American astronauts on Mars — making that happen is a priority for Jared Isaacman, President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead NASA, according to his recent Senate testimony.
That’s in addition to NASA’s current Artemis program, which aims to return humans to the moon.
Critics, including Isaacman himself, have complained about the price tag of Artemis — around $100 billion has been spent so far.
But Congress continues to support — and fund — the lunar return mission. Some observers even say it’s a bargain.
It’s been more than 50 years since anyone walked on the moon. It just hasn’t been in the budget, said Scott Pace with the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University.
“Fiscal year 1964, the U.S. was spending 1.1% of the [gross domestic product] on space, OK? That is never going to happen again,” said Pace.
Instead, NASA is spending what amounts to a GDP rounding error on the Artemis program, said Casey Dreier of the Planetary Society.
“This is going back to the moon on the cheap,” said Dreier.
Artemis started in the first Trump administration. Dreier said it’s been politically durable. “No NASA return to the moon program has survived a presidential transition ever.”
But the program has suffered its share of surprise setbacks, according to a former astronaut who knows about that kind of thing.
“Actually, on my first flight, I did the first unplanned, what they call contingency space walks in NASA’s history,” said Jeffrey Hoffman.
When he’s not attempting emergency satellite repair in the void of space, Hoffman is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He said the relative shoestring budget of Artemis is one cause of the delays.
“Back in Apollo, there was enough money that if you ran into a problem, you could spend money on two alternate solutions to that problem and choose the best one,” said Hoffman. “That's not the case for Artemis.”
He said NASA has worked for years to solve a heat shield issue. The current plan is to land on the moon in 2027. That’s despite critics’ calls to cancel Artemis because it’s still taxpayer money and the private sector could do it more efficiently.
Hoffman, though, sees things differently.
“There was a lot of criticism in the early space program,” said Hoffman. “‘Uh, why are we spending all this money to put satellites into orbit?’ And I mean, our economy now depends on satellites.”
He said the moon could one day be a source of minerals or a staging point for missions to Mars. There’s another big reason many in Congress still support Artemis, said former NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver.
“Ultimately, we've decided geopolitically it's a contest,” said Garver. “We now have ginned up we're in a race with China to go to the moon.”
These days, competing with China is one thing Washington seems more than willing to spend money on.
