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Comment by stupidcar | Hacker News Reader

"With this directive, Mr Trump abandons plans set by his predecessor Barack Obama, to send humans to an asteroid near earth."

Isn't this the problem? Every President gives Nasa a new set of priorities, which they work on for a while until the next President comes along and changes things again. Back in 2004, George W Bush was also announcing a return to the Moon:

"Our third goal is to return to the moon by 2020, as the launching point for missions beyond. Beginning no later than 2008, we will send a series of robotic missions to the lunar surface to research and prepare for future human exploration. Using the Crew Exploration Vehicle, we will undertake extended human missions to the moon as early as 2015, with the goal of living and working there for increasingly extended periods. "

Jan 14, 2004 - https://history.nasa.gov/Bush%20SEP.htm

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Am I the only one who sees a clear pattern here: each and every action of the current US president undos something that predecessor Barack Obama has accomplished.

There are the obvious things, like health insurance, immigration policy and the like. Whenever I cannot at all understand a certain action of the PotUS, like, for example, the scaling down (or closing) of two National Parks in Utah (Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante), I'll do a little research and find: the action is undoing some former act of Barack Obama.

Each day I get more and more convinced, that Mr Trumps only motivation is the extinction of the traces of his predecessor. As cited: it is not about Moon or Mars, it is about "abandoning plans set by his predecessor Barack Obama, to send humans to an asteroid near earth". Therefore it is absolutely unimportant, if the program gets funded or executed. The directive has fulfilled its purpse by rescinding an Obama act.

I am into archaeology and history. Extinguishing the traces of the predecessor is a very common pattern in history, you know, like chiseling away the former pharao's name from the temple walls. Alarmingly archaic, primitive and despotic.

Even the most absurd actions of the US president become completely reasonable, when seen in this context.

And George H. W. Bush in 1989:

> WASHINGTON, July 20— President Bush proposed today that the United States establish a base on the Moon, send an expedition to Mars and begin ''the permanent settlement of space.''

> In a speech celebrating the 20th anniversary of man's landing on the Moon, Mr. Bush made the first major commitment by a President to these ambitious goals and set the stage for the first full-scale debate in years on the nation's troubled space program.

> ... Mr. Bush pledged to commit the United States in the 1990's to the earth-orbiting space station as the ''critical next step in all our space endeavors.''

''And next, for the new century, back to the Moon, back to the future, and this time back to stay,'' Mr. Bush told the select audience, which included nearly half the American astronauts who flew in space. ''And then, a journey into tomorrow, a journey to another planet, a manned mission to Mars.''

Yes. It makes me wonder if anyone believes these anymore. I don't know how they did it in the 60s. They had just barely gone 100 miles up, and they came up with a plan to send people 200,000 miles, land two of them on a gravity well, and get them back. It's insane. I don't understand how President Kennedy said something absurd, and it came true, yet now we say we want to do it again decades later, and it's all talk.

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