NASA, heeding Trump, may add astronauts to a test flight moon mission
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...practice-moon-mission/?utm_term=.6732fe4359d7
President Trump has indicated that he wants to make a splash in space. During his transition, he spoke with historian Douglas Brinkley about John F. Kennedy's famous 1961 vow to go to the moon before the decade was out. Now Trump and his aides may do something very similar: demand that NASA send astronauts to orbit the moon before the end of Trump's first term — a move that one Trump adviser said would be a clear signal to the Chinese that the U.S. intends to retain dominance in space.
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Bob Walker, an adviser to the Trump transition team and a former congressman who chaired the House Science Committee, said Tuesday: “What I hear being discussed is the potential for sometime within the first Trump term being able to go and do an Apollo 8 mission" -- meaning a lunar orbit mission like the one performed by Apollo 8 in December 1968.
“This would be another precursor to ultimately landing. And I think sometime within a second Trump term, you could think about putting a landing vehicle on the moon,” Walker said.