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NASA Safety Panel Finds Concerns With the Journey To Mars (examiner.com)
MarkWhittington writes: NASA's Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel issued its annual report on various space agency programs. The panel found a number of areas of concern surrounding the Journey to Mars program, virtually all of them stemming from inadequate funding. It suggested that NASA's plan to launch the first crewed mission on the Orion, which would use the heavy lift Space Launch System to go around the moon, in 2021 was unrealistic given current, anticipated funding. The panel also suggested that lack of a clear plan for the Mars program is compromising its viability. It also suggested that the decision not to return to the moon should be revisited in view of the desire of international partners to do so and the need of low gravity surface experience in advance of going to Mars
The problem is not a particular president or a particular Congress. It's the fact that space missions have, somehow, become politicized. So, every time the balance of power shifts, the new legislature/administration immediately cancels the space program decided upon by the previous administration/legislature, because they want to screw over the other party. Then the new guys propose their own plan for space exploration, which, just like the old one, will take 15 years to show results, which of course guarantees that it will be cancelled in its turn when the electorate gets tired of the clowns in charge and votes them out again.
If NASA is ever again going to be a serious participant in the exploration of space, then it's going to need to either run missions that only take a couple years start-to-finish, which severely limits what can be done, or get buy-in from both parties for a longer-term project, which will be almost impossible to achieve.