Slashdot Mirror
NASA Finally Admits It Doesn't Have the Funding To Land Humans on Mars (arstechnica.com)
For years, NASA has been chalking out and expanding its plans to go to Mars. The agency's Journey to Mars project aims to land humans on the red planet during the 2030s. For years, the agency has been reassuring us that it will be able to make do all those audacious projects within the budget it gets. Until now, that is. From a report: Now, finally, the agency appears to have bended toward reality. During a propulsion meeting of the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics on Wednesday, NASA's chief of human spaceflight acknowledged that the agency doesn't really have the funding it needs to reach Mars with the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft. These vehicles have cost too much to build, and too much to fly, and therefore NASA hasn't been able to begin designing vehicles to land on Mars or ascend from the surface. "I can't put a date on humans on Mars, and the reason really is the other piece is, at the budget levels we described, this roughly 2 percent increase, we don't have the surface systems available for Mars," said NASA's William H. Gerstenmaier, responding to a question about when NASA will send humans to the surface of Mars. "And that entry, descent and landing is a huge challenge for us for Mars." This seems like a fairly common sense statement, but it's something that NASA officials have largely glossed over -- at least in public -- during the agency's promotion of a Journey to Mars.
And we'll have the best space program in the world.
Mike @ The Geek Pub. Let's Make Stuff!
.... the color black is found to be darker than most others.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Make NasaTokens and watch ethereum whales give you their money. Oh wait the bubble burst and thousnads of graphics cards were destroyed in the process.
It was great when it was a cover for air force ballistic missile research, but honestly does anyone else think that we are going to continue to piss tax dollars into the wind for an agency that has already achieved its objective of developing reliable ballistic missile technology for the military? Sorry, but "good for humanity" isn't a good enough excuse anymore to justify their existence.
but not enough to keep the humans alive during or after
This is a very controversial mission b/c of the risks to the astronauts/cosmonauts, so it should be borne by a private aerospace company funded by billionaires - and it seems there is no shortage of those.
Folks, the little data we have (compared to those who have all the data), it was becoming obvious. Only recently it was revealed that Mars' surface has a cocktail of substances that would "wipe out living organisms" (see this link https://www.theguardian.com/sc... ). The length of time, the sending of supplies, and trying to terraform, it's undertaking that would take an incredible amount of resources. And that is assuming the first manned mission even got there (which is question). I think many, many people questioned whether we would actually go to Mars in spite of all the hype. Funny enough the hype have information suggesting more and more that this is harder than anybody thought. So...we'd better start taking better care of our planet because it all likelihood, we aren't going anywhere. Perhaps like the North American expedition, someone will hock "The Queen's jewels", but save a few insanely rich tycoons sending a bunch of "serfs" on a possibly doomed test mission, this Mars dream, I suspect will postponed for a LONG time.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
But Mars is a Trump goal. The man wants his legacy. Will he raise taxes to fund it? Will he drop the wall to fund it? Will he cut health care to fund it? Trump needs his great legacy, will the GOP assist in getting the funds?
What will Trump do to make sure he gets his legacy?
1. Tell Trump there's coal on Mars - jobs for coal miners!
2. Start a rumour that Mars has no vaccination regulations - kills 2 birds with one stone as all the antivaxxers pour their money into a modern version of the B Ark.
3. Flatly declare that it is impossible. Someone will come along to prove you wrong
4. Tell the MRAs about the martian slave women. Then tell the SJWs about the MRAs wanting the martian slave women. See who gets to Mars first.
5. Tell the Christian and Muslim Taliban about the martian slave women walking around "all bare neked".
6. Tell the GOP that Martian women have multiple pussies to grab.
7. Tell the states that have passed bathroom bills that there is no such thing as a Martian male, so there's no such thing as a martian transsexual wanting to pee in their women's toilets.
8. "Gotta build a wall on Mars to keep the illegal aliens at bay."
9. Get Alex Jones and Breitbart to say that NASA doesn't lobby for enough money because Mars is full of Republican martians and refusing to go to Mars is a democratic plot to suppress voters.
10. "Russia and China and even India are all going. There's going to be a "planet gap" between the US and those countries that makes the missile gap look like a blip in history."
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
We're going to Mars... on a shoestring budget... that gets smaller with each passing year.
They cost 1/20th as much as manned missions and do at least as much (arguably much more) science.
For instance, look at WMAP, which contributed massively to cosmology and high energy physics and was launched on time and on budget. The results have been analyzed in thousands of papers, including the three most cited physics papers of the last few decades. It cost $150M (yes, M).
Meanwhile, the ISS is running about $150B (yes B), and it's absurd to think that somehow it's worth the relative cost. We could have hundreds (or at least many dozens) of WMAPs, Voyagers, Mars Rovers and other diligent automatons scouring the solar system, crash-landing into comets, and otherwise pushing the frontier of human knowledge, or we can have a few dudes sit around the ISS with their ant farms.
NASA was always confused about whether its mission was space exploration for the sake of aeronautics or for the sake of science. During Cold War, it was probably aeronautics with scientific exploration as a pretty-plausible veneer over the military applications. Today, it's likely the need for more public victories than a quiet-but-useful pursuit of knowledge.
So, India and China announc they'll spend money to go to the moon and Mars, which means there is a space race. India and China will say "no of course we won't place claims on lunar or Martian territory or mining rights" then they'll land and say "we're here, you're not.... Antarctica" and then they can weaponize and simply keep US and other countries from landing.
So, you know what? NASA will say "we need funding or the Chinese and India will take over a whole planet and we'll get nothing". What choice does Washington have then?
Another year of the orange moron making this planet a toxic wasteland, they will get all the funding they need when even the republicans realize that we need an exit strategy if impeachment fails...
(mod me whatever you like, but don't mod me funny - its really not...)
And no reason, either. Spare me all the pseudo-religious sci-fi garbage too. Grow up.
No such chance. They want an immediate ROI, within months. Years, tops. Something like a Mars mission would not only take decades to come to fruition, it's even likely that the ROI will not fall to the ones investing but to someone else.
The 60s and the moon shot program meant a huge leap forwards in technology. More even than WW2, and with a LOT less blood spent on it. But not only "hard" technology, we gained even a lot more in terms of new insights in logistics and organization. The logistic and organization problem they had to solve, i.e. how to coordinate many different suppliers and many, many thousands of people, to deliver on time, to deal with delays without endangering the project itself, eliminating redundancies without creating bottlenecks in case something couldn't be delivered on time, all these problems are exactly the same problems large corporations face today in a global economy. They benefit greatly from it.
Of course, that's something everyone benefits from, not just NASA. Not even just Boeing, Grumman and Rockwell who built the CSM, the LEM and the Saturn V. You won't find private investors for something like this, nobody puts his money on something that is then easy to copy and use by the competition.
And you can't patent organization systems.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
(sarcasm) I think I'm going to have a hear attack and DIE from that surprise...(/sarcasm).
Not enough funding eh? Tell me something I didn't already know..
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
1/20? try 1/200 or 1/1000
The world that I was born into in 1968 was experiencing something like Moore's law in regards to propulsion. The steam engine, the internal combustion engine, the jet engine, to moon bound rockets. The expectation that science would keep delivering order of magnitude advances in propulsion wasn't far fetched. (see the short lived television program "Star Trek" from that time period.)
As we know, that hasn't been the case. The digital information revolution has wonderful benefits, but it hasn't been able to get us to those space stations, moon bases, and Mars.
Perhaps they can focus on making better space propulsion systems to make solar system travel faster. Current tech is mostly chemical rockets and using gravity as a slingshot. What they need to develop is the equivalent of the Star Trek impulse engine. Try hiring more Scottish engineers?
If these logistic and organization problems were solved in the '60s, why do they keep coming up today? Even within NASA own projects.
Yeah but we apparently didn't learn this stuff is hard and we need more good read and more rational eyes on budget, less politics and more action. Maybe more like the military's lower levels, below where big politics get involved.
Regardless of the mission in question, we need to punish politicans and agency directors when they lie about the cost of some thing and then, after approved money is spent, they say whoops and ask for more. Happened in California with the stupid north south train idea, and many others. There needs to be an investigation. If it's anything like what happens at my work, somewhere along the chain is an idiot who says this estimate is too large it will never be approved let's cut it down and ask for more later. It's dishonest.
If we don't have the facts people need then we need to be honest and say, we don't know the total cost because we've never done this before , but we can split up the work into phases that stand alone, have independent benefits, and get smaller budgets approved one phase at a time. For example in California phase 1 wold have been picking a route and securing the rights to the land. Oh can't do that? Oh it's costing more than we thought? Ok it's the only thing we are doing in phase 1 so we can focus on that and get a good solution or fund more over time. Not hide it under carpet until it's a threat to whole project. Like this Mars thing.
So when Trump called them up and offered them money and they laughed at him, I guess maybe they were the clowns then.
Source? A halfway believable one?
They cost 1/20th as much as manned missions and do at least as much (arguably much more) science.
That's fine if you're simply talking about the science that humans aren't needed to do.
For instance, look at WMAP
Seriously? You're talking about a mission where humans would have served no purpose. At least keep it on an apples to apples comparison.
Meanwhile, the ISS is running about $150B (yes B), and it's absurd to think that somehow it's worth the relative cost.
ISS isn't just about the experiment pods that it carries. It's about humans living in space. The way you get to that science? By putting humans in space. The fact that these humans interact with the science experiments that aren't based on having meatbags in space is a cost saver.
I will say that a handful more probes to Mars is likely a good idea in filling in some of the questions about sending people into space and onto Mars, but right now the majority of humanity that has a real hand in this game have the ultimate goal of human footprints on the planet. We don't need to have all the science back before we start seriously developing the technology to take them there.
NASA was always confused about whether its mission was space exploration for the sake of aeronautics or for the sake of science.
Why not both?
I think this is the crux of the issue with what you're trying to get at; a false dichotomy that NASA should or could only do A or B. I'm all for pure research, let there be no doubt but at the same time putting people out in space is also a fine goal. Let the research serve its purpose but put people out there too when and where you can. There will be no safest time for this, it's an enterprise filled with all kinds of dangers, some unknown to us today. That's why we research but if we never go past the knowledge then the research becomes an economic burden with little payoff.
Humanity has the gift of knowledge and ability. Let us grow. A human on Mars could have done the same research in a week that it has taken the combined landers decades worth of total time to do. Is it right to shoot explorers out of a canon and see what sticks? No, but we do have knowledge that should be acted on and that knowledge clearly shows that we're well beyond LEO as far as where we can go. Maybe Mars isn't the right answer today but it's a better answer than sitting on our hands.
Gee, yet another dumb comment from the 'humans can't do anything' crowd. Sure, robot probes are necessary. The whole reason we have them is to pave the way for things that humans want to do. They're hardly an end to themselves. They absolutely cost less, and the sky's blue and hipsters still suck. Film at 6.
Pushing the frontier of human knowledge doesn't do anybody any good unless people actually, you know, go do something with that knowledge. One of those somethings that needs doing is to get some of us the hell off of this planet so that we as a species are not (as) vulnerable to a catastrophe the likes of which has absolutely happened before.
It's amazing to me how one of the more brilliant and, frankly, highest bang for the buck things the federal government has ever done, an agency which literally costs less than a penny out of every tax dollar at unfortunate current funding levels, always has to defend itself against bean counters and people with a serious lack of vision.
Yeah, it's too bad Trump ignores facts, and ya know, science.
They're yet to come up with a way to properly shield any humans on Mars from radiation even in the short term.
Considering NASA costs next to nothing (about 0.5% of the US govt's total budget), and the studies I've seen referenced show its return on investment to be about $10 for every $1 used (granted, it's a difficult figure to calculate, but even if assuming a huge error margin that's still great ROI), it's no wonder you chose to post that anonymously.
If that ROI were true, then NASA should be self-funded by now.
The integrated circuit was developed by two government programs: NASA's Apollo computer, and the U.S. Air Force's Minuteman guidance. While the IC had been invented by Noyce and Kilby, nobody in particularly had a use for it-- discrete parts already did fine, why put more than one component on a chip?-- except for NASA and the Air Force, who needed to develop lightweight computers, and funded the development of IC chips specifically for lightweight computers.
So, yes, if NASA had been able to take a cut from half the profits of the IC industry, and thus the computer technology that they (co-) developed, yes, the space program would be self-funded.
But there is no Christian Taliban.
huh. could've fooled me.
United States Murders
In the United States, violence directed towards abortion providers has killed at least eleven people, including four doctors, two clinic employees, a security guard, a police officer, two people (unclear of their connection), and a clinic escort;[I 1] [I 2] Seven murders occurred in the 1990s.[I 3]
The military is a mandatory function of the federal government, according to the US Constitution.
Federal funding for the dreams of space cadets and scifi authors is not.
A country without the ability to defend itself and its interests is not a country.
A country without a manned Mars program is still a country.
Pick one, we can't afford both.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
In every year of his administration, Obama's NASA web site hyped his "Journey to Mars" (and the team at NASA, still running on Obama appointees still has that markeing going) but his policy was to delete as much funding from it as possible, slow-walk the SLS and Orion projects, and keep trying to kill-off NASA's manned programs. Obama's 2010 NASA budget was a bold attempt to zero-out all US manned spaceflight an so shocked Republicans an Democrats alike in congress that it was nearly the only thing they cooperated on to kill that bill. That's how we got the SLS rocket (often called the "Senate Launch System") mandated by law - the congress was determined to block the end of NASA manned spaceflight.
Obama never, in 8 years, proposed any funding for any missions to Mars, and never proposed building any hardware for landing on Mars or the Moon. His administration never made any time tables, never projected any budgets, never specified any hardware, never even made much effort on his replacement program of going to an asteroid (which he down-graded to sending a probe to an asteroid to grab a sample). If the SLS ever flies with a manned Orion capsule beyond low Earth orbit it will be inspite of Obama, not because of him.
Trump is all tied-up in other stuff, so we have no idea where he is going to take NASA, but it cannot be worse than Obama who was the worst for NASA since Jimmy Carter. Remember: It was Obama's NASA admnistrator who tols Al Jazeera that Obama made it his top priority to reach-out to the Muslim world and help them to feel good about their contributions to math and science - all our previous NASA administrators had other priorities (Like putting men on the moon, developing the shuttles, or a space station, etc)
Robots are terrible at exploration - they're just better than nothing. Since we have no people on Mars now, the rovers are better. If there was a single geologist on Mars today, nobody would waste even one minute programming a rover to make a two week traverse to an interesting looging rock.
Robot probes are TERRIBLY incapable and inefficient; A robot on Mars gathers as much information in a year as a human would gather in a few hours.
There's always some moron proposing a robots-only exploration agenda. This is sheer idiocy. Robots are great for a little recon before humans arrive, or to get a look in a place where humans can never go. If, however, humans are never going to go then there's no need to send robots. If we are never going to Mars, then we already know more about the place than we ever needed to know. If we are going to go, then we have probably already wasted too much time and money on robot probes of Mars and ought to get on to the task of sending people for high-quality rapid science and exploration.
Robot probes have, sadly, apparently become career mechanisms for people with too many college degrees that are not in demand in the private sector. Every one of these probes gets build as a one-off hand-built work of art. It takes a decade to plan and design, a decade to build test and launch, and then is remotely operated for a decade. A guy can go from getting his PhD, to one of these programs, to retirement all on the taxpayer's dime and without ever doing a productive job in the economy. Their work product is barely inspiring and plays-out over decades with no real benefit to the economy or the taxpayers who are required to fund it. Such people become very slow, hesistant, risk-averse, and just down-right annoying. We need more Pete Conrads and more John Youngs and fewer Carl Sagans.
Right now manned space in general would be better off if they gave the SLS budget to Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos, to make a few big honking rockets for going to Mars or anywhere else they can sell a ticket for.
NASA should steer out of the launching business altogether and focus on space science and new technologies, and let the private sector take over the known technology of space launchers.
"Meanwhile, the ISS is running about $150B (yes B), and it's absurd to think that somehow it's worth the relative cost."
NASA's ENTIRE budget for 2017 is about 19 Billion... so if we are spending 150 billion on the ISS... per year... Then someone is doing a really good job. Holy F, such bull shit.
If you assume that NASA continues its past trajectory of "cost-plus" contracting, of course the cost will be out of reach. But the economics of "launch" are rapidly changing, due to SpaceX and several other players such as Rocket Lab, Blue Origin, and MoonEx.
Given the Trump administration's (apparently) positive attitude toward space exploration, and "commercial space" in particular (led apparently more by Pence than Trump), I think there might be a re-assessment of this price tag in the next couple of years, especially as Boeing and SpaceX get their respective "Commercial Crew" vehicles tested and qualified for flight ops.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
India sent a prove ro Mars at a fraction of rge cost of MAVEN. NASA is bloated and probably hampered by regulations and red tape too.
The ISS is a multinational effort, the figure is over the lifetime of the project* and maybe you should learn how to follow a thread so you'll reply to the right poster.
*A few seconds on Google would have enlightened you. And in defense of the OP, they never claimed it was a yearly figure.
And that is exactly how I handle my prostitutes...
The problem isn't money, its waste. They've burnt $25-35 Billion on Constellation/SLS so far and they don't even have a functioning rocket yet. With that kind of money you could launch over a hundred Falcon heavies each with a component for an interplanetary craft. Now it's not completely their fault, they had to press HARD to keep CCDev afloat despite being under budget and more capable than expected. The cost plus contracts need to be tossed and all future projects should come with a fixed budget and incremental funds dismemberment for achieved goals with NO bureaucratic hoops (use of shuttle components, rockets designed by politicians, etc).
While the IC had been invented by Noyce and Kilby
Why should NASA get any credit for inventing something when they were merely a customer?
The answer is that they didn't get credit for inventing it. But "who gets credit for inventing the IC" wasn't the question posed. The question was about the return on investment of NASA funding. NASA (along with the Air Force) funded the research needed to turn the concept of an integrated circuit into an actual product. The answer to the question of what was the return on investment is that this particular investment, in developing the IC from a concept to a commercial reality, has a very large return.
The return on investment, however, did not return to NASA. It returned to everybody who uses computers, or cell phones, or any electronic device using integrated circuits.
When has Nasa ever said they could go to Mars on their current budget? What are you smoking?
We didnt have a ship capable of putting a man in space between apollo and the shuttle either.
Actually, I thought they were building a military branch in charge of space? If they get any significant slice of the military budget they could actually do some cool stuff.
If we can't even get to Mars, how will we ever explore Uranus?
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
He was quoting mission costs, not per year costs.
In the past, oil on Mars. That didn't happen. :(
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Why MUST it be the Military budget that is in fact funding Space-X to a significant fraction of their budget that MUST be the military budget in opposition to space? Why, other than your prejudices couldn't it be spending on something else?
As Elon Musk has noted an a few occasions, the cosmetics industry in the US is 10 times all space oriented spending. Why is your wrinkle cream and spot remover more important than space?
Oh hey but you'd respond incidents like Khan Shaykhun with useless ineffectual acts like going on a protest march...
Posted AC to preserve mod points downloading other idiots like you.
Neither China or Russia have successful launched a probe to Mars or any of the outer planets.
As long as you don't count this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... or this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... or this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... or this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... or this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... or this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Wow, you tend to forget just how many failed Soviet Mars probes there were. Thanks for reminding us of the extensive failure list!
[list of non-Soviet probes and missions not going to Mars or outer planets ignored]
Don't date humans on Mars.
What nonsense, a sustainable human colony elsewhere is more than a century or more away if it is even possible. "getting off this rock" is not relevant to space exploration today, the tech dosen't exist and is not used for what we do today
To paraphrase Douglas Adams:
"Space is a crummy place to live. Really awful. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly inhospitable it is. I mean, you may think things are pretty bad in Detroit, but that's just peanuts to space."
People keep talking about how we need a backup plan for Earth because we're going to mess it up. I think they're failing to realize that nuclear winter, Chicxulub-like asteroid impacts, ice ages, runaway desertification, a thousand other unlikely extreme scenarios, or just about any physically possible conjunction of any of these would all leave Earth a more resource-rich and hospitable environment than any other mass in the Solar System.
With improvements in rover and probe technology I don't think there's any rational justification for sending meat into space until we have vastly improved materials science, propulsion, and launch systems - the kind we might have, say, five hundred years down the road. If somebody wants a huge engineering challenge just to send people where nobody's been, try creating undersea colonies or something instead.
The top two would be China and Russia. China in particular, has a robust manned capability, has run two national space stations in recent times, current one still going.
While China does have a human space program, they've launched a grand total of six missions carrying people in thirteen years. I'm not sure if I'd call that a "robust" launch rate. I'd call it "very slow".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
...China has much more advanced abilities in space than NASA has and is advancing at a drastically faster rate too.
Hardly a "drastically faster rate".
Their budget grew 5 times since they landed on the moon. Sure they get less from a "percentage of federal budget" perspective but even the federal budget has ballooned well outside of the feasible limits a government can spend on.
They said it will cost ~$6B to get 4 humans to Mars. If you get $20B/year with a mandate to go to Mars within 10 years, what would you spend it on in that time?
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
We could send people to Mars today. Granted, their chances of survival would be near zero. It may even be as low as 50/50 to make it to Mars orbit and under 10/90 to manage to walk on the surface before death. But these are much better odds than many past explorers enjoyed.
Those explorers were usually private explorers who sometimes had government backing. After a brief period in which the governments actually took full charge of the missions and has now allowed the efforts to mostly stall for almost half a century, we are thankfully seeing real explorers return to the advanced exploration game.
The new explorers will accomplish with vastly less expenditure what NASA will not or perhaps can not. It is far cheaper to follow an incremental path in which people live a bit longer into each mission until we finally achieve success. The cost of trying to reach NASA quality levels on the first attempt guarantees failure of the mission before it even leaves the ground.
RIP NASA.
We really have to make it possible guys! The hard part is to make a cable light and strong enough to attach a geo-stationary satellite to the earth's surface. Graphene nanotubes are the best candidate but we still have to figure out how to produce it in such lengths. Still, if we put out money into saving fuel to reach earth's escape velocity, the inner solar system would be much cheaper for humans to travel and we could start thinking about building and maintaining bases on the moon and other planets. I still dream I'll be able to see this space elevator in my lifetime.
Hahaha youre full of shit. Stop getting your news from reddit.
Interesting report. Source? Having worked for and with NASA for years, there is a high population of extremely conservative folks working there. Dont forget, the fucking SLS is designed in Alabama.
Last time I was at Marshall qualifying hardware for flight, there was conservative talk radio playing in both the EMI and vibe facilities.
Why don't they just hitch a ride with Elon, he says hes going.
http://www.spacex.com/mars
War on Mars! Done deal!
The millirary's
The US has military spaceplanes.
I put my confidence in Musk's SpaceX to achieve Mars human landing. Bezos is nowhere near with his amateur just-the-tip rocket.
ICBMs are not the travel system for the Moon, Mars or anywhere else beyond LEO with a human being as cargo.
We are at least 300 years before having a viable transportation system.
Why is it whenever some random government official gives a sob story about not having enough money that the immediate response is to suggest taking money from the military? Shouldn't the immediate response be asking why this person is working for the government in the first place?
I can point to the US Constitution on where it says that Congress is to raise a army, provide a navy, organize a militia, build forts, and so on. The Constitution spends a lot of verbiage on the defense of the nation and so it should be no surprise that the government spends a lot of money on the military.
Can someone point to the line in the Constitution that justifies spending anything on NASA? Or funding a mission to Mars? Did we declare war on Mars? Is that a place where we should be building a fort?
Looking at the other powers granted to the federal government I'm finding it hard to see what might justify the federal government funding a manned mission to Mars. Are we going there to establish a post office? Is someone on Mars counterfeiting US currency?
I can see the need of a civilian agency like NASA to do things like regulate the satellites launched by US entities, public and private. Perhaps even be a central agency to be responsible for the launching of government assets into space, civilian (like NOAA weather satellites), military (like reconnaissance satellites), and dual use assets (like GPS).
I think that the NASA director of human spaceflight should keep quiet or go find another job. NASA should not be in the business of launching people into space.
I might change my mind if it involves sending people like himself on a manned mission to land on the sun. Every government official that cries for my tax money is eligible for being a member of the crew. Why stop at Mars? Why not go bigger? No one has been to the sun either.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
... Don't do the job and ask for more money. Maybe some day someone will be held to account for the fraud.
Technically, the Soviets did crash some rockets into parts of Europe, yes.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Link!?
Requiem for the American Dream
"The Moon Shot accomplished nothing! My daily life is the peak of Humanity and I want nothing more, nor do I wish anyone else to strive!! All that is left to do is to carpet the planet in fast food joints!"
Really, with your attitude you could write off any achievement as "chest thumping." Does knowing that there was an essential role for Cold War and Superpower pride and competition on the line, change any of that? Nope.