In 2010, President Obama scrapped the NASA program that would bring humans back to the moon and then Mars. The Constellation program, which began under the George W. Bush administration, was "over budget, behind schedule, and lacking in innovation," according to President Obama.
So instead of Constellation we're getting the Space Launch System (SLS), and that's not going terribly well either. According to NASAspaceflight.com, the project to build a heavy lift rocket that could carry humans and their copious luggage to Mars doesn't have a game plan, and funding issues are at least partly to blame.
NASA is aiming to bring astronauts to Mars in the 2030s, and SLS is supposed to be the vehicle that gets us there. NASA has been heavily promoting the idea that the SLS is the future of space travel on social media over the past several years. However, NASAspaceflight.com spoke to "several" unnamed NASA employees who pointed out several problems after a recent meeting was held about the vehicle at Kennedy Space Center.
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