You forgot CRAPTO
Contrived Rubbish Acronym Purporting To Oraclate. I think Google's got the right idea - just name your project after something yummy.
NASA has published a shortlist of six missions its considering for launch from the year 2022. All are part of the space agency's “Explorers Program”, which aims to do heliophysics and astrophysics on modest budgets. The program runs “Medium-Class” missions with a budget cap of US$250m and “Missions of Opportunity” that get …
Can we please stop this buggering about and focus on getting our asses to Mars... or at least back to the moon...
Instead of these "one shot" projects, how about a permanent, long term space lab for space exploration? Big enough to hold a proper crew of dozens in a shirt sleeve enviroment. Build/park it in a proper Earth orbit, supply it with shuttles, then off to Moon, Mars, Titan, Europa, or whatever.
Long term missions in a proper solar system explorer.
And I'm talking a proper ship here, not some piddly little satellite that's not even high enough to clear the thermosphere, let alone the exosphere.
DAMMIT! I want the 21st Century that I was promised as a kid!
Not this "Shut up and enjoy this new gadget designed to distract you" Bizarro timeline I seem to have fallen into!
Yeah, my thought was a challenge with a mission of "landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth".
The original version was also "by the end of the decade", but since the current decade has less than two and a half years to run, that might be a bit tight on the timing.
But hey, at least we know how to build a launcher that can put 47 tonnes into lunar orbit. Well, that's not obvious from the current crop, all of which would struggle, at the best of times, to put 47 tonnes into LEO. But fifty years ago, we knew how to do it.
(Yes, it was hilariously expensive per launch, but that has more to do with the size of the launcher than with its expendable nature. When the turbopumps to drive the first stage motors consume 55000 horsepower from a gas generator just to keep enough fuel and oxidiser flowing, you know you're on to something ... big.)
EDIT: 55000 horsepower per motor. There were five.
Not so.
The biggest versions of all the main US launchers firing in salvo (over slightly more than a week) could put 62 tonnes into LEO right now. SpaceX FH will put about 20 tonnes on that number.
Without a dime spent on development.
How you use that capacity to implement a mission is a tougher question.