NASA's new plan that is neither new nor plan

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NASA's new plan that is neither new nor plan







Yesterday NASA turned sixty years old and many media echoed a supposedly new and revolutionary NASA plan to return to the Moon and, later, travel to Mars. A plan that would come to correspond to the Apollo program of the 60s. Is this true? Well, if you do not want to imagine what the answer is, I already advance them: a resounding NO. What NASA published on September 24 was a report called National Exploration Campaign Report    which, in effect, indicates / recommends / summarizes the space policy to be followed by the US in the coming years with respect to manned flights. What happens is that there is nothing new in this document. The supposed "return to the Moon" is nothing more than an exaggeration referring to the Space Policy Directive number 1 signed by President Trump on December 11 last year. According to this directive, the Moon becomes the priority objective of the space agency ahead of Mars, which is now relegated to an indeterminate future beyond 2030. In turn, the objective of this directive was no other than to level the way to Gateway lunar station, the favorite project of the Trump administration.



"America will lead" is the summary of the plan of NASA (NASA).



Gateway has not been formally approved in the sense that there is still no money available to make it happen, but every month the White House continues to press politically to change this situation. Gateway is also a project that arouses many sympathies within NASA because it allows the SLS / Orion program to make sense after years of development and billions of dollars disbursed. Of course, let's not forget that Gateway is a station around of the Moon and that, for the moment, there are no plans or money to send human beings to the surface of the moon. At least not before 2030 (of course, there are proposals to use the Gateway station as an intermediate step of manned missions to the surface, but for now they are just that, simple concepts). The report of September 24 speaks vaguely of missions to the lunar surface, but it is never indicated how or with what money.



Last design of the lunar station Gateway (NASA).





Gateway construction plan in which mature projects are mixed with other very green (NASA).



And it is that "vaguely" defines very well the spirit of the report. Relatively mature concepts are mixed, such as Gateway modules, with others that are not even in an initial stage of design, as would be the case of a hypothetical manned lunar module. Unmanned surface missions are mentioned together with private companies, but details are not given either. The only more or less significant novelty is that it seems that NASA wants to delegate to the private industry the development of unmanned lunar modules and, in the long term, manned (assuming there is money for them). A news that without a doubt Jeff Bezos will have received with joy. Likewise, the report confirms that the government intends to formally approve the Gateway before the end of the year, although the necessary resources will not be allocated until 2019. In other words, we will continue with this approval in slow motion, which is already somewhat tiresome. And let's not forget that the Gateway construction should start in 2022 and finish in 2026.



Latest design of the SLS and its versions (in units of hell) (NASA).



Beyond Gateway, which is in a relatively advanced design stage, everything is even more nebulous. It is only mentioned that Mars is a target for, at least, some year from 2030. In other words, the same thing that NASA has been repeating for the last five years. As it could not be otherwise, no estimate of costs is given nor is the architecture of a possible manned trip to Mars detailed. In short, what NASA presented at the end of September is a simple summary of the intentions of the agency that were already known to all for months and years. If someone is waiting for a new detailed plan for the next few years, I'm afraid it's time to wait or settle for the Gateway station.



The surface part is a fantasy today (NASA).





A nice image of the SLS just because (NASA).





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References:



https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/nationalspaceexplorationcampaign.pdf

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