1 in 3 adults said sending human astronauts to the moon or Mars should be a priority, about 30 points lower than the highest-ranked space research priorities.
58% said they were either “not too likely” or “not likely at all” to participate in civilian space travel, even if price weren’t a concern, up 10 points from the 48% who said the same in September 2017.
Last week, NASA accomplished a goal that reminded Americans that the future is coming fast: It landed another rover on Mars. Among billionaires and space enthusiasts, that’s just the tip of the iceberg, with many of them believing the United States could send humans outside of Earth’s orbit again in the next 10 years if the country plays its cards right.
By
Theresa Hitchens on February 12, 2021 at 5:06 PM
DARPA NOM4D project image
WASHINGTON: DARPA’s new project to research and develop novel materials and processes for manufacturing in space in particular on the Moon is stirring a legal and political dust storm about what DoD can and cannot do in cislunar space under the Outer Space Treaty.
“From an international perspective, DARPA doing anything on the Moon looks bad. It raises suspicions about the intentions of the U.S. space program there, and rightfully so,” Jessica West, senior researcher at Canada’s Project Ploughshares and managing editor of the widely-respected Space Security Index project, said in an email yesterday.