NASA is planning on a “big” announcement soon that may relate to humans returning to the area of the moon after what will be a 50+ year hiatus. Rumors floating around the online space policy community point to a possible exploration of the L2 area of the Earth-Moon system in keeping with benchmarks set by President Obama’s NASA Authorization Act of 2010.
John Logsdon, former director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, tells space.com that NASA may be announcing plans to return humans to the Moon. He further elaborated that these plans may have already been approved by the Obama Administration and that NASA was waiting to announce until sometime after the November 6 2012 presidential election, in the event that a Romney Administration might have changed NASA’s direction and budget. In keeping with President Obama’s 2010 directive, NASA is currently building the SLS – the Space Launch System – with tentative goals to return to the Moon, reach an asteroid, and then orbit Mars by the mid-2030s.
(continued, in the 60s with only a German WW2 rocket engineer NASA just up and did it? )
What will the world be like after its ruler is removed?
Moon landing is cool. Moon base would be great. Space station around the moon would be awesome. Better yet, rockets on the moon to thrust it into geosynchronous orbit and a giant space elevator linking the earth and the moon. And a Star Wars themed Disneyland. And genetically engineered Pandas that look like fucking Ewoks. Terraform it with enormous Douglas Firs and pay for it all by charging for speederbike rides through the forest.
NASA better not go back to the fronxing moon, that is where our trailers and catering department is. Have you fronxing simians any idea what it was like to be the showrunner for the Indochina season of "Chimp Wars" when you couldn't get a lunch because some chimps were tooling about on their magic space tree? I'm surprised that it went on after 69 to be honest. We'd all but decided to chuck it and go for broke with the superpower annihilation conflagration, but it seems that even without our influence, you lot wanted to go at that place hard.
I imagine most of them were considering future book and movie deals.
They're going back to find out just how much fuel is left in the tank of the descent stage of the Eagle. Were Armstrong and Aldrin landing on empty or not?
God has no place within these walls, just like facts have no place within organized religion. - Superintendent Chalmers
It's not up to us to choose which laws we want to obey. If it were, I'd kill everyone who looked at me cock-eyed! - Rex Banner
The Bluebird of Happiness long absent from his life, Ned is visited by the Chicken of Depression. - Gary Larson
Going to a LaGrange Point is not "Going Back to the Moon." It's going to a LaGrange Point.
We can certainly go from a LaGrange Point to the Moon and vice versa, though, but if we were looking to go to the Moon and build a Moon Base, why would Constellation have been canceled by Obama?
Well, if they announce we're going back to the Moon, great - I'm all for it.