CBS– President Trump’s fiscal 2020 budget request includes $21.02 billion for NASA, funding the agency’s ongoing efforts to develop commercial spacecraft and infrastructure in low-Earth orbit and to press ahead with construction and launch of the world’s most powerful rocket and the Orion crew ships that will carry astronauts back to the moon.
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, speaking to agency workers at the Kennedy Space Center Monday, also said the budget proposal fully funds a mini outpost known as Gateway that will be launched into lunar orbit in the 2020s, along with landers to carry payloads — and eventually astronauts — back to the lunar surface for extended exploration.
Bridenstine said the budget request reflects the priorities of Space Policy Directive 1, signed by President Trump in December 2017, which calls for NASA to encourage the commercialization of low-Earth orbit, including operations aboard the International Space Station, while focusing on long-range plans to return to the moon and, eventually, Mars.
Human exploration and operations totals $9.307 billion in the budget request: $5.022 billion for deep space exploration systems and $4.426 billion for low-Earth orbit and spaceflight operations.
If NASA stays on its current course — and if Congress continues its support — astronauts will land on the moon by 2028, according to a budget overview chart.
I as happy as everyone that Trump has us going back to the moon. I don’t think there’s really any reason to as we have advanced so far in technology since we last landed on the moon in 1972 we can see every crevice from our living room couches.
And I doubt the material on the moon has changed much, if at all, in the 40 years since we last touched down. I mean, it’s a rock? What is going to change about that? All the goods that were brought back are probably the same as they would be today. And I read somewhere that they are just now studying the stuff astronauts brought back from the 1972 mission after keeping it locked up so modern technology could examine it. So maybe there will be some reason to go back after look at that?
My real gripe here is that it’s going to take until 2028! 2028! I understand that there are budgetary reasons and political hoops to jump through and blah blah blah. But the United States government and NASA are going to sit there and tell me it will take 9 years to get there? Get out of here. I guarantee that if they wanted to NASA could launch a mission tomorrow, be on the moon by Saturday and have the astronauts home in time to watch the second round of March Madness.
They don’t need 9 years of planning for this. They went there in 1969! Do you know how much has been invented since then?? The only thing we had going for us back then that we don’t know is people were actually being vaccinated without questioning it!
I want to know the real reason why they are planning this out 8 years ahead. Is there a lack of astronauts? Are kids not dreaming of flying into outer-space anymore? I did then I saw Space Cowboys and realized it’s very easy to die in space and I’m a gigantic coward so that dream was nixed real quick.
Is it aliens? Are the hiding the fact that there is an alien colony on the moon that has been observing us and are waiting for them to leave? Maybe that’s why the world has gone to shit these last 10 years. Secret government projects to get them to go away. And if they’re planning this for 9 years in the future I don’t wanna know what big government has in store for us over the next decade.
Please don’t pee on my shoulder and call it rain. Tell us the real reason(s) why we have to wait 9 years to go to the moon, because we all know this “money allocation” explanation is a bunch of BS.
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