Tim Peake prepares for his Dec. 15th launch to the International Space Station. (credit: NASA)
Almost from the moment they are accepted as candidates, NASA's astronauts receive extensive media training. Don't speak out of school in public. Promote the program. Stay on message. And invariably, when talking with reporters, NASA astronauts will talk about all the wonderful things the space agency is doing. It's no surprise: many of them are from the military, so they're good at following orders. But more important than this, they want to fly. And flights don't go to off-message astronauts.
That is not to say NASA's astronauts don't have a variety of opinions about what the space agency is actually doing. And when you talk to many of them, they are deeply skeptical about NASA's Journey to Mars. They prefer a return to the Moon first, where the space agency can test out deep-space habitation systems before sending humans far deeper into the solar system.
Just as importantly, a lot of veteran astronauts do not have confidence in successive Presidential administrations, Congress, and NASA's own leadership to work together to craft a cohesive, visionary exploration plan. In other words, there's a greater likelihood of sticking to a 10-year plan to put astronauts on the Moon, rather than a 20-plus year plan to put humans on Mars.
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