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Message: <blockquote data-quote="robertsconley" data-source="post: 9887664" data-attributes="member: 13383">When it comes to science for its own sake and government, we already have solutions.  The Antarctic program is a good example. It operates in a hostile environment, is publicly funded, and is managed through a mix of peer review, objectives, and fiscal oversight. It’s not perfect, but it works well enough to be sustained over decades.Space doesn’t require inventing new systems. When it comes to science, governments already allocate what they can afford, prioritize through peer review, and hold programs to budgetary standards.With the United States and NASA, the main complication is the long shadow of Apollo. That created an expectation that human spaceflight should be large, centralized, and spectacular. That’s more of a cultural constraint that transcends poltics than a technical or financial one.A more effective approach would be to treat space infrastructure the way earlier generations treated things like the National Road or the Air Mail system. The government funds and maintains the capability, but doesn’t try to dictate every use.This is easier to supervise because it is more focused and easier to supervise. You are funding access and capacity, not betting everything on a few outcomes. From there, the users of that infrastructure determine what it is actually good for.</blockquote>