Last week's poll: Trump's lunar ambitions

As we reported - unlike President Kennedy’s famous speech at the height of the Space Race in 1961 - Trump’s order is relatively vague and is in line with NASA’s existing  plans to develop the Orion capsule, the giant Space Launch System rocket, and an orbital Deep Space Gateway.

Neither is it the first presidential order directing NASA to the moon; both Presidents Bush issued Space Vision directives calling for missions to the Moon and Mars, but such programmes are such long term goals that the clock ran down with no such missions going ahead.

We asked whether readers thought the plans would rekindle the glory-days of the space-race and drive technology development, or whether they were more cynical about Trump’s motives, and viewed the announcements as an effort to distract attention from the many controversies dogging his administration.

Reaction from the 644 respondents taking part was fairly mixed, although the majority (55 per cent) were sceptical about the plans, with 38 percent of the overall sample feeling that Trump’s plans are an attempt at distraction, and 17 per cent saying that the plans will never come to fruition.