US Won’t Lead New Manned Moon Landings, NASA Chief Says
http://www.space.com/20557-nasa-moon-missions-bolden.html
NASA chief Charles Bolden says the space agency won’t be sending astronauts to land on the moon any time soon, according to press reports.
The U.S. space agency won’t lead the way back to the moon in the foreseeable future in order to maintain its focus on manned missions to an asteroid, and eventually Mars, Bolden said during a joint meeting of the Space Studies Board and the Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board last Thursday (April 4), according to a SpacePolitics.com report by Jeff Foust.
“NASA will not take the lead on a human lunar mission,” Foust quoted Bolden as saying. “NASA is not going to the moon with a human as a primary project probably in my lifetime. And the reason is, we can only do so many things.”
Instead, he said the focus would remain on human missions to asteroids and to Mars. “We intend to do that, and we think it can be done,” Bolden said.
We need to keep an eye on the moon.
It is close enough, China may develop it as a weapons base.
Just saying. Not likely, but we should not turn away from the largest, closest space neighbor we have.