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As a governmental entity, NASA will never be removed from politics. A million different things could completely derail any sort of 5-10 year plan, not to mentio

As a governmental entity, NASA will never be removed from politics. A million different things could completely derail any sort of 5-10 year plan, not to mention that as soon as NASA got a "guaranteed" fund-for-5-years-and-leave-us-alone budget, every other federal agency will clamor for that too. Long-term planning requires alignment of incentives. In government, the incentives of top officials are short-term in the extreme: get re-elected at all costs; grow next year's budget at all costs (e.g. waste all the ammo at the end of the year). Of course, more authoritarian states often tout their 5 Year Plans, but you're making quite a few tradeoffs of civil and economic liberties to get there. Until there is market-driven demand for humans to be on or around the Moon, politics will dominate the story.

nerdkid93 7y ago
> Until there is market-driven demand for humans to be on or around the Moon, politics will dominate the story I don't know if I've ever thought this before, but wow. That's a great argument
- whatshisface 7y ago
  Weirdly, you'd think that politicians would want to look smart by successfully administrating public projects.
0xffff2 7y ago
Of course people (including many at NASA) have been speculating about how to generate market-driven demand for a very long time (at least for as long as NASA has existed in the case of reports coming from there). The more I learn about the (lack of) history in commercialization of space, the more I doubt I will actually see significant exo-terrestrial colonies within my lifetime.