>>11998928Timeline:
1. Obama's new NASA plans are revealed in the FY2011 budget rollout. It ends Constellation, and instead has a bunch of new initiatives mainlined by investments into exploration research and technology that would be Mars related for future Mars oriented hardware development phases. Solar electric propulsion, inflatable habs, fuel depot demo. + some rocket engine development programs ahead of a 2015 selection date for a competed super/heavy lift rocket program. +some exploration probe/rover missions too, including a moon rover. + commercial crew, but with better funding
2. Some people complain it is bad because it doesn't have a destination timeline.
3. Obama declares visiting an Asteroid in 2025 as a destination and timeline metric as a response. This isn't asteroid redirect. This could be thought of as a shakedown cruise of a human Mars ship as a follow on to those technology investments to an easier asteroid destination before later Mars missions.
4. This plan didn't have a SLS like rocket. People who wanted that succeeded in getting SLS installed instead of the Mars technology program.
5. SLS sucked up all the money and development time and so timelines were pushed out and there was no room or likelihood of the actual asteroid mission being lived up to.
6. Someone thought up asteroid redirect mission.
7. Asteroid redirect mission became a thing in this post SLS period as something small that could be done, even though it was something else entirely.
