Post by Logan on Apr 12, 2017 23:31:31 GMT -6
NASA officials have released a new and improved plan for how the federal space agency will get astronauts to deep space and Mars by the 2030s — and no one seemed to notice.
The details were unveiled during two presentations Bill Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for NASA, gave for the NASA Advisory Council last week. Gerstenmaier showed the council sharp new designs for a small moon-orbiting space station and a reusable transport ship to carry astronauts to Mars and back and laid out how the federal space agency plans to put astronauts on the red planet by the 2030s, but the announcement was barely even reported, and was summed up in a NASA release.
NASA officials are most likely just fine with that. The space agency has often been used as a political bargaining chip, something astronauts currently seem to be trying their best to avoid since the only shot they have of ever going to Mars is by staying neutral enough that nobody decides to hack away at their funding for political purposes.
There's been a push for NASA officials to come out with a specific plan about how exactly they are going to get astronauts to Mars ever since the Space Launch System, the most powerful rocket ever built, was announced in 2011.
Read more: www.houstonpress.com/news/nasas-new-improved-plan-to-go-to-mars-that-youve-never-heard-of-9346879
The details were unveiled during two presentations Bill Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for NASA, gave for the NASA Advisory Council last week. Gerstenmaier showed the council sharp new designs for a small moon-orbiting space station and a reusable transport ship to carry astronauts to Mars and back and laid out how the federal space agency plans to put astronauts on the red planet by the 2030s, but the announcement was barely even reported, and was summed up in a NASA release.
NASA officials are most likely just fine with that. The space agency has often been used as a political bargaining chip, something astronauts currently seem to be trying their best to avoid since the only shot they have of ever going to Mars is by staying neutral enough that nobody decides to hack away at their funding for political purposes.
There's been a push for NASA officials to come out with a specific plan about how exactly they are going to get astronauts to Mars ever since the Space Launch System, the most powerful rocket ever built, was announced in 2011.
Read more: www.houstonpress.com/news/nasas-new-improved-plan-to-go-to-mars-that-youve-never-heard-of-9346879