It is amazing to believe but there is one Trump administration priority that will persist under President Biden: The return of manned missions to the moon and, eventually, to Mars under the Artemis program, now the first human deep-space exploration effort with funding to survive from one presidency to the next since the Apollo program.

But don’t expect Biden to stick to his predecessor’s ambitious time line of returning to the moon by 2024 and achieving the first manned spaceflight to Mars by 2033.

Both seem unfeasible from a budgetary and/or technological perspective. Congress, for example, has given NASA only a quarter of the funding the agency requested for its lunar Human Landing System. And one independent assessment concludes that manned flight to Mars likely won’t be possible until at least 2037.

It is a matter of money and Biden wants to spend money on roads and infrastructure, as well as space.  Either way prepare to pony up more for taxes to cover both endeavors and to pay for those stimulus packages.  I think within reason all are/were important.

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