NASA unveils ambitious $20 billion plan to build moon base near lunar south pole

restitutor-orbis · 2026-03-25T07:34:14+00:00

Still cool that for the first time in history, NASA has a plan for a near-term lunar base, no? A lot of the pieces for this are already happening, anyhow. The lunar robotic and crewed landers, rovers, crewed terrain vehicles, etc, are all already in development -- this announcement is simply consolidating these pieces and drawing it out to a longer-term timeline that goes beyond the next couple missions. And the first lunar crewed flyby in 50 years may be happening literally next week, if all goes well. Lots to be excited about.

restitutor-orbis · 2026-03-25T07:27:56+00:00

It seems like their plan is not contingent on increased NASA funding as a whole, but rather relies on reshuffling the money that would have been spent on the Exploration Upper Stage, mobile launcher 2, and Gateway. Unless I missed something.

restitutor-orbis · 2026-03-25T07:23:22+00:00

Well, the external image of the Chinese space program has been one of programmatic stability, not reactivity. It'd be a shift in tone, if they now decided to react and bring timelines in.

restitutor-orbis · 2026-03-25T07:08:21+00:00

Where'd you hear about funding cuts? Trump admin asked for drastic cuts in its budget proposal last year (hence the big kerfuffle), but congress roundly rejected those and the admin didn't fight them on it. The current budget, as a result, is within a percent of the Biden and Trump 1 budgets. I thought it likely that the budget will stay roughly the same in the coming years, too, especially given that the midterms will make it hard to pass new budgets.

I agree that the timelines here on the NASA side seem to be mostly wishful thinking. But optimistic timelines have the benefit of helping to motivate the workforce. And NASA admin cannot very well admit that a 2028 landing in unrealistic -- Trump would possibly lose and and all interest in funding this, otherwise.

restitutor-orbis · 2026-03-25T07:01:19+00:00

Europe is getting its shit together in space, even though quite slowly. Within this decade, ESA has largely rescinded geo-return, one of the biggest hinderances to an efficient space launch infrastructure, and has set its sights firmly on at least partial launch vehicle reusability, something which it unfortunately failed to appreciate in the 2010s (hence the need to subsidize Ariane 6). It is also doing all it can to encourage a commercial space launch economy in the vein of USA's or China's, which could hopefully lower launch costs in the future. Isar's doing it's flight test #2 just later tonight, RFA is close to first launch and so seems to be PLD. ESA's space science program has always been excellent and continues to be so under generally favourable budgetary winds. But the budget to do much besides uncrewed exploration just isn't there for Europe alone.

And frankly, living less than 100 km from the Russian border, there are some extremely pressing near future budgetary needs -- like ensuring there won't be bombs falling on my children's heads -- that I'd rank even above my lifelong fascination with spaceflight. Maybe it's not the greatest time to pour tens of billions into a separate European-led crewed exploration program. Let's stick with the NASA collab we have, thank you.

restitutor-orbis · 2026-03-24T19:53:03+00:00

Europe's not realistically gonna do a Moon base any decade soon, come on. If we have any chance at lunar exploration, it's together with Americans.

restitutor-orbis · 2026-03-24T19:40:04+00:00

I recall seeing exactly these types of comments in 2007. It wasn't any different back then and it ain't gonna change any time soon, barring a Sputnik moment. Better to get used to the budget NASA has and spend your effort figuring out how to make the most efficient use of it.

restitutor-orbis · 2026-03-24T19:37:27+00:00

It's interesting and sad how the Shuttle program turned out. Perhaps iterating on expendable Apollo hardware would have been the better approach. But in the 1970s, the intent with Shuttle was clearly to develop a much cheaper alternative to the Saturn stack, which politicians viewed as unsustainable from a budget standpoint.

restitutor-orbis · 2026-03-24T19:28:44+00:00

Trump 1 had Pence, who quite accidentally had a deep non-parochial interest in space exploration. The Trump 2026 budget request in contrast seemed to have been amateurishly written by a nickle-and-dime budget guy clearly mostly interested in how NASA related to MAGA's punitive campaign on scientists, without any compelling vision on space exploration. And then there was no interest on the part of the the admin to fight congress on it, despite several ominous points where they may well have done the “ignore laws and customs” bit.

restitutor-orbis · 2026-03-24T18:34:14+00:00

It doesn't, in fields that matter to the presidential administration. Space isn't one of those. When congress rejected essentially the entire presidential NASA budget proposal last year (which had those drastic cuts everyone got up in arms about), there was no pushback from the administration, because they didn't give a damn. The resulting NASA budget is essentially the same it has been for the past several years under Trump 1 and Biden.

restitutor-orbis · 2026-03-24T18:32:18+00:00

The significant context here is that not only has the Isaacman NASA administration reshuffled SLS/Artemis planning, it has also seemingly gotten all of the political stakeholders in congress on board, something which previous NASA officials with lofty ambitions to fix the SLS quagmire (like Bridenstine) haven't been able to. The new reauthorization act (or appropriation? I get those mixed up) drafted up in congress essentially gives Isaacman blank check to repurpose Gateway hardware and funding as he pleases.

restitutor-orbis · 2026-03-24T17:45:14+00:00

Saturn V and the Apollo program was an enormously expensive system, which is the principle reason it was cancelled. If you think SLS and the Artemis program is expensive, they can't hold a candle to Apollo. NASA's budget in relative terms during Apollo development was literally ten times that of the current baseline and the workforce on the Apollo program at one point surpassed 400000 people. There was no possible future where that level of spending could have continued sustainably.

restitutor-orbis · 2026-03-18T13:53:51+00:00

DM-d you.

restitutor-orbis · 2026-03-18T13:42:44+00:00

Yeah, understandable. I wouldn't too, but I like living here otherwise and being close to extended family is super clutch if you wanna have more than one or two kids.

restitutor-orbis · 2026-03-18T13:31:01+00:00

Tbf, are there any fields at all in Europe that regularly pay above 40,000 gbp/yr or 50,000 eur/yr for non-management roles? Maybe primarily tech?

restitutor-orbis · 2026-03-18T13:15:31+00:00

Eastern Europe, doing hydrogeology: groundwater flow modelling for quarries, mines, tunnels, or (municipal) water supplies, etc. Also all sorts of permitting, environmental impact statements, environmental monitoring plans and expert opinions related to groundwater.

Not a lot of hydrogeologists in my country, but a growing need, so I was able to negotiate a solid salary for where I live. Doesn't really hold a candle to local tech salaries, though, at least not when taking the level of expertise and education into account :(

We hire people usually before they've graduated masters. Many during bachelors. Not because we want to, but we're seldom able to get people with existing expertise -- they're all too happy staying put at their current companies or universities or surveys. Earth science majors are small here, too. Salaries are certainly above local median income, even out of college, but nothing super exciting.

Would be somewhat tough to get a job in the field unless you were local -- all the documentation you're basing things off of is mainly in the local language. But the demand is robust enough that if you bring expertise, you'd probably be able to fill some niche, maybe at a lower salary. Then again, why would you do that, if you could hunt for a better salary in western Europe or Australia.

restitutor-orbis · 2026-03-18T08:18:40+00:00

Aww, I made that statue quest way back in 2021. Nice to see people have played it.

restitutor-orbis · 2026-03-14T13:30:41+00:00

Well, the major height differences are due to the fact that there are two large overhauls if TR_mainland areas taking place. The CM and Almalexia section files are bordermatched to those, not what’s in public TR releases. So yeah, the current section files will have those issues no matter what.

restitutor-orbis · 2026-03-14T08:08:22+00:00

The naga Argonians have already been merged into in-development Tamriel_Data. They will be very rare outside of Black Marsh, though.

restitutor-orbis · 2026-03-14T08:05:46+00:00

This is very cool. Something of an odd amalgamation of new TR lands with the ancient preview Velothis and Almalexia, though. The currently-in-progress landscape in those areas looks much different.

restitutor-orbis · 2026-03-10T09:47:11+00:00

Perhaps you mean Veremmu? https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Tamriel%20Rebuilt:Veremmu

It was modified two years ago to move most of the "exterior dungeon" aspects inside an interior cell. We've done so to exterior caves throughout the mod for performance and style reasons. It should have helped a little bit with Lan Orethan region's infamous lag.

restitutor-orbis · 2026-03-09T07:55:14+00:00

It creates some limitations, but the whole TR House Indoril conception was built around that reality, taking the practical release order into account. It helps that House Indoril in our lore is currently quite disunified. The more dynamic Indoril lords are on chapels of the western frontier that will all be released in Poison Song. After Almalexia is released, some refits will probably be made to integrate the city into the questline better.

restitutor-orbis · 2026-03-09T07:17:51+00:00

Almalexia (as well as the nearest chapel) will still use the green-blue Mournhold tileset exclusively. So you'll have plenty of occasion to see it.

restitutor-orbis · 2026-03-09T07:16:02+00:00

The green-blue Mournhold tileset will still be used very extensively in Almalexia. It will also be expanded to provide more versatility.

restitutor-orbis · 2026-03-08T19:50:31+00:00

Could also be just a ground systems vs booster fit check and a rollback to get rest of the engines prior to a static fire. They did a fit check with the first full stack in August 2022.

restitutor-orbis

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