[Smokin' Joe]

The word that should be rolling off tongues at NASA is a philosophy of “cumulative” space exploration.

Von Braun was pushing for this concept in the 60s. He wanted an Earth orbit rendezvous between the lunar lander and the crews, at a space station.

We were racing the Soviets at the time, so the idea was abandoned for the lunar orbit rendezvous between lander and command module.

The landers could have been reusable (if different from the LEM), and the space station could have been a stepping stone to more exploration.

The concept still seems to be on the back shelf gathering dust.

The tunneling machine concept is a good one, but maintaining any tlelmetry would be the hard part.

[backwoods-engineer]

Telemetry wouldn't be difficult of the tunneling machine would "poop out" a battery-powered relay beacon once every few miles of tunnel. Of course, it has to have one on the surface to relay to Earth.

It could all be done. We just don't have the national will to do it.