Anti-Obama statements, fight against abortion and climatoscepticism, the President of the United States Donald Trump plays on all the tables. It turns out that the conquest of space also interests him since the latter talks about dominating space. It may make you smile, but Donald Trump does have a plan!
NASA and Space X want to make the Red Dragon project a reality in 2020, namely the use of a Mars lander derived from the SpaceX Dragon space freighter to deliver a quantity of scientific equipment to Mars. This project is also integrated into the Discovery program of 1992 comprising a host of varied missions whose ultimate goal is the identification of exoplanets and then their exploration.
However, since coming to power, Donald Trump has taken a close interest in the issue. During the composition of his government, the latter appointed Bob Walker, a lobbyist from Washington as an adviser on space policy and that could be a game-changer. Bob Walker sat down with NASA to explain his business vision for the US space agency.
The Trump administration therefore has a plan for space and we will speak here of domination, a term not surprising on the part of the businessman who has become president. It is no coincidence that this plan was drawn up by Bob Walker, who headed the presidential commission on the future of aerospace under the administration of George W. Bush.
It would then be a question of exploring space as far as possible with the Moon as a first step, of which the mining exploration carried out by robots constitutes the first project. Installing a permanent colony on our planet’s satellite is the next logical step. As some scientists point out, exploiting the Moon would then be a great source of profit with the presence of tritium 3 h (very rare on Earth), an isotope of helium which would make an ideal fuel for nuclear fusion.
The second stage is embodied by Mars and NASA could get down to developing a generation of space shuttles propelled not by chemicals, but by nuclear energy! The goal is to hold faster shuttles in order to reduce the travel time between Earth and Mars to just a few weeks.
John Slough, an astrophysicist at the University of Washington and inventor of the fusion engine, would have indicated that such an engine would require large investments. According to the person concerned, astronauts will land on the Moon and in a decade, Mars will be within reach of spacecraft thanks to the work of the companies Space X and Blue Origin already collaborating with NASA.
Donald Trump also wants NASA to no longer be in charge of issues related to global warming, a task that could soon be relegated to the American Agency for Oceanic and Atmospheric Observation (NOAA). Thus, NASA’s current budget combined with contributions from the commercial sector would be used to optimize space projects for greater efficiency.
Dominating space for commercial gain is the aim of the Trump administration’s plan. Still, the most worrying in these declarations is undoubtedly the desire to send nuclear rockets into space.
Source: Vice News – Daily Mail