Some dissent in the ranks at NASA; the man who led the development of the Apollo lunar module has come out in vocal opposition to plans to use explorations of the Moon as a test-bed for eventual manned missions to Mars; instead, he argues for full exploitation of the ISS and further robotic missions to the Red Planet.
Arguments of this type are ten a penny in space politics, which is a landscape of conflicting ideologies; Moon versus Mars, robotic missions versus human missions, and so on. An essay at The Space Review argues that these conflicts are “zero-sum games”, and a waste of energy and resources that could be better expended by the different groups working together toward common goals. Human nature being fundamentally factional, I’m not going to hold my breath just yet. [Image by jurvetson]