The Future of American Manned Spaceflight

Here's a subject that's dear to my heart--America's manned spaceflight program, or the apparent lack thereof.

About three weeks ago, I ran across an article on Google News (originally from the Wall Street Journal), saying that the Obama administration was planning 'outsource' America's manned spaceflight programs, eliminating NASA's Constellation program in favor of funding private-sector manned spacecraft. Included in this proposal is additional funding to keep the International Space Station in service for an additional 5 years beyond its currently-scheduled destruction in the 2015 time frame.


I was aghast. I was born in 1967, and can remember watching the last three Apollo missions on TV. My friends and I in preschool and elementary all had space toys (one had a very expensive kid's size replica space suit), and we followed the last few moon missions as well as Skylab and Apollo-Soyuz. Then there was the long drought until the first of the Space Shuttle launches in 1981. Through it all, all the years of my life, and all the changes and different places I've gone, the things I've seen and done, I've never lost the fascination with space.


It's been a given that the United States was at least one of the leaders in space exploration, if not out-in-out the outright leader. Sure, the Soviets had considerably more experience with space stations and long-duration space flight, with their Salyut and Mir space stations, but ours was pretty good too, and a lot more 'flashy'. It's part of the American psyche, I think, that our nation is superior to most (if not all), and one of the cornerstones of that is that ours is the only flag on the Moon. Neil, Buzz, and all the rest may have 'came in peace for all mankind', and that's a very good thing, but it's still our Old Glory that's exclusively on the Moon.


But now it seems that in an effort to save money, we're going to throw that all away, or at least that's what I thought at first.

The plan (or at least part of it) is to give government funds to private industry to try to 'jump-start' commercial spaceflight. The intent is that doing so will reduce the cost to put satellites (and people) into orbit.


I have some major reservations with this whole plan. However, as this is going to take some time, I'll have to break this down into several posts.