Continuing Moon-Mars Mission Takes Optimism, and Creates It

Dec. 24, 2019 (EIRNS)—An op-ed in The Hill Dec. 22 by veteran space writer Mark Whittington, assesses NASA’s Artemis Moon-Mars mission as to whether the Fiscal Year 2020 budget leaves NASA’s glass half-empty or half-full. The issue of optimism is the right one, but beyond the “fiscal accounting” level at which the author places it.

NASA Administrator James Bridenstine is clearly the optimist on the authorization by Congress for development of the lunar lander for Artemis. Bridenstine wrote on Dec. 16 on his Twitter account: “Great news! If passed, the spending bill gives @NASA funding for a human lunar lander for the first time since Apollo! We are grateful for the BIPARTISAN support & will continue to work with Congress to secure the funds needed to land the 1st woman & next man on the Moon by 2024!” Moreover, Bridenstine and Douglas Loverro, new administrator of NASA Human Spaceflight, had plans to pursue the Artemis timeline of landing human beings back on the Moon in 2024, even with no authorization for the lander.

Bridenstine is looking to the fight for big leaps in funding starting next year, Whittington says. He notes the unfortunate “reality” provided by a Congress which is too deep in talking points to see the reality of human beings as a galactic species, as we are. Not only was the funding for the lander at less than half—$600 million out of $1.4 billion needed—but, as he reports from Marcia Smith’s SpacePolicyOnline: “NASA must provide a detailed timeline for implementing Artemis, the lunar landing program, which will include budget estimates and key milestones per fiscal years before funding above 40% of that total is released.”

The Congress’s demand for a complete and detailed action plan with spending levels attached over the several years of Artemis phase one is absurd in the sphere of human space exploration. More seriously, he writes: “NASA must articulate the tangible benefits, especially in science, commerce and political soft power that American and allied astronauts living and working on the Moon will garner.”

LaRouchePAC and EIR have uniquely shown that mining helium-3, the best fuel for breakthroughs to fusion power and plasma technologies; a new order of rapid space travel with advanced fission and fusion propulsion; a lunar infrastructure to base travel to Mars; completely new materials-science discoveries in working with and on the Moon’s surface; an explosion of advances in robotics as thousands of young engineers work on machines to help humans work on the Moon, are just a few of the scientific breakthroughs promised. Even more important is the culture of optimism that will be created as human beings see their species living, working, observing in an environment very different and vastly larger than the one in which our species developed.