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New Zimmerman op-ed at The Federalist

In the piece, Trump’s Promising New Space Plan Won’t Work Without Cutting The Pork, I take a close look at Trump’s Moon plan and actually come away somewhat encouraged.

For one, it is pretty clear that Gateway has been dumped, or at least deemphasized significantly. Second, the plan shifts the focus from NASA being the builder of the program to NASA being a customer of the private sector.

Read it all. There’s a lot more.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

One comment

  • wodun

    Nice op-ed and I agree that the plan is vague, especially more than a year or two out. Part of the problem here is that we are treading into the unknown, so planning too far in advance isn’t possible. Also, transitioning into a space program that relies more on commerce to develop capabilities and provide NASA with opportunities can’t be “managed” just like the economy in general can’t be managed. Right now, it is impossible to predict what advances will be made, what companies will succeed, and how what is learned will influence succeeding activities.

    Adding to the vagueness is what will happen in congress and with SLS/Orion/Gateway. So, vagueness is baked in for a variety of reasons. There is an intellectual and persuasion challenge here. It is just like getting people to understand how free commerce works over time as people pursue what they think is important. The future is always uncertain and humans have an evolutionary compulsion to manage this unknown but it manifests in different ways, for example capitalism vs marxism.

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