could President Trump Take Us Back to the Moon?
President Trump has said he wants to "unlock the mysteries of space" and "focus on stretching the envelope of space exploration."
He may now have the chance to send astronauts to orbit the moon, a mission that carries significant risk — but which, if executed smoothly, could bring huge benefits to accelerating future missions to deep space.
Robert Lightfoot, NASA's acting administrator, wrote in a memo to employees this week that he was asking the human spaceflight team to review the possibility of adding crew to an EM-1 test flight planned for next year.
That flight will be the maiden voyage for NASA's SLS rocket, designed for deep space missions, such as a future one to Mars, along with an Orion crew capsule. The test flight is set to spend three weeks in space, with several days orbiting the moon.
"I know the challenges associated with such a proposition, like reviewing the technical feasibility, additional resources needed, and clearly the extra work would require a different launch date," Lightfoot wrote, according to the Washington Post. "That said, I also want to hear about the opportunities it could present to accelerate the effort of the first crewed flight and what it would take to accomplish that first step of pushing humans farther into space."
All of that of course takes money, which is of course dependent on the budget Trump chooses to set for NASA, which is then passed by Congress.
The current proposed budget for NASA in 2017 is $19 billion — down $300 million from the previous year but still an improvement from the past decade, which saw the end of the space shuttle program.
http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-ne...s-back-moon-n722456?google_editors_picks=true
