Mayhem in space planning

NASA should avoid a straight shot to Mars, panel says

There is plenty of speculation about how NASA should proceed from here: scrap Ares as a flawed design, not enough money to go to the Moon again, certainly not enough for Mars. Even "let's do other deep space stuff instead - how about an asteroid?"

But - I didn't realise this:

The budget would delay the first Ares I flight until December 2018. That is almost three years after NASA currently plans to send the International Space Station careening towards Earth to burn up in the atmosphere and plunge into the ocean. The current budget projections have also not set aside money for the space station's end-of-life plans.

Bloody hell. The thing seems barely to have been finished (in fact, is it really finished now, it's hard to keep track) and it is only supposed to last another 5 years?

The only thing it seems to have achieved is giving astronauts experience at piecing together big things in space. I guess that's something of value in itself, but all those astronauts doing it are probably at the peak of their career anyway and won't be on the next wave of exploration.

NASA had better start publicising some science done on board if it wants to maintain some credibility for its planning.

And finally - readers know I am strongly of the view that going back to the Moon is a practical, achievable thing that is relatively low risk to astronauts (compared to all the radiation exposure they will have on a trip to Mars). It's rarely spoken about, but isn't there a partial science justification in terms of good astronomy to be done from there? Perhaps radio astronomy from the dark side, or your usual astronomy from anywhere.

Would be easier to do the type of sky surveys required to spot deadly (but relatively small) asteroids that were mentioned here recently from the Moon? You at least are assured of long, clear nights!

Update: a NASA page, containing some links, that talks about lunar astronomy as a possibility. People seem to like Hubble photographs so much, I suspect they would be impressed by similar quality photos from the Moon.

If it is a good place to search for earth approaching asteroids, even better: you can sell a return to the Moon as an insurance policy for the future of civilisation.