{"id":35668,"date":"2017-03-28T10:02:34","date_gmt":"2017-03-28T17:02:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2017\/03\/the-us-government-is-pitting-two-hugely-expensive-space-projects-the-international-space-station-and-the-space-launch-system-against-each-other"},"modified":"2017-06-04T07:07:22","modified_gmt":"2017-06-04T14:07:22","slug":"the-us-government-is-pitting-two-hugely-expensive-space-projects-the-international-space-station-and-the-space-launch-system-against-each-other","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2017\/03\/the-us-government-is-pitting-two-hugely-expensive-space-projects-the-international-space-station-and-the-space-launch-system-against-each-other","title":{"rendered":"The US government is pitting two hugely expensive space projects\u2014the International Space Station and the Space Launch System\u2014against each other"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/the-us-government-is-pitting-two-hugely-expensive-space-projects-the-international-space-station-and-the-space-launch-system-against-each-other.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>In one corner, we have an international, orbital laboratory that cost over $150 billion to build and operate. In the other, a $23 billion and growing program to develop a huge new deep-space rocket and spacecraft to carry humans to the moon and beyond. Now, they will face off in a Darwinian struggle for survival, unless US lawmakers can find a third way.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAbout half of the current [NASA]<strong> <\/strong>budget is allocated to low-Earth orbit endeavors which consist of the International Space Station, commercial cargo, and commercial crew,\u201d a former NASA and Lockheed Martin executive, A. Thomas Young, told US lawmakers in February. \u201cThe other half of the budget is for human exploration which includes [the Space Launch System rocket] and Orion [spacecraft]. A $4.5 billion annual budget is clearly inadequate for a credible human exploration program. A choice must be made and made soon between [low-Earth orbit] and exploration.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The decision won\u2019t be made this year. Though there was an astronaut in the oval office as a beaming president Donald Trump signed a bill March 21<b> <\/b>to fund NASA through 2018, it didn\u2019t bring the government any closer to launching humans to the ISS, much less to distant planets.<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"https:\/\/qz.com\/942983\/the-us-is-facing-a-choice-between-the-international-space-station-and-a-new-deep-space-rocket\/\">https:\/\/qz.com\/942983\/the-us-is-facing-a-choice-between-the-...ce-rocket\/<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In one corner, we have an international, orbital laboratory that cost over $150 billion to build and operate. In the other, a $23 billion and growing program to develop a huge new deep-space rocket and spacecraft to carry humans to the moon and beyond. Now, they will face off in a Darwinian struggle for survival, [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":369,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1490,1514],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government","category-space-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/369"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35668"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35668\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58277,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35668\/revisions\/58277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}