What is the future of the US space program?

[BlueCheese]

Does anyone here know enough to summarize what the US space program's biggest priorities are in the medium-to-long term?

After the imminent retirement of the space shuttle, the US will no longer have the ability to launch humans into space. Bush had his "Vision for Space Exploration", which became the Constellation program. That included the Ares boosters and Orion crew exploration vehicle meant to eventually return to the moon and then on to Mars. There was a lot of debate as to whether Constellation was a good idea or not; in the end Obama and Congress canceled it last year.

The only info I can find online about the future of the space program now that Constellation is gone is a speech Obama gave last April and a space policy document issued in June. From what I gather, we will rely on other countries (Russia, right now) and private corporations for the apparently mundane business of launching people into low-earth orbit. NASA will concentrate on continuing its (in my view successful) uncrewed program of science probes and satellites, while developing a larger booster system for beyond low-earth orbit, with the vague goal of an eventual asteroid landing by 2025 and a Mars landing in 25 years or so. As far as I can tell, there isn't much concrete in how these last two are supposed to be accomplished--intermediate steps, what launch vehicles will be used or developed, etc.

Space, spaceflight, and space exploration have captured my imagination from my early childhood on. Human spaceflight as it's currently done might not be the most important part of NASA--in fact, I find the interplanetary probes and space telescopes more fascination--but it feels like something that we as a species should be capable of, and for the United States to no longer be able to do that seems an abdication of sorts.

I guess what I'm wondering is whether the United States, on behalf of all of humanity, has a plan to carry on human space exploration to Mars and beyond?

[Posteritatis]

1. I'm not sure there really can be said to *be* any plans along those lines

The US is deeply hostile to medum or long-term planning, well, in general, and that goes doubly for anythin to do with space. Add to that the fact that people are generally impressively clueless about its costs and so on - ask some people to guess NASA's budget without Googling sometime; it's not often you'll get a figure within the correct order of magnitude - and anything somewhat ambitious becomes way too convenient to ignore.

Just look to the responses you're likely to get to this your post for an example of the general view these days - I predict a bunch of talk about the military, people who don't know how little is being spent on such things, and a whole lot of misanthropes and technophobes.

[Posteritatis]

6. Though for the right-here right-now stuff:

The various spacecraft flitting about the solar system right now, where they are, and what they're currently up to.

[neverforget]

17. +100 for the Planetary Society

[BlueCheese]

7. I was surprised to find out how small NASA's budget is.

We're talking $20 billion a year or so--less than a quarter of what we spent to bail out AIG. NASA's spending over its entire history may not be more than what the DoD spends in one year.

What might we be able to do with more vision and just a little more money?

[Posteritatis]

9. Yeah, it really is staggeringly low

And people always hugely overestimate it - every other space thread here has a few people who think that if we zero out NASA's budget it will solve all our problems, and I've seen people now and then guess its annual budget as higher than the military's (or exclusively dedicated to the military, which is at least as ignorant).

[leftstreet]

2. Find a planet with oil and the Space Race will be ON !

:-)

[Motown_Johnny]

13. will a moon with liquid methane do?

[bbinacan]

3. In the current environment,

I think our space program, unfortunately, is dead.

[Leithan]

4. Obama's Biggest Mistake

I'm serious: Just as dominion over the oceans made the U.S. the leading world power, he who rules the skies will dominate the Earth in a couple of decades.

[vim876]

10. Also...

If we don't get to terraforming tech soon, we could be in serious trouble down the line.

[arcane1]

5. I'm not aware of any manned missions being actually "planned" at the moment

Though I think there's an actual plan with probes to check out one or more of Jupiter's moons in more detail. :shrug:

[htuttle]

8. (Spoiler Alert!)

It peters out until Zephram Cochrane invents warp drive around 2061.

[Liberal_in_LA]

11. trekkie!

[Motown_Johnny]

14. wrong universe

in that one the Botany Bay has already launched

[TheKentuckian]

12. Apparently somewhere between privatized and dead.

Gotta funnel a few billion to billionaires while killing the best return on investment we have had as a part of the giant sacrifice on the alter of the tax cuts for the top 20%.

[Motown_Johnny]

15. robotic exploration and humans in low earth orbit for the foreseeable future, and beyond

Mars is a pipe dream. The challenges far outweigh any possible reward.

Robots keep getting better and are by far the most bang for the buck.

Zero G experiments from low earth orbit has some value and a prestige factor.


If there is any real change of focus in our lifetime it may be having robots interact with meteors, asteroids and comets in ways that have not yet been done. That and exploring some of the more interesting moons in our system is about all we can look forward to.

[Johonny]

16. current plan

The problem with space is most Americans have no clue what America's space program is and does. Manned flight represent about 10-15 % of flights in a year. Frankly bouncing around in near Earth orbit the last 20 years hasn't been very productive either science wise or in terms generating $ through public interest.

So what is the plan for space? We are currently keeping up our vast space infrastructure which is the majority of our space program (around 90 % of flights). This means communication sats, weather sats, climate monitoring sats, GPS, etc. We are also formulating the next generation of these programs because as in terms of space years, our space infrastructure is getting old.

What about the man programmed? Well the unmanned program simply vastly out paces manned program in terms of science collected per cost, there simply has been no scientific argument to sending people to Mars. For the cost of the program using current technology, we could explore the solar system with unmanned crafts. The general vision for NASA is currently split between those that can't imagine space without people, and those that would like NASA's manned program more inline with well the other 90 % of our space program. That means spending less money on sending people into space, but instead spending more money on testing future technologies, and unmanned space exploration. Currently the people in love with people hanging out in low Earth orbit are winning the battle. Which means less $ for testing future space technology (without which any manned space exploration outside low earth orbit is very unlikely). If you can't tell I'd rather NASA focused on maintaining current infrastructure (which probably means using SpaceX to supply the space station), unmanned planetary missions, and testing and investing in new technologies.

One last thing, since the dawn of the space age space has always been a joint project between private industry, NASA and USAF. I don't get why people suddenly freak out about private industry building a space craft now?