Trump offered NASA ‘all the money you ever need’ to go to Mars in his first term
President Trump offered NASA ‘all the money you could ever need’ if they could land a man on Mars during the first term of his presidency, a new book has revealed.
The generous offer came in response to a NASA official saying that the U.S. aimed to land a man on the Red Planet by 2030.
Trump replied, ‘But is there any way we could do it by the end of my first term?’
Trum’s director of message strategy Cliff Sims revealed the conversation in his book Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House.
Sims says that the NASA officials were nervous as Trump had to call the Space Station minutes later – and had proposed shaving 10 years off their planned timeline.
But Trump continued, ‘But what if I gave you all the money you could ever need to do it?”
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‘What if we sent NASA’s budget through the roof, but focused entirely on that instead of whatever else you’re doing now. Could it work then?’
Last year, a NASA training chief said that the first person to walk on Mars ‘should be a woman.’
Only twelve people have ever walked on the surface of the moon – and every single one of them was a man.
That’s why it makes sense that the first person on Mars should be a woman, says Alison McIntyre, Chief of NASA’s Space Vehicle Mockup Facility.
McIntyre is in charge of a NASA facility with life-size replicas of space vehicles, where astronauts train before going into orbit.
McIntyre, a 20-year veteran of human space flight says that women are under-represented in science and engineering both in the UK and America.
That’s why it makes sense for the first person to step on Mars to be a woman, says McIntyre.
Speaking to Radio Five Live, she said, ‘My centre director is a woman, my former division chief is a woman.
‘We have female astronauts, but we haven’t put a woman on the Moon yet, and I think the first person on Mars should be a woman.’
