Why did NASA’s chief just shake up the agency’s plans to land on the Moon? | Per one source, “Duffy wants to be president. The NASA position has afforded him greater visibility, including television appearances, to expand his profile in a positive way. “He doesn’t want to give up the job.”
https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/10/nasas-acting-leader-seeks-to-keep-his-job-with-new-lunar-lander-announcement/?utm_campaign=dhtwitter&utm_content=%3Cmedia_url%3E&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter
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So you have Vance, Hegseth and Duffy all thinking they’ll become president one day? Can you just focus on your job please
>There are a couple of significant takeaways from this interview. First is the public acknowledgement by a senior NASA official that the space agency’s current timeline of a 2027 landing is completely untenable.
Finally some reality is hitting NASA leadership at least.
A Republican advisor to the White House told Ars that it is good that Duffy has moved beyond his rhetoric about NASA beating China to the Moon and to look for creative tactics to land there.
“Duffy hasn’t implemented any of the strategic reforms of Artemis that the president proposed this spring,” the Republican source said. “He has the perfect opportunity during the current shutdown, but there is no sign of any real reform under his leadership. Instead, Duffy is being co-opted by the deep state at NASA.”
Lmao, what absolute drivel. A Republican who wants Duffy to impound all NASA spending during the government shutdown and then says Duffy has been “captured by the deep state.” Could not be more transparently trying to appeal to Trump if he tried.
It’s easy to dunk on him for this but there is not a single person who’s been elected to congress that hasn’t thought they could be president one day. Probably says more about us the voters then them
It really sounds to me like he knows he’s going to be out w/ Issacman or someone else coming in and he’s trying to create a job for himself at a contractor ahead of time.
Because unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, it’s obvious that SpaceX’s “Starship” as a Human Landing System was the dumbest move that NASA made in the past 10 years. NASA has finally admitted that Starship development is far behind any schedule that would allow the US to return astronauts to the moon by 2030. I doubt that any version of Starship will EVER land on the moon, let alone Mars.
I never would have thought that the lumberjack with a hairy ass from The Real World Boston would be in charge of NASA.
Instead of pursuing science, they are pursuing politics. I don’t remember any other NASA director that thought it was a one way ticket to POTUS.
If China gets to the Moon before the US does (for the 2nd time) what will the US public and the world think made the difference, or claim made the difference?
A dysfunctional political system?
A dysfunctional space agency within that system?
A bizarrely run commercial space company?
A peculiarly run commercial space company?
Incompetent old-space companies? (Commercial, but you know what I mean.)
As usual, it won’t be determined on the facts but on who’s best at the blame game. The politicians are laying the ground for blaming as many entities as they can.
I hate to mention it, but him getting a high profile is not exactly helping his “presidential” image.
The man’s kinda dumb.
I mean he’s thinking outside the box.
The only one with a hope of going faster than spacex is a “blue moon 1.5” Ala Eric Berger.
Blue moon 2 is basically just as hard as starship and it’s behind starship.
No new vehicle will be ready in 4 years. None.
My take is Duffy is fucking with Elon Musk, trying to get some kind of reaction out of him.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|——-|———|—|
|[BO](/r/Space/comments/1obven2/stub/nkjdjju “Last usage”)|Blue Origin (*Bezos Rocketry*)|
|[ESM](/r/Space/comments/1obven2/stub/nkj8nsn “Last usage”)|European Service Module, component of the Orion capsule|
|[HLS](/r/Space/comments/1obven2/stub/nkjdjju “Last usage”)|[Human Landing System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program#Human_Landing_System) (Artemis)|
|[LLO](/r/Space/comments/1obven2/stub/nkj9hlv “Last usage”)|Low Lunar Orbit (below 100km)|
|[MECO](/r/Space/comments/1obven2/stub/nkj82x0 “Last usage”)|Main Engine Cut-Off|
| |[MainEngineCutOff](https://mainenginecutoff.com/) podcast|
|[NRHO](/r/Space/comments/1obven2/stub/nkj9hlv “Last usage”)|Near-Rectilinear Halo Orbit|
|[TPS](/r/Space/comments/1obven2/stub/nkj82x0 “Last usage”)|Thermal Protection System for a spacecraft (on the Falcon 9 first stage, the engine “Dance floor”)|
|Jargon|Definition|
|——-|———|—|
|[cryogenic](/r/Space/comments/1obven2/stub/nkj82x0 “Last usage”)|Very low temperature fluid; materials that would be gaseous at room temperature/pressure|
| |(In re: rocket fuel) Often synonymous with hydrolox|
|hydrolox|Portmanteau: liquid hydrogen fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer|
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