NASA has this week submitted its first proposal for the heavy-lift rocket it'll build to succeed the Space Shuttle. Among the science and political constraints, it sounds extremely sensible, with one hitch: NASA says it can't afford it.
The President has finally revealeddetails of his plans for NASA, as part of a desperate PR trick to recover from criticism after he canceled the Constellation moonshot rockets. Mars is the new goal, a disappointing 25 years hence.
Find hope in this, NASA, science and Mars fans: President Obama's new stance on NASA's funding will likely pump no less than $6 billion into the agency to create a new heavy rocket sooner than we'd hoped. Mars is its target.
Not everyone's pleased with NASA's future, as defined by the Obama-led new fiscal plans for the space agency...and three particularly significant chaps would just assume tell him to shove it up Uranus. They're names are Armstrong, Lovell, and Cernan. Ring any bells?
Ahead of the imminent "space summit" next week, and in the wake of some very dramatic rumors about its future, NASA's revealed how some of the proposed restructured government funding would be spent. It's NASA's future, folks.
All pointers say that in the next budget from the Obama government, NASA's moonshot Constellation program will be axed. It's not necessarily the end of the dream, though: The plan is to involve private space companies much more.
NASA's ambitious Constellation human space exploration program has been under an Obama-steered spotlight to see how it's going. That investigation has come to a stunning conclusion: NASA can't get to the moon if things stay as they are.
