VP Pence Talks Moon Return and Mars Mission at NASA

Vice President Mike Pence spoke at NASA's Johnson Space Center on Thursday about the agency's plans to send humans back to the moon for the first time in almost half a century and eventually on to Mars. He said: The next Americans who set foot on the Moon will start their journey by stepping through the NASA's Orion hatch. And this extraordinary spacecraft will one day bridge the gap between our planet and the next.

The International Space Station has been an unqualified success. Soon and very soon American astronauts will return to space on American rockets launched from American soil. America will not ever abandon the critical domain of space, we will open the way for innovators and development and we will lead once again in human exploration. Our administration is working tirelessly to put an American crew aboard the lunar orbital platform before the end of 2024. In a prepared statement, Pence added, "We're renewing our national commitment to discovery and exploration and write the next great chapter of our nation's journey into space. It's now the official policy of the US that we'll return to the Moon, put Americans on Mars and once again explore the farthest depths of outer space."

Comments

Screw the Moon and Mars...build a Real Space Ship

[sycodon]

Then go to the Moon or Mars at your leisure.

1. Non-chemical propulsion
2. Nuclear powered
3. Rotating working/living quarters
4. Descent and ascent vehicles
5. Completely closed, long term life support
6. Magnetic Shielding against solar and other radiation
7. Whatever else is necessary so that it can just hang out in orbit and then be driven somewhere when you want.

Shooting people across the solar system in a tin can is stupid.

Evolutionnary

[DrYak]

The technology does not exist to do such a thing.

The technology is basically just keeping the slow pace of incremental innovation that up to now has given us things like the ISS.

The main problem is that eventually reaching the point mentioned by the above poster is going to take at least several decades of progressive innovations and require multiple year to build each successive station, and that slowness doesn't fit into the short-term needed for a publicity stunt within the 1 or 2 cycles of 4 years each that your US politics has.

Meanwhile, shooting people in (single use) tin cans is somethings that can be done quickly enough to be a somewhat viable publicity stunt (despite being completely useless from the technological and scientific point of view)

Re:Evolutionnary

[MachineShedFred]

This is the one reason that I feel that any moon landing conspiracy theory is ridiculous and absurd:

1. The USSR had radar capable of tracking the Apollo flights. If we didn't go, they would have been more than happy to let the entire world know in order to reverse the propaganda effect of faking it.

Plus, there's also mountains of physical evidence, including retroreflectors on the lander descent stages that you (for various well equipped values of "you") can bounce a laser off of.