#lunar-colonization

#lunar-colonization

Barely a year ago, the moon was a distraction to Elon Musk, the billionaire chief executive of SpaceX then fixated on his ludicrously ambitious project to build a self-sustaining city on Mars within 20 years. Why bother returning to the orbiting chunk of rock humanity conquered half a century ago, he reasoned, when the greater prize of the red planet lay tantalizingly in reach for his company's mighty Starship rockets?

A balanced portfolio prevents any one mission from going over budget, thus securing funds for other vital endeavors in NASA's science mission directorate.