That's all nice and all, but costs and politics are a problem: >Consider the Mars Sample Return mission. NASA plans to partner with an important ally in spa

That's all nice and all, but costs and politics are a problem: >Consider the Mars Sample Return mission. NASA plans to partner with an important ally in space, the European Space Agency, to launch a sample retrieval rover (developed in Europe) and an ascent vehicle, built for NASA by Northrop Grumman. This mission, launching no earlier than 2026, could perhaps fly on United Launch Alliance's Vulcan rocket. Then, a European-built return orbiter would launch on an European Ariane 6 rocket to bring the small cache of samples back to Earth. >Such a mission would likely have a broad array of political support because it would fund multiple US contractors and bolster ties with Europe. By contrast, a SpaceX-only mission on Starship would upset NASA's other contractors, the European Space Agency, and the politicians who back their interests. >"Just because Starship is flying, I don’t expect that all of a sudden the Science Mission Directorate’s budget is going to double," the NASA official said.