General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Nasa chief fired as Trump administration wants moon landing to occur during his 2nd term [View all]fescuerescue
(4,448 posts)If we are going to go beyond our accomplishments in 1969 - we are going to have to repeat those accomplishments first.
We can't do it in one or two terms anymore than Kennedy could. We have to get ourselves back to 1969 levels of human space flight ability THEN go beyond it.
We junked an entire industry and a furloughed a generation of engineers. To rebuild all that will take lots of time. To rebuild it requires retracing some of the success of prior generations.
Trump doesn't have enough time to even just reapply the technology in 5 years. It would have to be done by his successor, and then moving beyond it to say Mars...well that will be by his successors successor or beyond.
Maybe that's what makes manned space flight so hard. It's always going to be a multiple administration accomplishment and it takes a President who is willing to make a hero of the likely opposite party. (i.e. Kennedy setting up Nixon and skipping Johnson)