Just a couple of days ago one of our favorite comedians was bemoaning the end of manned spaceflight and he broke a lot of hearts. Colbert Nation June 1 (link is currently broken on the site, redirects to latest episode). Steven might have been wrong ; )
Today's successful launch of the Falcon 9 signifies that Obama's space vision has legs. The President wants us to go to places no man has been before. The Moon? Been there, done that. Low Earth Orbit? Ditto.
We're going to the asteroids and to Mars, at it is about time.
Follow me over the fold.
Arthur C. Clarke talked about the failures of nerve and of the imagination. Obama's plan would seem to be avoiding both. Let the private sector in to provide the boring stuff and let NASA fly out to deep space.
There is so much the private sector can be doing (with government help in the form of flat rather than "cost plus" contracts):
Resupplying the Space Station. (Falcon 9)
Getting our astronauts to space. (Dragon)
Building Space Stations. (Bigelow) - It seems to be a no-brainer that we add a couple of these inflatables to the ISS, which is kinda cramped.
(not to mention Virgin Galactic, etc.)
etc, etc.
If we free NASA from the cost and drudgery of driving busses and let them actually explore, with both robots and people, then a new age really has dawned.
Actually, I believe that one of the President's aims is to broaden the space constituency which will allow the space endeavor to better weather the ups and downs of the budgetary process.
The Deep Space goals the President has set are exciting. A near Earth asteroid is first up. That is the kind of thing that can really pay off, as a science platform, a source of resources, as research in to how to avoid disaster and even as a space habitat.
Next up Mars. By building on new technologies and new heavy lift capabilities, perhaps a mission to Mars will not be the one off that the Apollo missions were but instead the beginning of a sustained exploratory expansion throughout the inner system and beyond. We must beware of overreach, as happened before.
PS. I too will be saddened to see the shuttle fleet grounded but they never lived up to their billing, were much more expensive and risky than they should have been and are getting quite long in the tooth. I'm just sorry that President Clinton did not launch a serious program to build on the Shuttle program. Then we could be launching the Shuttle 2.0 right about now instead of relying on 40 year old Soviet tech and private startups. For that matter, I'm sorry we abandoned the X series way back when. Chuck Yeager touched the edge of space back in the 50's, for crying out loud. If we'd kept up with that, who knows where we'd be by now.
PPS Still better late than never and the new program is certainly better that Apollo on steroids : )