Making Human Settlement of Space a Reality
This is a very optimistic view of the president&#x27;s space exploration legacy.  Cancelling George W. Bush&#x27;s &#x27;Vision for Space Exploration&#x27; may have been a wise political move, but doing so delayed the project by 8 years, with relatively little technical gain.  We are now looking at spending 25 billion dollars for development, and 2 billion more per additional launch, with the aim of reaching an asteroid in the mid-2020s, and Mars in ~2040.<p>I will be shocked if the Space Launch System (A.K.A. SLS, Senate Launch System) takes humans to the moon, and I will be dumbstruck if anyone uses it to go to Mars.  The system is simply too expensive, and the projected launch rate is too low for it to be useful.  In addition, the system is too politically vulnerable, as the program would have to survive more than 20 years for someone to use it to go to Mars. Much like the current president cancelled his predecessor&#x27;s plan, a future president will cancel this one.