Trump Wants To Put Humans On The Moon Again, But Plans To Send Robots First
Mopic/Shutterstock No human has set foot on the Moon since the Apollo program ended in 1972. Donald Trump would like to put humans back on the Moon, for the first time in 45 years. But first, he wants to send robots up there, is reporting. The last man to walk on the Moon was Eugene Cernan, who did so in 1972, at the end of the Apollo program (Apollo 17, to be exact). However, since that time, the space game has changed dramatically. No longer is there a need for a symbolic victory against the Soviets. Space exploration is largely privately-funded, and indeed private exploration may soon be all-but-entirely privately-funded within a few decades. And most tellingly, the space community has now set its sights on Mars as the next goal. However, the Trump administration announced this week that it wants to scale things back, just a bit, and at least for the immediate future (“immediate” being subject to interpretation in the space-exploration business). Specifically, the ad...