FPI / March 17, 2025
Geostrategy-Direct
By Richard Fisher
It has been a week of momentous space news for the United States, with the March 2 landing of the Firefly Aerospace Blue Ghost unmanned Moon lander, the March 6 failure of the second Intuitive Machines unmanned moon lander, and the March 6 spectacular failure of the SpaceX Starship second stage, while seeing the third successful recovery of the massive booster stage.
But perhaps the most far-reaching news came in President Donald Trump’s March 4 State of the Union address when he stated, “We are going to conquer the vast frontiers of science, and we are going to lead humanity into space and plant the American flag on the planet Mars and even far beyond.”
It is that last phrase, “…and even far beyond,” that is potentially of historic importance, as it appears to commit the United States to achieving a manned presence — “plant the American flag” — on space bodies, be they planets, Moons or asteroids, that are “beyond” Mars and into our solar system.
While Trump’s statement does not preclude early reliance on unmanned probes and then unmanned landers to “plant the American flag” and conduct early research, even to return distant planetary and lunar samples, his phrase “lead humanity” would appear to include the transport of humans beyond Mars.
It may take some time for Trump Administration officials at the White House, or National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Administrator Jared Isaacman to articulate the full meaning of Trump’s phrase.
Another source of U.S. space leadership, the White House National Space Council, most recently led by Vice Presidents Mike Pence and then Kamala Harris, will not be continued under the leadership of Vice President J.D. Vance.
But Trump’s full statement amounts to an American commitment to achieve a significant manned presence on Mars, and then perhaps considering some of the more promising Moons of Jupiter and/or Saturn for manned visitation, which by logic would require a manned presence on Earth’s Moon for security goals and to develop the technology required for deeper space exploration.
Trump previously explained the necessity for going to the Moon in a Sept. 20, 2019 meeting at the White House with Australian Prime Minister Morrison, saying, “They said, ‘No, sir. It’s a launching pad for Mars.’ So, we’ll be doing the Moon. But we’ll really be doing Mars. And we’ll be — we’re making tremendous progress.”
Trump’s new focus on Mars can in part be attributed to his developed friendship with Elon Musk, leader of the innovative SpaceX Corporation, developer of the million+ ton reusable Starship, that since about 2016 Musk has touted as the vehicle that SpaceX will use populate Mars with humans.
While it has been tested eight times, with mixed success as per the SpaceX “fail forward” philosophy of iterative development, Starship would have to demonstrate full two stage reusability, full Earth orbit mission capabilities, refueling in Low Earth Orbit, in addition to missions to and from the Moon before undertaking missions to Mars.
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