NASA further delays moon landing

It's not a big surprise but ARS Technica reports NASA no longer deems it feasible to land humans on the Moon by 2024.

"The 2024 lunar landing goal may no longer be a realistic target due to the last two years of appropriations, which did not provide enough funding to make 2024 achievable," the acting administrator, Steve Jurczyk, told Ars. "In light of this, we are reviewing the program for the most efficient path forward.”

Two weeks ago Biden's press secretary, Jen Psaki, said the new administration would support the space agency's Artemis program to land astronauts on the Moon and set the stage for an eventual human mission to Mars. Jurczyk said during an interview that NASA has welcomed a vote of confidence from the Biden administration.

Further delays were expected as the Space Launch System (SLS) is nowhere near ready and a decision regarding the Human Landing System (HLS) still needs to be made. NASA expects it will narrow down its selection of bids for the HLS to two, or possibly even one, by mid to late April.

Besides a lack of focus and plans that typically change every 4-8 years as a new administration comes swooping in, one of the big issues NASA has is that it's handled more as a jobs program than as a space exploration program. This results in big, money-wasting projects like the SLS -- with little results to show for it. As such, I think hyper-focused companies like SpaceX have a much better shot at enabling space exploration.