Anatoly Zak has a report on Gerstenmeier’s recent announcement.
I’d say it’s more a delusional long-term vision than a plan. As I quoted Dale Skran in my anti-Apolloist screed from last summer:
…the NRC report is based on the unstated assumption that over the entire period considered, all the way out to 2054, there will be essentially no progress in rocketry other than that funded by NASA exploration programs, and that for the entire period the SLS as currently envisioned will remain the preferred method for Americans to reach space. It is difficult to imagine a more unlikely foundation for the planning of future space efforts than this. [Emphasis added]
And yet NASA continues to do so, because it has no choice, because Congress refuses to let it do it sensibly.
They are proposing a 20+ year plan. As I’ve noted in the past, even Mao never tried for more than five. Think back to 1996. Who would have predicted that, twenty years later, we’d have Internet billionaires building and flying vertical reusable launch systems? Or plans for private space facilities? Or the beginning of assembly of large structures in space? The notion that any plan for human exploration of the solar system that NASA has will survive contact with technical and budgetary reality of the next twenty years is ludicrous. But Apolloism marches on.
Much more than half the country is ok with (tax paid) theft. Nothing gets fixed until our morals our straightened out.
I expect less than 1% of this much above average crowd gets what I just said.
Back a long time ago, when Mike Griffin was head of the Exploration Office at NASA he said, in a meeting on First Lunar Outpost, that any viable Lunar or Mars plan had to go from go to landing in about 8 years. One presidential administration. Otherwise, the incoming administration may stretch it out or kill it off. Any 20 year plan isn’t a plan, it’s wishful thinking.
If they want to build a lunar space station that includes ion propulsion, why not build it in LEO and use said propulsion to get it to the vicinity of the moon?
Using SLS as a cargo launcher for this is beyond fiscal madness. I also can’t see how their plan is even remotely possible; under their current somewhat generous budget assumption, they can’t afford payloads, yet they think they can build and maintain a space outpost near the moon?
I do think it’s possible they’ll make some progress on this; if their budget is increased by just a billion a year, they might even be able to launch a new twitter hashtag in 5 years. That’s about the best we can hope for though.
I think the ultimate goal is here a computer simulation or computer model of a Mars mission. This will happen because we don’t actually have any hardware to get to Mars and back. So this will have to be first modeled to make sure it is adequate. With the right incentives the model could take the place of an actual program, fulfill the goal of maximal employment at all NASA centers to keep the $$$ flowing in key Congressional districts and ALL with absolutely NO ADDITIONAL RISK above those faced in the civil sector.