Free Republic

The United States plans to land astronauts on the moon within the next five years, Vice President Mike Pence announced today (March 26). The nation had been shooting for a 2028 lunar touchdown, but "that's just not good enough," Pence said during the fifth meeting of the National Space Council (NSC), which he chairs. "We're better than that." So, it is now the official policy of the United States to return astronauts to the surface of the moon by 2024, the vice president stressed, invoking a 21st-century space race with China and Russia. "Urgency must be our watchword," Pence said...

Now, government officials are dialing up the pressure on Boeing to speed up development of the long-overdue rocket, called Space Launch System or SLS. The space agency contracted Boeing in 2012 to build SLS's core components. Bridenstine's remarks came after US Vice President Mike Pence said Tuesday at a National Space Council meeting in Alabama that news of more hangups with the SLS program were a "great disappointment," and the current timeline is "just not good enough." Boeing began building SLS's core stage, the backbone of the rocket, about seven years ago. Officials said at the time that SLS would...