[ExI] What happens to US space programs after November?

[Giulio Prisco]

John, we DO have the technological capability to do these things. And
I think that, at this moment, re-igniting the human spirit with
ambitious crewed space missions to the Moon and Mars is more important
than astronomy.
Are you sure you aren't letting your dislike for Trump dictate your
opinions on space policy? That would more than prove one of my main
points, that the current climate of extreme political polarization is
very toxic.

On Mon, Jun 15, 2020 at 2:02 PM John Clark via extropy-chat
<extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> On Sat, Jun 13, 2020 at 3:02 AM Giulio Prisco via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>> > If Trump wins US astronauts will probably walk on the Moon before the end of the decade. [...] If Trump loses, good bye Artemis and the hope to return to the Moon.
>
>
> Good. At this point in our technological development I see little point in sending astronauts to the moon and even less to Mars. I can understand wanting to have a 2 planet civilization but It makes no sense to spend $1 trillion to send a couple of people to Mars and then spend another $2 trillion to bring them back. I'm in favor of sending people into space I'm just not in favor of bringing them back; when we have the technological capability to make a fully self-sufficient colony on the moon or on Mars then it would be time to send people there but not before, and right now we can't even make a self-sufficient colony on Antarctica. In the meantime It would be vastly more scientifically productive if the government forgot about Buck Rogers and just gave NASA the money it needs (which would be many orders of magnitude less than manned spaceflight) so it can build all 4 projects in this video, although the first one talked about, HabEx, is my least favorite:
>
> 4 Future Space Telescopes NASA wants to build
>
> John K Clark
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