Like the Presidency, the Moon-Mars Mission Is Embattled

Dec. 18, 2019 (EIRNS)—The massive non-defense budget appropriation for the remaining nine months of FY2020, apparently going through both Houses of Congress this week, leaves it up to the American people to fight for realization of the Moon-Mars space mission called Artemis, announced by the Trump Administration on March 26, 2019. That mission would have American men and women returning to the Moon by just 2024 to develop both its surface and the orbital space around it for human habitation and economy and as the launch point for human travel to Mars by 2033. In the national celebrations in July of 50 years since the first Apollo Project landing, it was clear that many millions of Americans support just such a mission as an inspiration and a “science driver” for progress.

But the NASA budget being passed this week critically underfunds Artemis right at its opening stage. In particular, there is less than half the $1.4 billion NASA needs as it starts, from scratch, developing a lunar lander to take astronauts down to the Moon’s surface from the lunar-orbit space station to be called Gateway—whose development is also short-funded. In fact, the funding is essentially at the level the White House requested this past January—months before the launching of the “Artemis” Moon-Mars mission.

The future of Artemis was impacted not only by the indifference of subcommittee chair Rep. Jose Serrano and other Democrats to any NASA timetable for a successful mission. There was also some heavily-lobbied shifting of funds to Boeing for an upper-stage rocket it wants to develop, but which NASA Administrator James Bridenstine made clear NASA did not need or want for Phase I of the Moon-Mars mission.

So Bridenstine will now need massive popular backing for his presentation in February of a much larger investment in Artemis over Fiscal Years 2021-24. Lyndon LaRouche called for just such a Moon-Mars mission in a nationally televised broadcast in 1988, when other leaders had forgotten space exploration, and made this central to his “fourth economic law,” science drivers for the economy. This is an issue of the power of the Presidency to conceive and set long-term missions in science and infrastructure development for the nation, visions for America’s future capacities and those of humanity.

The Moon and Mars are for exploration by the human race, not for billionaire tourists alone.