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Now I like the idea of a moon base and space research as much as the next engineer (and we here at HN seem pretty friendly to it) but I have the general impression that without commensurate investment, this is on par with saying "NASA is directed to clone unicorns"

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Pretty much, though not exactly.

NASA is, after all, made up of a vast number of people competing to get their own favourite projects funded. If a directive comes down from on high that NASA's primary goal is to build a moonbase then it means that projects relevant to this goal start getting funded (and that projects irrelevant to this goal get a hasty rewrite to make 'em sound like they're relevant to this goal).

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