NASA has been a make-work welfare project from the early 1970s. That's when the leaders of America decided to turn their backs on manned space exploration. Since that time, NASA has been piddling along with just enough actual research to justify keeping its staff employed. All the brilliant projects devised in the 1950s and 60s were shelved. Atomic rockets. Space hotels. Lunar colonies. Mars bases. All nothing but talk. If the NASA schedule of the 1960s had been sustained, we would have permanent Martian and Lunar bases by now, massive orbiting space stations, and rockets capable of visiting the planets within reasonable periods of time.