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Billionaire businessman Jared Isaacman has a big vision for the future of humanity. He set off on his first mission to space in 2021 – a private journey he paid an estimated $200m (£160m) for – and announced that he wanted space travel to be for the masses, not only for the 600 who have experienced it to date – most of them professional astronauts employed by Nasa and the wealthy.
“We want it to be 600,000,” he told reporters. Later, he added: “I drank the Kool-Aid in terms of the grand ambitions for humankind being a multi-planet species… I think that we all want to live in a Star Wars, Star Trek world where people are jumping in their spacecraft.”
Since then, there have been more adventures: last year he demonstrated Captain Kirk-like daring by travelling in an upgraded SpaceX capsule and performing the first commercial spacewalk…ubble Space Telescope just after leaving the cargo bay of the Space Shuttle Endeavour where it docked for repairs. Part of Earth’s horizon can be seen in the corner.
The creation of the first reusable space shuttle, the construction of an orbiting space station, the images of distant worlds captured by its robotic spacecraft and the awe-inspiring photos from Hubble have all inspired generations and supercharged interest in science. As a result, senators and congressmen know that America and the world owe Nasa an unpayable debt.
“There is a delicate balance between the interests of Nasa, Congress and the White House.”
Where that balance will fall will emerge in the coming months: some are speculating that the return-to-the-Moon programme might be scrapped altogether in favour of going straight to Mars, as President Trump alluded to during his inauguration, with the greatest proponent of that policy – Musk – seated nearby. Others fear cuts in Nasa’s Earth Observation programmes, which monitor and model environmental changes from space, and include the impact of climate change; and some worry that the robotic scientific missions to other planets might be cut back to boost efforts for the human spaceflight programme.
There is concern in some quarters about the close relationship between Mr Isaacman and Mr Musk. Mr Isaacman paid SpaceX for his two ventures into space. The company has already received $20bn (£16bn) in contracts from government since 2008.
But if SLS is scrapped, and SpaceX were to receive the lion’s share of Nasa’s Moon programme work, Mr Musk’s firm stands to receive contracts that might be ten or even a hundred times greater, possibly at the expense of other private-sector players.
Ultimately, however, it has become painfully clear, even to Nasa’s most ardent supporters, that it needs saving from itself. And the need for Nasa reform is not a partisan issue – Democrat and Republican presidents alike have set the wheels in motion. But the coincidental timing of the success of SpaceX, Blue Origin and other private-sector space firms with a new administration impatient to cut costs and energise the private sector means that Mr Isaacman has a unique opportunity to make some of the biggest changes to Nasa since its inception.
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