Bardzo ciekawy wywiad z szefem NASA. Facet naprawdę jest z innego świata niż spora część tej instytucji.
https://soundcloud.com/nasa/gravity-assist-7-30-18-jbnew-introeditsZ dedykacją dla tych co piszą, że "pieniądze się znajdą":
"Our bugdet, as great as it is (...) we do have limitations and we do have to make tough decisions"
"We going forward to the Moon" (...)
"We gonna go to the Moon and we gonna do it in a way that is sustainable. THIS IS NOT GONNA BE APOLLO AGAIN (....) This time we gonna go to stay.
What does it mean? THAT MEANS EVERY PIECE OF THE ARCHITECTURE WE USE HAS TO BE REUSABLE. (....) That drops the cost of access to space and increases access to space. So that's what we need. We need reusable rockets, but that's just the beginning. We need tugs between lower earth orbit and the moon lunar orbit to be reusable as well. (....)
We need reusable landers that would go from the gateway to the surface of the Moon.
We have commercial and international partners that we didn't during Apollo era. That gives us more opportunities (....) than ever before. Ultimately we want everything to be replicable at Mars.
So we go to the moon for the whole host of scientific reasons but we also GO TO THE MOON AS THE PROVING GROUND FOR TECHNOLOGIES, and life support and resource utilisation, using the resources of the Moon to live.
We go to the Moon to prove that we can ultimately go to the Mars to live."
Co znamienne, ani razu nie wymienia nazwy SLS. Ani razu. Widać, z czym wiąże przyszłość i co uważa za priorytet, a co za konieczność wymuszoną polityką.
Na końcu mówi też, że chcą odejść od samodzielnego konstruowania sprzętu czy nawet pozyskiwania danych na rzecz zakupów od zewnętrznych firm, bo to obniża koszty. "NASA will not look the same in 10 years that it looks now".