Trump to start process of sending Americans back to moon: White House | Hacker News Reader

Trump to start process of sending Americans back to moon: White House

reuters.com

20 pointsartsandsci12 comments

That process has been started and restarted by every President since the Apollo program. Nothing ever came of those processes, and it's hard to see how Congress would ever allocate enough funding to make this one fly.

I suspect politically it's DOA. Healthcare is on people's minds more than going to the moon, which has had no strategic use since the 60's, and that was more or less a propaganda war with the soviet union.

It'll be interesting to see how this plays out; as we've seen before, there's often a long path from the president providing a directive like this and actually getting traction and accomplishing the mission.

Still, this is exciting news for space exploration. I've always wondered why everyone is so eager to jump directly to Mars and the asteroid belt when we've still done relatively little on the moon.

There's nothing of commercial value on the Moon (Helium-3 mining is entirely speculative) and the low gravity would probably make it unfit for human colonization even if the radiation and life support problems could be solved. So the only point of doing more manned missions to the Moon would be just to gain experience before going other places. (Geology research and other basic science could be accomplished far more cheaply with unmanned probes now.)

If the only good thing to come out of a Trump presidency is that we actually go back to the moon, it would all have been worth it.

Unless you're taking Trump on a one way trip to the moon, no it fucking won't.

Thank you for this, I laughed so hard.

and anti-trumpers around the country collectively sighed

"....cool"

It'd be cool if NASA would be allowed to plan anything long-term. I've watched every President of my lifetime nix the space exploration program of his predecessor in favor of a new one.

Maybe we need lifetime appointments for NASA administrators like we do for the Supreme Court, because right now it's impossible to do anything that takes more than a decade.

It would be cool if the US Congress can just pass a budget for a year or two years and not just continuing resolutions.

In reality, there is no way that anti-trumpers going to let Trump have aa legacy on par with JFK.

Really this is Pres. Trump just realizing his wall isn't going to work, but deportees definitely won't be able to come back if he deports them to the moon. So this is just a pivot for him.

edit: Too many reallys, really.

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