BUDGET/MIKE PENCE/NASA: “Last week, Vice President Mike Pence announced a bold new mission for NASA: creating a sustained human presence, perhaps like a lunar base, on the Moon’s surface. It’s a big change for the agency, which has been focused on going to Mars for the last seven years. But just saying NASA is going to do something isn’t enough for the space agency to actually accomplish a task. Ambitious programs require extra money and sustained commitment from Congress in order to become a reality.
Fortunately, NASA is already working on new hardware for deep space missions that could be used to go to the Moon. For the last decade, the space agency has been developing a giant rocket called the Space Launch System, and a crew capsule called Orion to take people to Mars, and those vehicles could easily be used to take astronauts to the lunar surface instead. But establishing a sustained presence on the Moon is going to require the creation of a lunar lander, habitats, life support systems, and more. And all of that will require extra money and time to make. At one point, NASA estimated a return to the Moon would cost upwards of $100 billion.
And there aren’t many options for where that money can come from. Either Congress can raise NASA’s budget by billions of dollars each year, or the space agency can rework its existing programs to free up funds for technology development. But such changes aren’t easy to implement, and it’s unclear which route the new administration will take in order to follow through on Pence’s bold proclamation.”
-Loren Grush, “If Mike Pence wants to send NASA back to the Moon, he’ll need to find a way to pay for it,” The Verge, Oct. 10, 2017 10:00am