It's just a speed bump in the space program. The new Orion could fly in 2013, just two years off and the Ansari X Prize has produced a couple commercial quality programs that will have sub orbital spaceflights happening soon enough. I predict that by 2061 (Kubrick and Clarke were just off a few, OK 60, years) that we will have regular commercial flights to and from a space station and possibly even the start of a moon base, provided our own government doesn't get in the way. This will all be a commercial venture though that involves multinational corporations, nut governments.

NASA is a fucking bargain compared to everything else the government spends money on. It is incredible that NASA maintained America's status quo in space for 30 years on only 200 billion dollars.

And what has come out of the NASA programs has been incredible. Microchips, fire-retardant fabrics worn by firemen and race car drivers alike, scratch-resistant lenses, memory foam, infrared thermometers (ear thermometers), long-distance telecommunications (aka satellite), adjustable smoke detectors (like your home probably has), cordless tools (NASA research improved efficiency on Black and Decker's original designs), and water filters just to name a few.

And what has come out of the NASA programs has been incredible. Microchips, fire-retardant fabrics worn by firemen and race car drivers alike, scratch-resistant lenses, memory foam, infrared thermometers (ear thermometers), long-distance telecommunications (aka satellite), adjustable smoke detectors (like your home probably has), cordless tools (NASA research improved efficiency on Black and Decker's original designs), and water filters just to name a few.

Error 500 caused double post. Sorry.

They are saying that we will be back in space by 2015, but I don't buy it. Honestly, I think this is a travesty that future generations will come to regret

That was incredibly cool to watch. I hope I'm alive (and wealthy) but 2061 so I can take a trip into space.

"possibly even the start of a moon base"

I'll believe it when I see it. The trouble with a moon base is that it will be stupidly expensive and won't really do anything (in many ways a lot like a US president). Humans in space for the near future will be a combination of pampered celebrities taking photos from what are essentially aeroplanes that fly slightly higher than usual, and astronauts bused to and from the space station in glorified tin cans. The golden age of shuttles and huge investment is well and truly over for a while.

I saw 2013 on a recent article. That is when Orion is supposed to be ready.

I'm confused now - after looking into the Orion.

I was under the impression that ending the space shuttle program was the beginning of a downshift in NASA's space exploration. Rather, it just looks like it's the end of an old program and the beginning of a new and equally exciting one.

The way NASA has been allowed to atrophy is a disgrace. We can spend 800 billion dollars on a stimulus which did almost nothing but can't give NASA another 10 so we can keep our lead in space exploration?

Who would have ever thought we'd be reliant on the Russians to get Americans into space? Hopefully the private sector and the military's transport shuttle will be enough to prevent too much of a brain drain, but I doubt it. I have a feeling we won't get serious about space again and realize what a monumental mistake this was until there's a Chinese flag on the Moon too. It's a scandal.

Its horrendous. And I looked at the NASA page, and the Constellation Program, which would have launched the Orion module, has been scrapped, so I have no idea when we're going to launch something up next

If we don't make it to Mars by 2050 we will be in tough shape.

The only way to avoid an eventual collapse of civilization is to expand our economy beyond the resources of our single planet. And you have to start somewhere, and the sooner the better.

AND... NASA really isn't that expensive compared to the other shit we spend money on. It's something like a few percent of the defense's departments non-war budget.

I hate when people whine about how much we spend on foreign aid and the space program and other things that are... really... chump change. You want to whine about waste, talk to me about the defense budget and entitlements.

Also there is potential to have a self-sufficient moon-base. A lot of money in the space budget should go toward researching making this a reality I think.

I see NASA's role as a vanguard for private industry because when you get right down to it asteroid mining needs to be cost-effective by the end of this century or else we're going to have to rethink how we use resources.

And it really could be cost-effective fairly easily. Those things are giant fucking gold bricks. So much is on one that you'd have to be careful about how fast you sell it to avoid crashing commodities markets.

And ultimately if we start to harvest resources that are already in space one could begin to move toward in-space construction which would further decrease the cost of being in space - no need to build big-ass rockets to haul it all up there anymore.

All of this is possible by the end of the century if we don't drop the ball.

Apparently the US Military's budget for two years equals NASA's budget for the last 50 years combined. I have a feeling that if NASA had the resources that it deserves then there would be a huge jump in technology for space exploration. Neil Degrasse Tyson talked about this at a lecture I saw.

I am also far less concerned with which country does all this first than I am with someone doing it.

If it's authoritarian China, well, it's a shame we didn't get an American into the history books again but that's how it goes. I would be proud of what the human race did regardless of the last name of the guy.

It goes beyond the explorations of the past which were people finding other people. This is all people going into regions never before ventured into - the last time we did such things was perhaps at Antarctica, and before that, the early migrations out of Africa.

Yeah poor Neil will probably be dead before we make it Mars. Maybe he will live a long time and see it though - I hope so cause the guy is fucking great.

Going to Mars is a mistake. It can never be a comfortable home for humans. There's just not enough gravity to hold a thick enough atmosphere or to keep our bodies in good working order. The only thing its gravity achieves is making mining there too expensive to consider even if it wasn't so far away. Going to Mars is a fool's mission.

We can't stay on Earth forever if we want to outlive our own propensity toward fucking ourselves over.

"I am also far less concerned with which country does all this first than I am with someone doing it."
Agreed, I think that with the fluidity of the scientific community we need someone to make strides and it doesn't matter too too much who it is.

@Octavious, I thought that lower gravity would make mining cheaper and easier (especially in-situ mining).

@Thucy - Asteroid mining has always seemed to me to be one of those things, like the space elevator, which makes a ton of sense academically but needs a massive leap of faith to be the first to do it. Financially, it has to be an incredibly risk for private enterprise to undertake.
I guess that's the role of programs like NASA - to boldly go where no man has gone before.

It does matter if China is the first to do anything. Control of space means control of Earth, and you can bet China won't have even the fig-leaf restraint the United States has shown in militarizing space.

Space missions can take decades of planning, and we are going to be doing nothing in the manned spaceflight department for the foreseeable future. We're also not giving NASA enough resources for non-manned alternatives and other technologies to reach their full potential. The outlook for the American space program is grim. I just hope we come to our senses before it's too late, or I die before it gets too bad.

"needs a massive leap of faith to be the first to do it" -and that's why we can't rely on the private sector to do anything but what governmental space programs have already done.

@invictus - better a militarized outer space than no one in space. obviously i'd prefer it be NASA or the ESA but if we're not going to step up to the plate...

The rest of the world cheered us when we got to the moon, even Soviets I imagine, if in private, because it was an achievement for mankind. I would never be so parochial as to fold my arms if the Chinese did something similar - they would deserve my congratulations, admiration, and well-wishes.

Also re the militarization of space - it's already militarized and that's no one country's fault.

The ESA have the capacity on the Ariane 5 rocket to launch manned rockets, they just aren't designed to (ie there is no capsule which can carry people, but it can lift the required weight)

i know there has been talk of developing a module for this rocket, but at present i don't think there are any plans to do so. It might take 7 years if they tried, though i'm sure any NASA program wouldn't consider teaming up with the Europeans.... at least i've never seen it suggested.

I do know that the ESA and the EDA (European Defence Agency) have agreed a tech plan to share resources which are to be dual-tasked but NATO i'm sure has no plans to start a joint-space program, so i'm guessing it will be private enterprise which next takes an american built manned space craft up/out.

I really hope this isn't the end of NASA. They would be killing a lot of history and tradition.

Seriously? We really need to focus more on frickin sharks with lasers on their heads...

"And what has come out of the NASA programs has been incredible. Microchips, fire-retardant fabrics worn by firemen and race car drivers alike, scratch-resistant lenses, memory foam, infrared thermometers (ear thermometers), long-distance telecommunications (aka satellite), adjustable smoke detectors (like your home probably has), cordless tools (NASA research improved efficiency on Black and Decker's original designs), and water filters just to name a few."

really? any private company would have so many patents by this stage wouldn't they find it pretty easy to fund their own space program, i mean if NASA has done all this? Not to doubt it, I just happen to be capitalist enough to think that private enterprise is going to do space exploration a little better then the state...

also "when you get right down to it asteroid mining needs to be cost-effective by the end of this century or else we're going to have to rethink how we use resources. "

really? i think we have enough resources right here on earth, we just need to start looking in landfills as our new mines. I imagine it will be far more effective than, eh, mining space rocks...

even with a space elevator - which is at least 30 years away, if they can crack the material strength issue, which happens to be non-trivial, and how much funding does basic science get? - you still have to go and find rocks...

Sure using materials mined in space makes a huge amount of sense for construction in space, because you save on a huge amount, and IF we have a space elevator it become feasible to send the comparatively massive amounts of metal into space to build a refinery. (or you can develop zero-G vacuum refining, but that's going to be a whole mess of experiments and about an extra decade minimum)

but no amount of space mining is going to compare to the massive usage of materials earthside for hundreds of years. Not while we have all this junk just gathered together in landfills ready for exploiting...

Krellin, i salute you. +3

That being said....Obama, being the asshole that he is, Cancelled the Constelation project, and said private industry (which can't even orb it a guy yet) should pick up where NASA left off. Obama, asshole that he is, thinks we should OVERPAY Russia and China to lift guys into space.

NASA is dead until 2012, when, hopefully, a new President understands the inportant scietific off-shoots of NASA and gives them money again. Until them....NASA has just become Obama's fucking Muslim outreach program. Asshole..

really? i think we have enough resources right here on earth, we just need to start looking in landfills as our new mines. I imagine it will be far more effective than, eh, mining space rocks...

Oh don't get me wrong we will be doing that too, probably inside this decade. But we're going to run out if we level off our population at 15 billion or whatever. We just are, unless of course our way of life drastically changes.

What I mean by that is - the "first world" can become more like the third world instead of the other way around, or, we can get new resources.

Our economy and way of life for that matter is entirely dependent on this planet - all our eggs are in one basket. The sooner we change this the less likely it is that we will go extinct in the relatively near future.

Because if society collapses in any big way before we've made it out you probably set back getting off the planet by another 500 years and that could quite frankly be too late.