A consensus has developed that we should get back to the Moon. The Trump Administration has made returning to the Moon official policy. Congress seems supportive. And other countries who have never been to the Moon are eager to get there.

But there’s a huge roadblock in America’s way. A massive obstacle that could make a Moon program impossible. And we are creating that obstacle despite the fact that the people it will stop is us. It’s called The Lunar Orbital Platform. Sometimes known as the Deep Space Gateway. And it’s a fraud.

NASA has been tasked with getting us to the Moon. Not just getting us there, but building a base there. Instead, the space agency is focused on a diversion—a human-tended space station in orbit around the Moon. A budget-breaking, useless space station. Why? To make money for Space Military Industrial Complex contractors like Lockheed Martin. And to justify another budget breaking space destroyer, the Frankenrocket known as the Space Launch System.

The Space Launch System, aye, there’s the rub. Elon Musk has developed his Falcon Heavy rocket for half a billion dollars. And he’s flown it successfully. NASA is spending 60 times more–$30 billion—to develop the Space Launch System. And that Space Launch System has never flown.

Even worse, the Space Launch System, if and when it flies, will not be able to land. It won’t be able to set itself down on Mars. It won’t be able to land on the Moon. And it won’t be able to land back on earth. So how do you create an excuse for the Space Launch System’s existence? You build a Moon program that never intends to touch down on the Moon. And how do you do that? You come up with a destination no one needs and where no one wants to go to—a Deep Space Gateway, now renamed a Lunar Orbital Platform.  A pseudo-destination to which the Space Launch System can fly.

Problem solved. Now space contractors can make a fortune. In addition to the three billion dollars per year those contractors make on the Space Launch System, they can reel in roughly another two billion on the Gateway. And Americans can watch as China, Russia, and India actually land on the Moon’s surface while we Americans, who went to the Moon first, cannot. All because NASA’s entire budget for manned space is being poured down two rat holes—the Space Launch System and the Deep Space Gateway/Lunar Orbital Platform. The gateway to failure.

Funding the Space Launch System has prevented Americans from getting to space on American vehicles since 2011. We can’t afford to have an alleged Deep Space Gateway that cripples our manned space program even more. The Space Development Steering Committee urges the House, the Senate, and the President to kill the murderous Deep Space Gateway… before it cripples America.