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Blog - Latest Entries NASA to be grounded Obama's new annual budget proposal involves cutting funding that was to be used to develop the shuttle replacement. His budget also cuts the program that was going to get humans back on the moon and establish a permanent base there. Obama's proposal is to let the private sector handle getting humans into space. I both agree and disagree with this idea. While the private sector has made huge leaps and bounds in just the last few years, it still has a long ways to go before it could put people on the moon or beyond. Heck, it has a long ways to go before it could even get people onto the International Space Station (ISS)! Next year, Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic is scheduled to begin launching SpaceShipTwo into suborbit at 68 miles altitude with paying space tourists. The ISS orbits between 173 miles and 286 miles altitude. Based on these facts, the private sector is going to need to triple it's efforts in very short order just to replace NASA's current orbital missions. While all of this may be possible, that still leaves the issue of the moon and beyond. Many in the private sector have had plans to conduct missions for NASA close to home and let NASA focus on distant missions. Who is going to focus on distant missions now? We need to get off this planet sooner or later. Posted by Dustin Cowell in Space on 02/01/2010 at 1:42 PM Comments (0)
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