I would be so happy to see this materialize. I hope they start cutting task orders soon to really set things in motion. A lot of the rockets and landers are starting to align to make this all possible.
this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2026
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whitey on the moon!
Here's my prediction:
NASA will spend hundreds of millions of dollars planning for stuff that will never get done.
NASA hasn't done anything ambitious since the Shuttle. The end of the Cold War brought ambitious stuff to a screeching halt because ambitious stuff is expensive, and it's hard to justify the expense when there's nobody left to outspend.
NASA has since been a vehicle to spend presidential prestige programs' budgets with nothing to show for any of them.
NASA launched multiple rovers to another planet with RC helicopters and shit.
What are you on about them not doing stuff since the shuttles ? That is not on NASA that is on Congress and the POTUS giving up on budgeting NASA.
Don't expect scientists to be marketers.
Sorry I should have been more specific. I was talking about those grandiose programs to return mankind to the stars - you know, putting people on the moon again, establishing a base there, sending someone to Mars... That's all fluff that will never happen, but NASA sure has spent a lot of dough on those programs.
Yes, NASA has put together many, many successful unmanned space programs that have done excellent science. No questions. But those aren't the ones announced with great fanfare by the new POTUS from the White House.
“NASA hasn’t done anything ambitious since the shuttle” is pretty specific and pretty incorrect.
I actually agree with you that NASA has been unproductive and wasteful for a while now. Not always, but certainly when it came to ambitious and inspiring projects. However, I see this as a course correction that puts NASA back on track. Certainly it's a much better plan than they had before. But maybe I'm just being hopeful, or even naive? Time will tell.
Even worse, NASA is now just a tool to funnel money to Boeing/Lockheed for not finishing any project on time, on budget or even finishing at all. Then they can justify to give even more money to Musk.
I love space travel but I hate this timeline.
I love space travel but I hate this timeline.
I love space exploration. But space travel by human bags-of-mostly-water is nonsense. Apollo was awe-inspiring and enthralling, but the science that was done didn't remotely justify the cost insanity. Of course, science wasn't the point of Apollo, but it was its cover story.
The Shuttle wasn't even space travel at all: it was an attempt at exploiting low-Earth orbit at cost. And it failed at that, as it was really, REALLY expensive for what it did. Private space players now do that for cheaper, and it's really not inspiring.
Since then, probes have been doing space exploration on humanity's behalf and they've been doing a much better job that we'll ever do in person.
Traditional meatbag mankind is hopelessly Earth-bound, and probably won't ever leave its cradle. Space travel will be done by humanity's offspring: the machines.