NASA/ReutersThe Trump Administration is but a few weeks old, but already a massive change is occurring in the future course of space exploration. NASA is weighing in, but a lot of the change is being driven by the private sector, some eager to be part of a return to the moon, which had been off the table during the previous administration. First, NASA announced that it is conducting a feasibility study, on behalf of the Trump administration, of sending an Orion spacecraft launched by a heavy-lift Space Launch System around the moon by 2019. Then SpaceX’s Elon Musk just announced that two customers have paid to be launched in a crewed version of the Dragon spacecraft around the moon, launched by a Falcon Heavy as early as 2018. Before you get too excited about the news of what might be a new race to the moon, it should be noted that space missions that have been confidently announced to occur by a certain date have often slipped farther into the future because of unexpected technical and funding problems. NASA, stodgy and bureaucratic as it is, is not the only organization so afflicted.