In the last two years on the job, Bridenstein has repeatedly sought to position himself as a bipartisan leader, and has managed to gain widespread respect from the space community. Many deputies also say their political experience has been a bonus, allowing them to better promote NASA’s interests on Capitol Hill.
Some analysts and experts told CNN Business that, in their view, Brydenstein has done a good job of navigating a very complex situation – his boss, while balancing the need to pursue the president’s wishes, while also trying to keep NASA away from hyper. In the political arena of the party.
Money for the moon
Yet, legislators are not ready to put a fork on the cash requested by NASA.
“He has tried to persuade Congress that there is a legitimate reason for humans to have a deadline to land on the moon by 2024,” said Laura Seward Forzick, a space policy consultant and consultant at Astralitic. “Yet, he couldn’t.”
But funding isn’t flooding yet, and yet As the 2024 deadline turns out to be unrealistic, Bridenstein has spent the past two years putting NASA’s space agency on a plan for how to bring humans back to the moon – and that plan has won many supporters and critics.
The place of commercialization
The latest iteration of NASA’s lunar ambition, known as the Artemis program, has been suppressed more and more than a one-sided innovation mission: Bridenstein and Pence have repeatedly said that the next lunar landing will be made with the goal of creating a “continuous presence.” On the moon, pave the way for astronauts to keep going again and again. Ultimately, they say, people can live and work on the moon, collect lunar ice for rocket fuel, or research the lunar environment and prepare to bring a human presence to Mars.
But for now, most of the technology needed to complete the first Artemis lunar landing does not exist. Significantly, NASA still needs a lunar lander, a vehicle that will take astronauts from astronauts to the lunar surface. Worst of all, the current plan for how NASA will develop does not have widespread technical support.
Instead of handling the design and development of in-house lunar landers, Bridenstein is pushing commercial companies to create their own lunar lenders, with financial support from NASA. And while companies will technically own the final vehicles, NASA may choose which lunar lander to use for the Artemis program.
It’s an idea that shuts down NASA’s other flagship program, the Commercial Crew Initiative, which turned NASA’s traditional launch program on its head. Instead of developing in-house rockets and spacecraft, the agency did everything from the early Mercury rocket program of the 1960s to the retirement of the space shuttle, with NASA contracting virtually everything to private corporations that only provided astronauts. Essentially, NASA only bought tickets for the flight, although taxpayers have funded most of the development costs of the new spacecraft.
More recently, legislators have also pushed back on NASA’s lack of transparency about the program.
Even if Bridenstein could not win the congress, Forzac considers the commercial crew contracting style a huge victory that saves money and leads to the creation of exciting new technologies. And he applauds Bridenstein’s decision to stick with the model.
“I’m carrying a card, a pin-holding member of the Bridenstein Fan Club.” Overall, it gives his two years at the helm of NASA an “A-“.
ISS and international collaboration
The International Space Station has hosted astronauts from NASA and dozens of other partner countries for over 20 years, a physical recognition of global cooperation in space.
But a football-l-field-size orbiting laboratory will not last forever. It is currently scheduled to end service in 2024, although this could be extended to 2028. And Bridenstein’s plan to gradually extend the operation of the space station to the private sector has received pressure from Congress, and only a little discussion has begun in the space community about it. The future of spaceflight should include how much corporate corporate branding and private interest should be involved.
The remaining retirement of the space station has also raised big questions about how the United States will continue its partnership with other spacefaring nations.
ISS is NASA’s primary mechanism for international collaboration, said Brian Weed, program planning director of the nonprofit Secure World Foundation, which promotes cooperative space research. “And there were a lot of questions about what came next” after the station’s service ended.
Countries that have tense relations with the United States have not signed NASA’s Artemis plan.
Still, overall, Weiden said he believes NASA is moving in a great direction under Bridenstein. And notably, many of the policies are a continuation of the space policies implemented by the previous administration.
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