Not really about potentially jettisoning the President-elect (as I write this) out of the airlock sans spacesuit, this is about what space policy might be like during the absolute terror of the second Trump administration.
What a 2nd Trump administration could mean for NASA and space exploration
"And with SpaceX on track to lower the cost of a single Starship flight to less than $10 million, SLS and the broader architecture of the Artemis program is deemed to get a hard look even as NASA Associate Administrator Jim Free urged the incoming administration to maintain the current plans. Historically, SLS and Orion development has received substantial funding from a broad coalition; the program supports more than 69,000 jobs nationwide as of 2019."
That job thing might make it hard to cut Artemis.
"One concern I have is that U.S. space policy will continue to evolve to enable, even more so, the rapid occupation of Earth orbits without adequately accounting for the risks — operational, environmental, and security — associated with that growth," Aaron C. Boley, who studies orbital debris as co-director of the Outer Space Institute, told Space.com via email.
There is also a looming uncertainty about how NASA will position itself in the coming years. The space agency has notably been a non-partisan entity over the years of changing administrations and conflicting priorities.
With Musk's growing influences over the federal government, however, "the idea of sending humans to Mars could start to be itself seen as a conservative or right wing value," said Dreier, "which, even though there's no inherent reason why it should be, would induce a knee jerk rejection by the opposite party because it will be seen as a defining aspect of the right wing."
That would be strange. Spending an exorbitant amount of money to get to Mars in a budget-cutting, inflation-conscious, deficit-wary MAGA-pandering administration.
Why do I see a problem here?
This is why.
No comments:
Post a Comment