Yes, it’s an ongoing mess.
[Wednesday-morning update]
Yes, putting a nuclear reactor (in fact, several of them) on the Moon is a great idea, but it’s out of context with the policy mess. If we want to put reactors on the Moon, we have to come up with a scalable, affordable transportation infrastructure to get not only them, but lots of things there. We don’t currently have one, and no one in the administration seems to be concerned about it.
How about a court-appointed executor to wrap up NASA’s affairs?
The MLP would make a heck of a flag-pole. For the right price…
check govplanet.com
Seems to me the problem here is Senate Democrats.
Partially, but they’re not preventing him from nominating a new NASA administrator, or setting up the space council.
I don’t necessarily agree with the premise of the article. There’s a lot more wrong with the country than NASA. Trump’s political; capital is far from unlimited.
How much political capital does it take to reestablish the space council, or name a NASA administrator?
Seems like none and a lot, considering recent events. How much has the council accomplished, during times when it existed. And what harm will it do to a DOGE’d NASA if Trump appoints a new temp between now and the Midterms? Republicans win is one thing, Democrats win is quite another, Me, I think the entire Senior Executive Service should be dismissed and blacklisted. But even disbanding SES would help.
Rand you didn’t need to add “Space policy” to the title of this post it still be accurate.
Thank you so much for that idiocy.
Space is not important™
Duffy is making a decision here, another there, with no apparent coherency. Which is to be expected. That coherency is precisely the greatest loss with the loss of Isaacson, who had spent a lot of time preparing to be the full-time Administrator.
Not only won’t it be possible to “beat” China in the “short game” under these conditions, but more importantly, we won’t outdo it by showing that public/private partnerships and well-crafted frameworks can bring down costs and accelerate activity in the slightly longer game.
Eventually, the feds may pay Elon for a lunar “show the flag” trip
If he can get the tankers working between now and Dec. 2026, that would get us to the Moon before 2028. The next Cargo Dragon is testing a propulsive trunk. The full one for the US ISS crasher would work on a Crew Dragon in place of Orion (which kind of assumes Artemis II either never flies or does and kills its crew).
But what will fuel those lunar reactors? Let’s hope it isn’t governmentium.
The reactors on current US nuclear subs are never refueled, so same with these. Send them up with a never run fully fueled reactor and bury them on the moon at EOL. I’m assume these will be military grade reactors anyways.
Navy nuclear reactors can be run for 25 to 30 years without refuelling because the starting fuel charge is 95% U-235. I doubt if NASA would ever get permission to even handle weapons-grade uranium, let alone launch a reactor full of it into space.
There was enough angst about the three plutonium-fueled RTGs left on the Moon by Apollo (and the one that came back from Apollo 13), and that was non-fissile Pu-238.