Eric Berger writes:
Don't miss part one, either: "As NASA seeks next mission, Russia holds the trump card."
The Space Launch System, or SLS, is the seed - a super-sized rocket NASA hasn't had in decades. If everything goes right for May, NASA can build this rocket that can again take humans beyond low-Earth orbit where they have remained confined for 40 years. The catch is this: Washington isn’t giving NASA nearly enough money to actually do this.
The task of rocket building gobbles up so much of NASA’s meager exploration budget there’s no money left to develop payloads; the spacecraft, the living quarters, rovers or all of the stuff NASA needs if it wants to send humans to the moon, the surface of an asteroid or Mars.
For this reason critics, and there are many, have dubbed the SLS a “rocket to nowhere.”