The most relevant quote:
The bill officially establishes in law that human exploration of Mars, including potential human habitation on the surface of Mars, is a NASA objective. It lauds the progress made by the SLS and Orion programs and requires NASA to submit a critical decision plan and strategic framework laying out the details of how it will achieve the goal of landing humans on Mars.
What makes you think this is more than just words? I get that this formally tweaks NASA's mandate, but it's not clear this would have any affect. After all, the Constellation program was not just an executive order by Bush; according to Wikipedia,
> NASA Authorization Act of 2005...directed NASA to "develop a sustained human presence on the Moon, including a robust precursor program to promote exploration, science, commerce and US preeminence in space, and as a stepping stone to future exploration of Mars and other destinations."
> It’s not a legally binding bill. Future presidents or lawmakers, or even NASA’s own administrators would still be able to modify plans at their own discretion — and that’s inevitable given the development of new technologies and fluctuations in funding over the next couple of decades.
> Nevertheless, by using explicit language never before used in federal legislation related to NASA authorization measures, the bill would make it tougher for future administrations to cut funding for the Mars mission or scrap the mission altogether.
I'm not impressed by the "explicit language never before used in federal legislation" when comparing it to what's come (and gone) before.
The most relevant quote: The bill officially establishes in law that human exploration of Mars, including potential human habitation on the surface of Mars, is a NASA objective. It lauds the progress made by the SLS and Orion programs and requires NASA to submit a critical decision plan and strategic framework laying out the details of how it will achieve the goal of landing humans on Mars.
Here are a couple related articles:
https://www.inverse.com/article/21129-a-new-senate-bill-coul...
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2016/09/21/senat...