NASA IS BACK – AND INSPIRING AS EVER – AT 1:30 P.M. ET:    After years of being virtually ignored by an Obama administration, NASA is roaring back to its position as America's official agency of dreams.  From Fox: 

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine says the U.S. is within 10 years of having a continuous manned presence on the moon, which will lay the groundwork for expanding space exploration to Mars.

“Right now we’re building a space station, we call it ‘Gateway,’ that’s going to be in orbit around the moon — think of it as a reusable command module where we can have human presence in orbit around the moon. From there we want reusable landers that go back and forth to the surface of the moon,” Bridenstine told Hill.TV’s Jamal Simmons and Buck Sexton on “Rising.”

“We think we can achieve this in about 10 years, the idea being prove the capability, retire the risk, prove the human physiology and then go on to Mars,” he continued.

Bridenstine joined “Rising” to detail NASA’s plans to partner with nine U.S. companies to travel to the moon, a key component of NASA’s plan to extend human space exploration.

The administrator said he hopes to drive innovation by creating a commercial marketplace called the Commercial Lunar Payload Services Program (CLIPS).

Through the CLIPS program, Bridenstine hopes to develop technology that will eventually establish a continuous Moon presence.

“At the end of the day, what we’re doing is we’re going to buy services where we’re going to have multiple companies competing on cost and innovation to deliver payloads to the surface of the moon — right now we’re just talking about scientific instruments, not large payloads, but building the capability that then feeds forward to larger landers that would include humans,” he said.

The move is part of President Trump’s Space Policy Directive, which calls for revisiting Moon exploration.

COMMENT:   I love it.  I hope I last long enough to see Nancy Pelosi sent to Mars.

November 29, 2018